It was one of those Saturdays where you find yourself thrust in the middle of Coney Island’s annual Mermaid Parade. You know the ones -- where you nonchalantly bike down to the boardwalk only to be shooed due left by the cops and their barriers, left to wonder who now got shot in the head.

Instead you find a whole procession of fish-tailed blue things, red things, green things, yellow things -- and one thing that sticks in your head. What stuck wasn’t the drag queens, although their beauty continues to amaze me. It wasn’t the dragging pace of the parade. It wasn’t the antique car display.

It wasn’t the fire eaters, the stilt walkers, or the mermaids of all sizes -- right down to a hillbilly with a tail comprised of beer cans.

It wasn’t Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz as King Neptune or even the dead mermaids carted by a hertz and surrounded by skeletons. It wasn’t the radiant aqua wigs, the creepy coral lipstick or the screaming pink pasties -- although that surely is stuck in the head -- and camera -- of the man next to me.

No, that’s not what stuck in my mind, either. What I recall to this day was a little mermaid who looked like she was about to cry. Well, she wasn’t so little -- and she may have done more than cry. She appeared as if she wanted the sky to open up and swallow her in one of those frequent fantasies we all seem to have.

I noticed this creature in the first place because the man driving the car that was towing her float slammed on the brakes and hurled himself out the car.

Driver man then turned towards his mermaid, hands on hips, and shot her the ugliest glare I have seen since I was a kid and my brother and I fell into my mother’s dried flower arrangement, crushing them. The mermaid looked crushed. She looked swollen. Her face was pinched yet she held o so tightly on to that facade of serene. I knew that feeling well -- in fact, I use it every time I bike against the wind.

Upon closer inspection of her rather plain-looking float, I noticed tons of props piled high in the back seat of the car, as if the float decoration were never finished. I noticed New Jersey license plates on the car. I noticed the mermaid’s make up was smudged and her hair had come loose from its chignon. I noticed the anger, the pure rage, in the boyfriend’s eyes. I noticed the girl was mentally bleeding.

But the mermaid didn’t cry. No, she held on (literally) to the sides of her make-shift throne with her face straight forward and her eyes erect. The mermaid looked neither left nor right; she did not smile; she did not wave. She held her head high as if untouched by whatever angst was feeding on her insides, and believe me, it must have been lots.

I had whole scenarios as to what happened between the two of them, of why the float was half finished and they were bickering. Maybe he thought she was dressed too scantily and looked like a whore (she didn’t, especially compared to the rest of the mermaids). Maybe driver man would rather be out barbequing on the Jersey shore but instead has to drive his car through this "stupid procession down Surf Avenue."

Maybe the mermaid started it the fray -- perhaps she registered them in advance and forgot to tell him until this morning and he had to break his plans of going to France (that would piss me off!). Perhaps they both started it -- let’s say theirs is a dead-end, long-term relationship and this was their final, desperate attempt to throw back some cohesion into their lives and perhaps salvage their bond. Maybe they were both stoned on PCP and were simply paranoid.

Whatever the case, Mr. New Jersey got back into the car and slowly sauntered them away.