The Fish Story

Abstract

It was almost like they knew they were going to be crucified. First they would lie still on your palm, as though dead. Only a slight tremor, at one end or the other, gave their trick away. It was this moment. This moment of calm right before it happened, that I liked most, when their tender, fleshy bodies, studded with black dirt, would lay in my hand like the trust of an old friend. At seven years old, that glistening body of plumped worminess was more beautiful to me than any … (Breaks off.)

This monologue was written while Naomi Wallace was a graduate student at the University of Iowa in the early 1990s. It was included in the 1994 Heinemann collection Monologues for Women by Women edited by Tori Haring-Smith and was presented by Rogue Planet and Horizon Theatre Company as part of the 2001 Naomi Wallace Festival in Atlanta. It also appears on lists of pieces for oral interpretation in high school forensics competitions. It provides an early indication of Wallace’s abiding concern with the body (and particularly the wounded body and sexual contact). And its focus on worms-as-food makes for an interesting comparison with The Tal Pidae Lehrstücke, an altogether different monologue written 20 years later for an altogether different character.