Le Mouching, fly fishing,BKHendrickson'sPool_0I had just put my feet under the table for a romantic dinner with my adorable wife when the telephone rang, jingle-jangle:
“Hello! Fleche my Chicken (I hate when someone calls me volatile names!) it’s Steven Steven on the phone… (you’ve got to have really nutty parents to give their kid a first name the same as his family name! but, that’s not my problem!) Get your things together real fast and head for the Beaverkill where there is a little miracle going on. There is an eclosion of Henricksons; you couldn’t imagine such a thing in your wildest dreams. The trout are throwing themselves at the flies, it’s like a porno film. Fleche you won’t believe it… it’s never happened before! You can cast the worst imitation of a bald eagle and they’re devouring it. I don’t know if it’s the GMO that’s making them do it but… don’t waste a minute, or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!”Le mouching, Fly fishing,FlyCenterSign
As you can well imagine, at dawn the next day I was on the road headed for ROSCOE, the mecca of fly fishing in the Catskill Mountains just three hours from New York City. The closer I got, the more the little clouds turned into enormous, menacing black things and when I finally stopped my car at the river’s edge one would think that the whole river was tumbling down upon me… a torrent, a Niagara married to the Zambeze. With great difficulty I pushed through the curtain of water that engulfed me and I could see the color of the river rapidly turning to “shit brown”, which isn’t a good sign for fishing.
Then I remembered that, at ROSCOE, there was a Flyfishing Museum where I dragged my waders years before and made the acquaintance of the young director, Rosa Alvina; the following year she made a short visit, too short, to the Ardeche. Le Mouching, fly fishing, RosaThe day before she returned to New York she insisted that visit one of our lovely rivers to go fishing together. It was a delicious day and I could see that Rosa was as excited as a young filly, she cast me a burning eye (she was blind in one eye) instead of watching her fly (in parenthesis, it was a horrible fly!).
Well, you know me, I don’t need to be invited twice so I pretended to slip on the rock where we found ourselves and I barely recovered by grabbing onto her bathing suit. Just before the elastic of the suit gave way, Rosa as well, pretended to lose her equilibrium and miraculously recovered by grabbing my bathing suit. So there we were, ready for a session of the Kama-sutra in the “Southern Ardeche” style.
It was precisely at that moment, on the riverbank opposite, that a group of girls from a vacation camp arrived and the little bitches deluged us with jibes like: Go for it guys…Fuck her!  or: You’re not using a condom, jerk! And on and on, each jibe more refined than the last until we were obliged to retrace our steps and head for the car in our Adam and Eve costume; renouncing the fishing excursion and a little hanky panky. The next morning Rosa gathered up her things and returned to New York.
Today, many years later in the stupid museum in Roscoe, there was Rosa Alvina bestowing me with a great big smile.
“Hello Fleche… so nice to see you! C’mon, let’s go and have lunch at the Roscoe Diner, my invitation. What about it?”
“You got it… with this dreadful weather we are much better indoors.”
Sitting there chatting like old friends, with our pastrami sandwiches and Brooklyn Lagers (a marvelous beer), I reminded her of our half-baked fishing excursion in the Ardeche.Le mouching, fly fishing, Epoux
Just then I saw this monster arrive. The guy was at least 2 meters tall and weighed 350 lbs. He had a sinister face and the arms of a strangler. A real nightmare.
Rosa introduced me: “Fleche, this is Roger, my husband. Roger, this is Fleche, my friend from France.”
Roger stared at me with disgust and as though he was talking to a garbage bag, said: “A Frenchman huh? One of those jerks who chickened out and let us hack the shit in Iraq!” Then addressing the owner of the restaurant: “Henry, give me a plate of “FREEDOM FRIES.”
I grasped that it was time to make my exit; under the pretext of an urgent meeting with my art dealer, I left.
When I returned home my wife welcomed me with a double bourbon…”4 Roses”.
“So how was the fishing darling?”
“Fly fishing is too dangerous. I’ve decided to stop and sell all my gear on Craigslist, perhaps I’ll take up badminton.
After all, we only have one life.Le Mouching, fly fishing freedom fries,