‘I swim in a shark.’

            That’s how this story starts. It began with that one strange line and evolved into a full narrative. What am I talking about? I have a new story published in The Bangalore Review, called ‘Dragon boy’. What is The Bangalore Review? It’s a literary journal from Bangalore, India that has quite a following, and submitting there satisfied my urge for pursuing global connections.

            I don’t think too much about where stories come from. They pre-exist me, and I usually find them hanging out on the porch, drinking my beer. I revel in my strangeness. I celebrate it. You should take your oddness and wear it like a ballcap. The more beaten up and sun worn, the better. This story is an example of that, and I have my own thoughts on what it means.

            I hope you read it. A short story on the shorter side, to be sure.

            I won’t spoil what I see in this narrative, but I did go and do something strange and ask ChatGPT to read the story and tell me what it thought. Before you get worried, I know enough about ChatGPT to understand that it does not retain content that you give it unless you ask it to. I told it to forget the story, and I hope it does! But it had an interesting take on the story, and I’ve included that take here, for what it’s worth. I rather like that it picked up on the juxtaposition between the main character and a sea-dweller.

            For the record, I’m not a lonely person. I’m not. But I have been, and I will never forget those periods of my life. I’m not a sadboy, either. But I have been.

ChatGPT’s take on ‘Dragon boy’:

‘The narrative weaves between mundane human interactions—dinners with family, conversations about relationships—and surreal, almost magical experiences beneath the waves. It contrasts the protagonist’s immersion in the ocean’s depths with their interactions on land, hinting at a yearning for escape, connection, or something beyond ordinary human experience. The ocean represents a place of freedom, but also of danger and depth, where the protagonist finds solace but is also confronted with existential questions, like the impossibility of exploring the trenches and the creatures that lurk there.

The recurring imagery of sharks, both biological and mechanical, symbolizes a primal force of survival and a search for belonging. The protagonist seems drawn to places where human and marine life interact, like beaches and coastal towns, but always remains an outsider—observing, facilitating joy for others (such as the child on the shark’s back), yet never fully part of those experiences. Their interactions with people on land, like their family, seem disconnected, contrasting with the sense of community and acceptance they find in the ocean, even among strangers.

The trench and the dragon at the end also suggest a quest for something deeper, possibly enlightenment or understanding. The dragon’s desire to rise from the depths and explore the sunny world above mirrors the protagonist’s own struggle between staying submerged in their solitary world or surfacing to face human connections and the expectations of society. The mention of “mass extinctions” and sharks’ survival implies resilience but also loneliness—a creature that outlasts others, always moving forward but perhaps never fully at peace.

In essence, the story seems to be about a man caught between two worlds—the natural, primal depths of the ocean and the structured, sometimes suffocating life on land. He seeks understanding, connection, and meaning in both, but ultimately, he feels like a traveler in each, belonging fully to neither.’

            Who am I to argue with our robot overlords? Next up, I play ping pong in a buffalo…