What is Whale Talk?

I'm sure I'll expand on this tomorrow after my honors class, but for now, you need to know this is my favorite passage of literature. Probably ever. I get chills each and every time I read it. And, each and every time I finish it, I have tears in my eyes. It's that good.

Just to set you up ... TJ's dad, John, had a horrible thing happen to him - well, because of him. It's something that this man struggles with daily; something that he constantly tries to make up for. Just before this conversation, TJ found his Dad at home, in a bedroom, crying.

"... 'I realized I had reached adulthood without even knowing what it is to be human. Nobody ever told me how dangerous it is, how risky. I started wishing I were a whale. At least they know what it is to be a whale. I mean, think of it. I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it travels maybe two blocks. A whale unleashes a cry and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. It they think it, they say it. If some man-whale cheats on his wife, her anguish, her rage, her despair, is heard and understood by every whale who swims into the range of her voice. The joy of lovemaking, the crippling heartache of a lost child - it's all heard and understood. Predators and prey have equal voice. The Mother Teresa whales and the Jeffry Dahmer whales all have their say. Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what is to be you.'

I watch a spider crawl across the ceiling toward the light.

'All that is exactly opposite of what it is to be human. My parents were wonderful people, I suppose, but they didn't want me to know the real skinny on sex or love or boredom or hate or disappointment. They sold me their wishes as if they were fact. After you saw me in the bedroom, I was embarrassed. I feel so weak when I get like that. But, the truth is, that's just the way it is with me some of the time, and you might as well know it.'

I tell him what I haven't said. 'I guess I was afraid you were suicidal.'

'Suicidal or not, I'm not going to kill myself,' he said with a smile. 'If I were going to do that, I'd have done it a long time ago. What you need to know about your old man is that I always bounce back.'

I went to my room and tried to get some sleep, but I couldn't help running Dad's and my conversation over in my head. If we all spoke in whale talk, and I heard the voice of Chris Coughlin and Andy Mott and Simon Delong, how would I put them in the same ocean with the shit that comes out of Rich Marshall and Mike Barbour?'"