Real Mermaids

For five years in the early 2000s, I lived on the north coast of Hispaniola, in Cabarete, Dominican Republic. I practiced massage at a destination for European water-sport enthusiasts called Happy Surf.

It was intense living at the edge of the open Atlantic. Sometimes in the madness of 3am I heard noises that I knew couldn’t be other than the songs of mermaids.

J. Alfred Prufrock was a great love of my younger life, even though he was quite a bit older. He knew exactly my feelings of isolation. Wandering through harsh streets of neighborhoods with no soul.

He was old enough to be going bald, though. And he still worried so much...

I always feel a nostalgic affection for him, but it is ruined with a mild sense of pity because he never swam with the sea girls, his name for the mermaids,

whereas I eventually did.

("The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" T.S. Eliot)