MOE BOWSTERN is the editor since 1996 of Xtra Tuf, a zine that chronicles the experiences and adventures of commercial fisher folk in Alaska and beyond. Moe performs annually at the Astoria, Ore. Fisher Poets Gathering; she has also appeared at the Sea Music Festival in Mystic, Conn., the Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford, Mass., and Tony's Bar, "Kodiak's Biggest Navigational Hazard" in Kodiak, Alaska, among other places. Xtra Tuf #5: The Strike Issue won the 2007 Lilla Jewel Award. Moe has worked on fishing boats since 1986, when as a miserable 18-year-old boat cook she once inadvertently threatened the lives of the crew by serving pasta tossed with shards of glass. Her newest issue, Xtra Tuf #6: The Greenhorn Issue, features contributions from over 20 other commercial fishing writers, all on the theme of initiation into the rough world of commercial fishing. Find her at www.moebowstern.com.
VIDEO
Video courtesy of Brad Wartman, 2018
AUDIO
WRITINGS
Things That Will Be Difficult
It will be hard to never know what is going to happen next or indeed what is happening right now. It will be hard to not understand what is going on for days, weeks. The entire first season. It will be hard that everyone else knows how to do everything, and they know that you, the greenhorn, can do nothing right. It will be hard to have no opinion worth attending. It will be hard to have no one around to whom you can say, will you please explain that whole knot versus miles thing again?
It will be hard to look at the fish hold and see an undifferentiated mass of fish, while your crew mates are separating fish into five distinct species. It will be hard to wake up in your tiny little bunk in the pitch-dark fo'c'sle in the middle of a scream with your crewmate shaking you by the shoulder, telling you to shut the fuck up, we're trying to get some sleep. It will be hard to dream that you are in a coffin every night.
It will be hard to cook two or three meals a day, every single day and have no one ever ever not once say thanks. It will be hard to get the hatch cover off. It will be hard, if you are a woman, to struggle to do anything new without having some man come and take the tool from you and do it. It will be hard, later, to hear yourself described as lazy when you've given up doing anything because some man takes over everything you start doing. Except the cooking.
It will be hard if you are a man, to understand why your female crewmate, who started out so friendly, is so silent now, when you are only trying to help.
It will be hard, if you are a woman, to go two weeks without speaking to another woman, to only see a woman as a faraway figure clad in raingear on a distant boat.
It will be hard, if you are a man, to read a poem or draw a picture without having another man call you a faggot or a pussy. It will be hard, whatever you are, to go for weeks without a touch, a caress, a hug, a kind word. It will be hard, if you are queer and a man, to never let anyone know who you are. It will be hard, if you are queer and a man, to work all summer and never dare to get drunk with your friends and crewmates lest your resolve fail and you act, after which you will be called 'the kisser' in harbor legend forever, and you will never return.
It will be hard, if you are queer and a woman, to keep it to yourself lest you scare away the few women around you, and bring closer the men who have rented a specific video they think you might have starred in. It will be hard, if you are a woman, to walk onto a boat filled with men watching porn and see your friends among them. It will be hard, if you are a man, to refuse to watch porn with those men. It will be hard, if you are a woman, to remember that you are pro-porn.
It will be hard to keep everything to yourself, buttoned inside your head and locked in your heart. It will be hard when you go without laughing for so long.
It will be hard, if you are a man, to go without seeing a woman except as a faraway, raingear-clad figure on the stern of a distant boat. It will be hard when you realize you are helplessly hot for your crewmate. It will be hard when you realize that the skipper has a crush on you and your crewmates hate you for the special treatment you didn't ask to get.
It will be hard to find joy. It will be hard to make it through those last twenty days of August. It will be hard to regress to the childhood frustrations of not knowing how to do anything, even the simplest thing, without anyone to cheer you on when you finally figure out the simplest thing--tying a knot you are supposed to know, fueling up without spilling a drop.
It will be hard to be green. To hurt all over your body and have nobody care. To see whales--whales!--and when you run in to tell your crewmates they are irritated at their interrupted naps, they who have seen a thousand whales, they to whom a whale is a fishing obstacle.
It will be hard to return to the boat for your second, triumphant season, and realize that you are still a greenhorn. It will be hard to find a place alone, where no one can see you cry or masturbate or read kid's books. It will be hard to look at the beach every day and never set foot on land, fifteen days, twenty days. To live in thirty-eight or forty-four feet with three or four other people, that will be hard. It will be hard to watch yourself become your worst possible self, to understand eventually that all along the problem was you, and even with this epiphany, you can't stop being that self.
And then, finally after it's all over, and you are back home, wherever that may be, among those who love you, who praise you, who hug you and laugh at your jokes and always say good morning--then you will find that beyond all reason, you are homesick. A truck will belch diesel as it passes you and the stench will transport you to a moment in a quiet bay, fueling up at your favorite tender. Everything will be too fast and too loud, there will be too many people everywhere. You will develop an affinity for men with beards. You will learn how to spot a working fisherman, a fellow. You will miss the boat. You will miss the ocean. And that will be hard.
Xtra Tuf #6, The Greenhorn Issue
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Skiff Song
I want to get you in a skiff
Is what I think, when i drive that big, badass skiff around,
I think of you!
I want to get you in a skiff
I want to drive across the channel,
slip between the breakwalls and pull back hard on the throttle
So you slump forward with the momentum
So the skiff rocks onto the bosom of its own wake
And you will know right then, again,
How it feels when I get my arms round you
I want to get you in a skiff.
Yeah, wanna drive wide open with my grin big
Spit flying from the corners of my mouth in spite of myself
‘Cause I just can’t stop smiling
When I ‘m driving a skiff,
When I ‘m unzipping the water with my prop
The white horses pull away to port and starboard
And it’s us, us in front of them all
I want to get you in a skiff.
Wanna drive you circle round the channel bell
Rock it to ringing, then cut the motor
So you can hear in the lonely tones
What my pulse sounds like in my own ears
And someday some
You’ll wake up from sleeping under my wing
The channel bell will be ringing in your ears
Lost and away like a seagull’s cry
My breathing Will sound like the waves that whisper,
Yes, no, please and thank you
As they tiptoe round the base of the bell,
That last, sad sound on the way out of town
I want to get you in a skiff.
Want to drive you down to where the big ship from Panama
Sits her ass so high out of the water it’s practically indecent,
‘Cause she’s a lady, you know
Scoot between the bow and the anchor chain,
All along the three, four, five hundred feet of the ship,
And didn't she park a time or two at the bottom of Mississippi Hill, oh yes--
Panama is where she’s from
“I would like to go one day to Panama” you say,
‘Cause you are a revolutionary
Me, I don’t say nothing
Just give her a little more juice and write my name in the wake
The man on the stern of the ship, he is from Panama
He pauses in his labors to read my name upon the water
And he wishes he was you
And I will never have to go to Panama
I want to get you in a skiff.
Yeah, I wanna burn that diesel
Wrap you in exhaust fumes, the plumage of your youth
Slide on the aluminum because of the oil dripped on it
And the transmission fluid
And the hydraulic oil
And the hynautic fluid
And the antifreeze
And the zincs welded to the hull, oh yes
And trade you toxins, kiss for kiss, you Bremerton boy
I’m gonna get you in a skiff
Xtra Tuf #5.5
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Molly Brine
to the tune of ‘Clementine’
In the galley of a seiner
Where the engine loudly whines
Stands a deck boss, full of hot sauce
And her name is Molly Brine
Light she is and like a mermaid
Xtra Tufs size number nine
Helly Hansens that she’ll dance in
Colored like a lemon rind
chorus
Oh, my darling, oh, my darling
Oh, my darling Molly Brine
You are lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Molly Brine
Boat was cruising, crew was snoozing
When up jumped a salmon fine
Boss to crew says, lose your snoozes
To make a set, I am inclined
Get the crew up, heat the stew up
Don’t forget the safety line
Can’t catch fishes making wishes
So we set out from the shoreline
chorus
The morn was early, the crew was surly
On the boat where I did pine
Plunging slowly, feeling lowly
Scanning for my Molly Brine
I’d been in town, threw some drinks down
Bragged too loud of my good find
Lovely brunette, hair with rain wet
Shy and tough, my Molly Brine
Many ears perked as my mouth worked
And my love I did malign
Described her face and all her graces
At Tony’s until closing time
chorus
Come the morning, without warning
Standing in the dock sunshine
Oh, my poor head, what had I said
Nothing much, I’m sure it’s fine
An approaching Fury made me worry
As she for me made a beeline
“You’re a dumb twit, I’m so over it!”
And she dumped me, Molly Brine.
chorus
Now here I am, lovesick deckhand
Of my heart there is no sign
Standing plunging in my Grundens
Dreadful sorry, my Molly Brine.
Xtra Tuf #5.5