Drew Prochaska decides to confront his fear of sharks -- by going swimming with them.
Drew Prochaska is a two-time Moth StorySlam winner, who has been featured on the "RISK!", "Dear Show", and Audible's "Stories in Session" podcasts. A graduate of The Tisch School of Arts Dramatic Writing Program, Drew's writing was regularly featured on the website of Running with Scissors author Augusten Burroughs. He lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with his dog, Lula.
This story originally ran on Feb. 24, 2017.
Story Transcript
Growing up, I had these really liberal filmmaker parents and because of this, I was exposed to a lot of movies at a very young age that I probably shouldn't have been, you know? The first one I recall was a made-for-TV movie in the mid '80s called Adam. Does anybody remember this? It was about a little boy who was abducted from a shopping mall and murdered. Basically, my mom turned to me after this movie was over and was like, "I just want you to know that if you don't get home before dark every night, someone is going to murder you and chop you up." I really believed this, but the movie that really messed me up as a little boy was Jaws. I saw Jaws when I was seven years old and when I saw that scene with the little boy on the rubber raft who just turned into this fountain of gore, I knew that I was going to get eaten by a shark. I didn't need anybody to tell me my fortune; I knew I was going to be chewed to death by something hideous with gills.
It's an irrational fear, but my friends will tell you this: Irrational fear is the force that binds my atoms together. It wasn't just sharks. It was everything under the ocean. The ocean just seemed like this hellscape to me, of things with tentacles and beaks and spines, like, filled with poison. I would have gladly boiled it if I had the means. Being afraid of the ocean isn't such an easy thing when you have two parents who are avid sailors, you have a brother who is a sea captain and a scuba instructor, a sister who teaches marine biology and builds submersible robots in her spare time for fun. I have this family of Ahabs, and Nemos and Cousteaus, and I'm the chicken of the sea.
You can't have these kinds of irrational fears as you grow older and still call yourself a man. I'm a grown-ass man. Seriously. Every year I take a trip to another country and I try to confront one of these fears. Four years ago, I booked a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, because if you've ever watched the awesome Air Jaws documentary during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, you'll know that in Cape Town, South Africa, great white sharks can fly.
In the panicky weeks building up to the trip, I started Googling shark statistics like “how many people every year are killed by a great white shark?” The answer is one. One person every year is killed by a great white shark. That's a really eerie number, you know?
I'm like, "I'm going in May. Has it happened yet?" Ever since I was a little boy, I was told that if you're ever attacked by a shark, what you're supposed to do is punch him in the nose, but apparently that's not true anymore. Apparently that just really pisses him off. So, like, what you’re supposed to do is if you're found in the mouth of a great white shark, you're supposed to, like, gouge at their eyes with your thumbs. Like really? Come on. I just decided if I was ever attacked by a great white shark I would just soil myself with such volume that they’d just spit me out and swim off in search of less pathetic prey.
When I get to South Africa, I book a trip on the exact same boat that was in the Air Jaws documentary. The reason I did this was because the crew of this boat devised this method to get the great white sharks to breach out of the water, and they do this by towing a foam rubber seal behind the boat. The reason why great white sharks jump out of the water in South Africa specifically is because, in the Cape Town Bay, there's an island with a very uninspired name of Seal Island, and it is covered with thousands and thousands of seals. Now, a seal can outmaneuver a great white shark. So what the great white sharks do is they swim to really great depths in the bay and they wait for a herd, I think? A murder? A school of… I should have researched that… of seals to swim above them, and they wait for a straggling seal to lag behind them, and then what they do is they launch towards that seal was such velocity that their entire bodies leaves the water.
If you watch any of these documentaries it's always the same. You hear this drumbeat like, "Bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump," and you see the seal just sort of darting through the water for dear life and "Bump bump bump bump bump bump," and then you see this mouth emerge from the water with that teeth like broken glass and these eyes just sort of roll back inside the shark’s head and your heart just starts going, "Bump bump bump bump bump bump," and the entire shark’s body leaves the water, and this enormous tail whips around and you see this expression on the seals face like, "No!!!” as two and a half tons of great white shark just bear down on it with its teeth. I saw this. I got to see this at sunrise standing on the deck of the Air Jaws boat and it looked like this: "Boop."
It was like a half second. I turned to the captain of the boat and I'm like, "Hey, man, aren't you ever afraid that one of these sharks is going to jump out of the water and land in the cockpit?" He's like, "Mate, that's my biggest fear." (I can't do a South African accent.) He's like, "It happened like three years ago on this German boat. This great white jumps out of the water, lands in the cockpit of this boat and crushed this guy's legs." I was like, "Oh my God," and he's like, "Right?" And I'm like, "But what a bad-ass way to lose your legs!"
It's like a while before we see another great white and the captain throttles down the engine to this low growl, and they start lowering the shark cage into the water and deckhands bring out this cooler, filled with chum, just guts and gore. They lift this tuna head out of the cooler and they pluck its eyes out with a knife, and they take a rope and they thread the rope through the eye sockets and they throw this tuna head out into the water, and it's not long before the first dorsal fin appears and there, circling the boat, is Jaws. Then another dorsal fin appears. It’s Jaws 2.
And the captain, he turns to us and he says, "You guys have no idea how lucky you are." He said, "We've actually been doing these tours all spring and this is the first time this spring that the sharks have actually come up to the boat," and I'm thinking, "It's because they know I'm here." You know?
Everybody is getting their scuba gear on, and I find the exact center of the boat and I stand in it. I can't move and I can't breathe and I can't do anything. The captain sees this and he comes up to me and he says, "Are you all right, mate?" And I said, "No, I'm really not okay." He says, "What are you afraid of?" I said, "I don't know if you've been paying attention, but there's two fucking great white sharks circling this boat right now." These were fourteen-footers. These were big great whites. He puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, "That there? That right there? You're afraid of that?" I was like, "Yeah," and he goes, "Mate," he says, "That's just Tim." He points to the other shark and he goes, "That there? That's just Sally."
He just gives these sharks names, and all of the fear that was in my body just sort of drains out of my toes at once, you know? And I take a breath and I put the scuba gear on and I walk to the edge of the boat and I step into the shark cage. For a moment, there's just bubbles and this red cloud of chum. Then Tim, Tim the shark, blasts by the cage like a subway car. He is so close, I could touch him. He looks so big under the water, I felt like I could have stood up inside of him. Then I look down and at the ocean floor there's this dark spot, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it turns into the mouth from my nightmares. This open mouth just comes up, and Sally the shark soars just past the cage and she just sort of grabs at the tuna head, and it's so quiet and it is so beautiful. It's so beautiful, and it is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. And I wasn't afraid.
That evening, I had a friend who just happened to be in Cape Town at the same time as me on a business trip. We arranged to have dinner at a restaurant, at the waterfront. It's a little after seven o'clock and the sun has come down, and I start walking towards it and it's about a mile walk. As I'm walking, this homeless guy starts walking next to me and he says, "Do you have any money?" I only had big bills on me so I'm like, "I'm sorry, man. I don't." He keeps going, "Can I have some money?" I'm like, "No." "Can I have some money?" I'm like, "I'm sorry, no." Then we finally turn a corner and there were no people and it's a dark street, and he gives me a little shove and he says, "Don't do anything fucking stupid." He motions down and he's holding like a shiv, like a filed-down piece of… like a spike.
There is nowhere for me to go, and he is younger and more fit than me. I wasn't going to run away. I said, "Fuck you. Fuck you, you asshole. You fucking piece of shit." Don't get me wrong. I gave him my money. I'm not an idiot. All I could do was just curse at him. I'm like, "I hope you drown in shit." I give him my money and he holds the knife up and he says, "Give me your keys," and I said, "Fuck off!" And he does. He leaves. I'm standing there on the sidewalk and I'm shaking. I'm so full of adrenaline and I am feeling so many things at once, you know? The one thing, the one thing, that I am not feeling at that moment though is fear. Because that guy who just threatened to kill me… that was just Tim, you know? That was just Sally. Thanks.