Here is the first part of the story of Hurricane Frank, which grows and shrinks and becomes more and less done the more I pick at it.
Want to read more? There's plenty. Let me know.
Everything on these pages is drummey born and raised.
Seth
“I declare this, the twenty seventh annual Beaumont Lobster Kissing Contest, officially begun!” Seth Tattersall, the traveling essayist for the newsmagazine We the People, booms. He points a lobster-shaped pistol into the air and fires. Seth stands at the head of a long table, which has been made by pushing lots of other long tables together and covering them with brown paper. On either side of the table, huge tubs are arranged, filled with live lobsters that wave their claws feebly in the Alabama heat.
Beaumont , Alabama is not in Hurricane Frank's path. While other parts of the state are pounded, the organizers of this historic event bravely soldier on, continuing the annual tradition. Seth and his team from We the People have come to record it.
“Why do some folks choose lobster kissing as a pastime? What makes them tick? I mean, look at the concentration on that man's face, will you?” Seth muses into the mike, while his team films a man whose long moustache blocks the view of lobster and human lip meeting. A judge confirms the kiss.
“In the ladies division, we have the same kind of determination, gusto, and as our Hebrew friends say, chutzpah. Look at these women go!” Seth continues. The cameramen film repeated shots of the lobster and human smooch, and a few near misses where the shellfish swipe at people's ears.
The “Lobster Arousal Expert” joins Seth on camera and comments: “To a lobster, the human head is not so much a predator as it is a monstrosity. If you can imagine how foreign a lobster looks to a person up close, think about it from the lobster's point of view. Think about kissing something that's, say, fifty times larger than you.
“It's hardly fair to expect the lobsters to be happy about having to pucker up. Plus, they're not used to this Alabama weather. It's really quite hot here. They like to be, you know, underwater. Where it's cold. Like up in Maine .”
Seth points across the field and says:
“Let's take a look at the Spiny Lobster Division, see how things are going over there.”
The entourage moves across the fairway, where imposing, squarish men sporting biker apparel and many tattoos raise great spine-covered creatures to their lips. Here, the kisses are wilder, quicker. Claws wave, spines drift. Anyone could lose an eye. The camera focuses on the contestants, then on the expert and Seth, watching, enthralled.
“This is the place where the real mavericks come out to play.” The expert offers. Seth nods but only once, for it is here that he begins to lose the world. It is here that the scent of boiled lobster that wafts heavily in the air finally takes control, kicks his brain over and under and over again, and sends him into the mysterious darkness. For Seth suffers from a condition unfortunate for a television host: he becomes catatonic under the influence of certain intense tastes or smells. The delicious aroma of the cooking shellfish covers the field of lobster-kissing competitors and likewise covers Seth like the thickest of blankets. He is very still, he surrenders the television host's animated gawk, the gee whizery, and his visage reads like a flat line.
Seth's display makes the We the People crew uncomfortable, especially when a thin but determined strand of drool begins to slide down his chin. It reminds some of the crew of their children, others of their parents. None want to think about where Seth is, really, when he is so obviously not there.
The crew members shuffle nervously. They wonder whose turn it is this time to rouse him. They wish he weren't so popular, so that someone else could be finishing up shooting right about now, and moving on to judge Ms. Lobster Bib 2007.