Big Rich and I had a symbiotic relationship. You see, we only had two things in common, women and sports. Yes, you are thinking, ‘a normal pedestrian guy story’. Think again…

We worked together at my night job. I would head off to work my morning job, and then one of my afternoon jobs. Rich would then pick me up on pay days and we would head to the strip clubs. I think I was 32-years old. Rich decided to add another day to our itinerary, and chose Wednesday, when I only worked the night job and morning job. We would then go fishing. I said, “But I don’t fish?”

He said, “Neither do I Mo. But I like to smoke pot, and so does that big-tit friend a yours who is comin’ fishin’ with us, and bringin’ her blonde lesbo-buddy. We’re meetin’ them at Cox’s point in an hour.”

I gave my reluctant consent, “Yes oh Wise One, I hear and obey…”

After fifteen minutes of watching Rich watch this hillbilly fish for carp while he smoked pot, I was climbing the non-existent walls of this Devil’s Island. At this point in my life, when I was working six jobs and only sleeping on buses, in cabs, and in the shower, boredom was lethal and would have me nodding out like a junky quickly.

“Hey man, I’m going to fall asleep here.”

“Christ Rambo, run a couple of laps—give me twenty pushups here on the picnic bench between each lap—no wonder you don’t get high.” He then turned to the hillbilly, “Could you imagine this nut-job on crack!?! Fuckin’ mass-murderer Mo!”

So off I went, doing my laps, waiting for Miss Triple-D to roll up with her girlfriend. As I made my rounds I noticed an old country black dude filling a bucket full of carp. Carp was a fish that my friends in Western Pennsylvania had always said that you did not eat unless you were white trash. But this guy was not throwing these carp back. When I returned to Big Rich, his hillbilly friend [These guys aren’t authentic hillbillies. But the neighborhood of Hawthorne just north of Middle River Maryland, has the closest thing to hillbillies in Central Maryland, so that’s what we call them, Hawthorne Hillbillies.], who we called Santa Claus, was catching carp but throwing them back, looking for a big one. He, apparently, had not discovered the space-age fishing device known as a plastic bucket.

I did my pushups and then asked Rich, who claimed to fish for carp when he had no reefer, “Hey man, how do you cook carp. Is there a special way you prepare ‘em?”

He took a long drag and regarded me as if I had just urinated on his perfectly manicured lawn, “Fuck you Mo!”

“But you catch ‘em. Why wouldn’t you eat ‘em?”

“Because I don’t eat carp Mo. Now ask this fuckin’ fat hillbilly here. He’s probably fixin’ to eat that big carp when he finally catches it.” He then addressed the hillbilly, “Hey Santa Claus, how does carp taste?”

Santa Claus retorted, “I don’ eat no carp. Only ոiggers eat carp!”

I howled “Eureka!”

Big Rich looked at me wide-eyed. “What the fuck Mo, you passing a kidney stone?”

“No, no—I’ll be right back!”

I ran over to the pier, to the old black country guy and coaxed him over to the picnic table. I then got all three of them together and said, “My redneck friend here says hillbillies eat carp, and his hillbilly friend here says black dudes eat carp. Now sir, you being our black representative, who do you say eats carp?”

The man wrinkled his nose in disgust and said, “Sheee, ebry body knows it dem Koreans who be eatin’ up da carp!”

I howled, “Eureka!” and the black man and Santa Claus looked at Rich accusingly, for having brought me to their sacred island. Rich took a drag and shrugged his shoulders, “Dude don’t even get high. It’s fuckin’ endorphins; a knucklehead high. He exercises too damn much.”

I than waved over another carp fisherman and hosted a fact-finding session, which I termed the Search for the Eaters of Carp. I said, “Gentleman, when I lived in PA my friends said that only the white trash in the trailer parks ate carp. Now you all are saying it’s the Koreans. Somehow I suspect that if I cornered a Korean fisherman he would blame the Filipinos.”

Cuss, our new arrival, the man who Santa Clause sold his carp to, agreed with the black man, that they both sold their carp to the Koreans. Cuss was behaving in a guilty manner though. I homed in like a guilt-seeking missile of truth and pressed him, “So what do these Koreans do with the carp man?”

Cuss croaked, “They sell the carp to the seafood restaurants up the Eastside here; all up Eastern Avenue. If you clean it right it can be used as filler for crab cakes and such.”

Big Rich, a huge consumer of crab imperial, belly ached, “Oh fuck me Mo. I’m payin’ twenty-nine-ninety-fucking-/ITALIC]-five a fucking platter so you fuckin’ hillbillies can buy a six pack a Natty Boh?”

The black man held up a carp from his bucket, “If id a make ya feel any betta’ I gives ya one fo free.”

Rich was inconsolable, “Fuck me Mo…”

Just then a car door shut and we saw chocolate brown five foot tall Miss Triple-D and her tall blonde friend headed our way. Rich said, “Now there ain’t no filler in that.”

Cuss belched and licked his lips, and Santa Claus chimed in, “Yessiree Marie.”

The black man said, “Good-goog-a-mooga—we can all agree on dat sher ‘nuff.”

I, for one, was pleased to have plumbed the depths of the Carp-eater Conspiracy and to have discovered it came down to white men selling carp to white men who thought only black men did dine on that particular fetid fish.