July 7, 2020

The Stingray Story

I have some people over for drinks in my backyard. There is Allie, Cory, Lewberg, Candace, and Candace’s new boyfriend whose name I don’t catch. I have learned—by the look on the faces of my guests maybe not learned well enough—how to make whiskey sours, and we are social distancing and talking about antibodies and immunity.

Not really my favourite topic, but I’m okay with it because it is a nice night, the whiskey sours start tasting a little bit better after your second, and it gives me a chance to tell my stingray story.

So I wait for a little gap in the conversation, somewhere between COVID, Spanish flu, mumps and measles, and jump in with my, “Have I ever told you my stingray story?”

As it happens, only Allie has heard the stingray story, and, to her credit, or likely as a result of one too many whiskey sours, instead of saying, “Nobody wants to hear your stingray story,” says, “That is a good story.”

Every once in a while, you are reminded why you are friends with someone and this is one of those times.

I top off everyone’s drinks and then announce this might be a good time to go pee.

Then Allie, who maybe isn’t quite as drunk as I might have thought, says, “Why don’t you tell the short version?”

Nobody makes a move to the bathroom. I think that’s on them. It’s their bladders. 

In the spring of 1975, I took a week-long school-sanctioned field trip with five classmates to the Malaysian island of Tioman.

I had been going to school in Singapore at the United World College of Southeast Asia. This, for reasons I still have yet to comprehend, was part of the curriculum: a one-week camping trip.

So six of us took two taxis to the Malaysian border. Three Germans.
An Australian.
A Zoroastrian Indian.

And a Canadian Jew.

One of us was lugging a 25 hp outboard motor.

I can tell you it wasn't the Canadian Jew.

We then hitchhiked up the Malaysian coast to the fishing village of Mersing.

Allie, who now seems a little drunker, says, “There is no way your parents let you hitchhike up the Malaysian coast.”

I cast her a glance. I don’t like the flow of my story interrupted. “With a 25 hp outboard engine,” she adds, now giggling.

But she is right—the notion of my parents letting me go camping for a week on a remote island with five sixteen-year-old classmates and hitchhiking there to boot sounds, well, to borrow from Wallace Shawn, inconceivable.

I might have mentioned we were going to be accompanied by a faculty advisor. 

The distance between Singapore and Mersing is 120 km. I looked it up. It takes us 10 hours to get there. Turns out, not too many people want to stop and pick up six students and a 25 hp motor. Finally, a trucker takes pity on us. We sprawl out on the lumber on his flatbed.

The last ferry has left hours ago. But, I soon learn, we were never going to take the ferry. The ferry was only for guests of the newly built resort on the other side of the island. We weren’t staying at the resort. I ask if there is a campsite. The Australian says not so much a campsite as a deserted beach.

Okay then.

We pool our resources and hire a Malay fisherman to shuttle us the 50 km across the Mersing straight to Tioman Island. It is a two-hour ride. There is much drinking. By the three Germans, the Australian, and the Zoroastrian Indian. The Canadian Jew does not drink. He spends a lot of time worrying about sharks and falling off the boat.

We get deposited 50 metres from the beach and wade in in the dark. It could be Haifa 1947. I carry the outboard motor. Everyone else is too drunk. We all pass out on the beach.

They say youth is wasted on the young, but when we woke up the next day, each of us, all only 16 years old, five of us very hungover, one of us wondering where the hell you were supposed to take a shit, all of us, to a man, understood we were in paradise. The sky was bluer than we had ever seen. That water was clearer than we had ever seen or would ever see. The reef below could be explored without snorkels or goggles. The beach went on forever. One of the Germans climbed a tree and we breakfasted on fresh coconut and ramen noodles. The coconuts cut in half by a machete which was in a rowboat along with fishing rods and nets which had magically washed up on our beach while we were sleeping. I guess arrangements had been made.

The plan was to take the nets and harvest smaller fish to be used as bait for a night fishing expedition.

“Night fishing?” says Allie. “You were going night fishing? This part is definitely made up. You wouldn’t even go day fishing.”

She is beginning to get on my nerves.

“Look,” I say, “Whose story is this?”

“When are we getting to the part about the stingray?” says Lewberg, emboldened by Allie’s constant interruptions. “This part is getting a little bit boring.”

“I’m just getting to it. It’s coming right up. Jesus, give a man a chance.”

So I am in the shallow water. Water barely higher than my knee. With a net in my hand when I feel a really, really sharp sting on my ankle.

I drop the net and crash into the shallow water and see the stingray, which had been minding its own business until I stepped on it, float off.

My cries for help are ignored.
To be fair, only moments before I had put on a pretty convincing shark attack pantomime. Eventually, one of the Germans wanders over and drags me onto the beach.
The pain is intense.
I am on my back and they have balled up a towel and elevated my foot.

The island caretaker suddenly appears on a moped. He is a large man and the moped sags from his weight. If I weren't writhing in pain, I would have laughed. He says something but we can’t make it out because he is so soft-spoken. We ask him to repeat it. He does. Nobody has a clue what he is saying. We say, please, one more time. So he gets off the moped and kneels right next to me on the beach. He leans over. It smells like he had coconut and ramen noodles for breakfast too. This time I hear what he says.

He says, “You shouldn’t elevate the leg. It allows the poison to run to the heart.” I say nothing, but in my head I’m thinking, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
The caretaker continues, “Someone should suck the venom out.”
Someone.

Not him. Someone.

One of the Germans, in a moment of minor heroism, leans over and proceeds to, as best as he can, suck the venom out of the small cut in my ankle.

My story is then interrupted by Candace’s new boyfriend. It is the first time we meet him. There was a little discussion about whether he should have been invited at all. Anyway, he has not said a word all night. And now he is interrupting my story. He too, like the caretaker, is soft-spoken. But I hear what he says. And I immediately take a shine to him. Later that night I will call Candace and tell her I really like her new boyfriend.

What he says is, “Doctor said you are going to die.”

It is a punchline to a joke.

Anyway, I’m not sure anyone heard or understood him. But I appreciated it.

The venom does not go to my heart. The pain is excruciating, but the Australian, for reasons that are not at all clear, seems to have some codeine.

My ankle gets bandaged. I manage to hop around for a week. I don’t go back into the water.

The caretaker sees us off on the last day. He has arranged for us to go back to Mersing on the official ferry. Turns out getting stung by a stingray on Tioman earns you some island cred.

He asks me how I am.
I say good.
I don’t mention the codeine.
I say, “The stingray barely nicked me. Why did it hurt so much? The cut was not deep at all.” He says, “The pain comes from the venom. The stingray venom is one of the most painful.”
I give him a wide grin and say, “I know.”
He says, “The good news is you now have lifetime immunity from stingray venom.”
Allie says, “Oh, yeah, now I remember why this story is about immunity.”
I say, “You are ruining it.”
She says, “No, I’m not. They don't know where this is going.”
The new boyfriend now speaks for the second time.
“You stepped on another stingray?” he asks a bit sheepishly.
I glare at Allie. “I am going to fucking kill you,” I say, but I am smiling.
“You really stepped on another stingray?” asks Candace.
“Yes,” I concede, realizing the story is now shot. “10 years later in Israel. In Eilat.”
“No immunity?”
“Nope. Hurt like a bitch.”
Everyone is silent for a few seconds.
Then someone pipes up.

“It’s still a good story.”
Everyone agrees it is still a good story.
I glare at Allie.
“Good story,” she says with a smile. “It’s one of my favourites.”

The end.