Flukes and celebrity sightings
FLUKE, n. I saw whales for the first time ever this week. I also saw dolphins, and three coyotes while walking in Griffith Park, and that most Los Angeles of wild animals, a celebrity.
I don’t know why I’m being coy about this: it was Natalie Portman. She’s very pretty. I felt bad looking at her. She was just there to eat Thai food like the rest of us. She didn’t want to be looked at. I wouldn’t want to be, either. Happily nobody wanted to watch me shoveling brussels sprouts larb and fantastically spicy noodles into my face until I sniffled and blinked back tears, but obviously I still looked at her. Sorry, Natalie.
Some of the animals we saw didn’t want to be looked at, either. The coyotes and a few of the whales were indifferent to our presence, but a few of the whales swam away from our boat as fast and discreetly as possible. The dolphins, on the other hand, loved being looked at. And they loved looking at us! They followed our boat, playfully chasing us and leaping out of the water to show off. It’s rare and sort of flattering to encounter a wild animal that wants your attention. A chance outcome that’s difficult to repeat—a fluke.
While we were on the boat watching whales, I thought it must be the case that “fluke,” as in a whale’s tail, is related to “fluke” as in a chance outcome. Certainly, I felt lucky every time we saw a fluke. But no dictionaries have substantiated my hypothesis.
The oldest meaning of “fluke” is a flatfish, which can be traced back to Old English floc and eventually all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European root meaning “flat.” Then the word “fluke” transferred to parasitic worms (rat kings, butter shit, parasites—this newsletter is delightful every week, I know) based on the similar shapes. That’s probably also the reason that “fluke” can mean the flat end of an arm of an anchor.
“Fluke” as in a stroke of luck or a chance hit is maybe, possibly related to whale tails. Whales use their flukes to swim fast, and apparently sailors used to say “to go a-fluking” meaning “to go fast.” “Fluke” as in a chance hit seems to have come from 19th-century English slang about billiards, and I guess… billiard balls go fast? The connection is a stretch, and both Wiktionary and the OED only say that lucky “fluke” is of uncertain origin.
Interestingly, for both J and myself, the word “fluke” can also mean a chance outcome that is bad. All the dictionaries I looked at only recorded the meaning in terms of good luck, but that’s not the case for the two (2) native speakers I have polled. I know this doesn’t count as data yet, but it might indicate the beginning of a shift in meaning—another cool thing to observe in the wild.
The fluke of a California gray whale in front of Anacapa Island off the coast of California, photo credit to J
This would have been a great, thematically appropriate week to start reading Moby-Dick, but I didn’t. Instead I read a few small-r romances.
Open House (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Ruby Lang. I love this series, I love New York City, I love main characters Magda Ferrer and Tyson Yang, I love the enemies-to-lovers trope deployed to perfection—Tyson, along with a group of old ladies, has reclaimed an abandoned lot on 135th Street and turned it into a garden, and Magda is the real estate broker charged with selling the lot—and most of all I love the scene of seduction via dumpling in this book. Ty brings Magda dumplings as a peace offering at one point and the description of the food is completely gorgeous. There’s another scene between them in the garden that is laugh-out-loud funny, but I can’t describe it for fear of ruining the joke. This book is a joy from start to finish. My only complaint is that it does not come with a box of dumplings. Content warnings: grief over the death of a parent, sex.
The Prince of Broadway (m/f, both cis and het, historical) by Joanna Shupe. Another book set in New York City, but this time in the Gilded Age. Clay, raised in a tenement, runs an illegal casino in the city. Florence, raised uptown in obscene luxury, goes to him for lessons so she can start her own illegal gaming business—for women. Clay hates and wants revenge on Florence’s father, which he discloses immediately, so the set-up is tense and delicious. I’m really impressed with how this book kept the emotional conflict between the two main characters evolving throughout the middle, instead of reiterating the same problem over and over. They fight and make up a couple of different times over a couple of different issues.
The setting is great, and I loved fearless troublemaker Florence, but I found her repeated insistence that gambling is perfectly harmless and shouldn’t be illegal a little too pat. People get addicted to gambling just like they do to alcohol and drugs. It’s not entirely innocent. She’s fine with bribing the police and the city officials, but she never fully examines the life-ruining potential of casinos. I realize this is maybe a little bit ridiculous as a nit-pick: I’m totally into her running a criminal empire, I just want her to do it knowingly.
But anyway, this is good fun and I do cherish that rare historical heroine who doesn’t want marriage or babies. Content warnings: a character has lost a young sibling in the past, sex.
“Penhallow Amid Passing Things” (f/f, both cis and lesbian?, historical, fantasy, short story) by Iona Datt Sharma. This is a lyrical and magical short story about a smuggler and a revenue agent teaming up to right a wrong.
Here is a bonus photo of some dolphins enjoying themselves in a safe-for-work way. The friendly volunteer naturalist on our boat who was wandering around our boat answering questions informed me and my companions, in a gleeful and conspiratorial stage whisper, that these dolphins have sex ten times a day. I’m happy for the dolphins who seem to be living their best lives at all times, and also I’m thrilled for that volunteer because some day I too will be a dirty old lady.
Have a good week!
