Congratulations on Winning the Oyster Shucking Competition!

The Maine Oyster Shucking Competition is conducted every year by a group of hard working, wader wearing youths with loose morals and big dreams. They come from all over the state to prove their prowess at removing the shells from mollusks with artistry and speed, and they do not all prove themselves worthy of the competition. The Maine Oyster Shucking Competition is known to many as “the finger destroyer,” in reference to unusually large number of finger injuries sustained by youth during the competition. It is not unusual for shuckers to lose one or more digits as they attempt to prove their skill.

And, of course, losers lose far more. Because in Maine, if you turn sixteen and you’re still a virgin you’re forcibly deflowered by the town De-Virginator, a man, usually obese, whose only purpose is to have unpleasant sex with you so that you’ll understand how abysmally sad your life in Maine is going to be over the years to come. The only way out is to win the Oyster Shucking Competition, through skill or guile.

You’ll be the daughter of a fisherman and you’ll go by the name of Sam. You’ll be one of those androgynous beauties, one of those rare human beings with a sexual fluidity that makes them appealing to nearly everyone who beholds them. You’ll be a spritely, brilliant young woman with dreams of leaving Maine and finding a real life somewhere else, somewhere slightly less horrible like Boston or maybe just one of the bigger towns in New Hampshire. But you know that you’ll be so traumatized if you give up your virginity to someone who doesn’t deserve it, especially a De-Virginator, you’ll probably fuck up college applications and, with them, the next eight years of your life.

So you’ll show up for the Oyster Shucking Competition with your trousers rolled up around your ankles, a man’s shirt hanging, too big, from your shoulders and a cockney cap hiding your gorgeous face from onlookers. You’ll have your own shucking knife, natch, and a sprig of wheat tucked in your mouth from an unknown source.

You’ll sign your name, take your place and, knife backed by your thumb, await the starting pistol with relaxed muscles and calm breath. When you hear the shot your hands will move the knife through and across, slicing the muscles at the back of each shell before you pry open the rest of the mass and scrape off the remainder with a deft pair of knife sweeps. You won’t bother putting the shells into their own bucket, you’ll just let them fall on the ground around your bare feet. Only the meat will have a new home.

You’ll repeat this motion again and again and again, your hands moving fluidly: one for the knife, one for the shells. Your fingers, calloused and thick pads on them gripping their precious cargo, will move like dancers: hardened and swift. Around you curses will echo from the mouths of other participants: blind rage as they cut their hands or lose some meat to the ground. Men and women alike will stare at you, at your hands and shoulders as they barely move with each new shucking. Your feet will remain still, the pile of shells growing around you.

You won’t think about time or effort as you move, just of the sun above you, how that same sun shines down in places that aren’t Bar Harbor or Bangor. You’ll be aware of where your hands are and where the shells are and where the knife is the same way you know where your heart and your eyes are, but you won’t give much thought to what you’re doing or how you’re doing it.

That’s why, when the sun sets and all the other shuckers are sitting on overturned buckets, cursing their luck and bandaging your hands you’ll just look up at the buckets you’ve filled, shift your feet to send the shells around you scattering to the ground and let yourself smile for the first time that day.

Your competition will be staring at you to a man, baffled by your success. They’ll all be shaking their heads in disbelief, watching you as you take off your hat and run your hand through your short, shaggy hair. You’ll laugh, sort of a guffaw, as you head up the beach to the card table where the registration desk will be ready to give you your prize.

You’ll only be there for a moment, and then you’ll be gone, your grace a sharp memory burned in the minds of each and every person on that beach. You’ll be on your way back home, where you’ll begin drafting one of your admissions essays centered around that day, around the rhythm and the sun and the hope that you found out there on that beach, the hope you gave each and every one of us when you reminded us that sometimes good things do happen. Sometimes the institutions that Maine has constructed to ruin the lives of its own inhabitants fail. On the days when that comes to pass, the weather, you’ll note in the essay, always seems exceptionally nice, even when it is not, necessarily.

Congratulations on Winning the Oyster Shucking Competition!