Funk Soul Brother Number One, My Main Hombre Lance, along with his trustworthy robot pal Leeroy, renew the 100 Word Song Challenge this week with Ben Harper's "The Woman In You". This story is called, "Reunited".
They were supposed to be playing songs from the 1980s, but I didn't remember any of them.
I saw her from across the room. Her hair was cut short now, emphasizing the simon pure whiteness of her neck. She looked like most of the women there, shadows of the girls they were, thickened and made coarse by time and children and pain. I walked over, waiting for her to pause, remembering sitting on the hard wooden dock, thinking about the future, holding her hand.
"Some things never change," I said admiringly.
"Some things never stay the same," she replied.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Trifecta Writing Challenge: "____________________"
My new friends at the Trifecta Writing Challenge issue a weekly call to arms centered around (surprise!) the number three. This week involves the third definition of the word "scandal", and must be between 33 and 333 words. My story is called "Motherfucker".
The young woman in the modest blue dress, pearls, and low heels was used to public speaking, being a teacher. But she didn't speak before groups of adults like this, so her voice wavered a little bit as she began.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the school board, I was told that you wanted me to appear before you in order to address the issue of certain reading material I assigned. I appreciate the gravity of this situation. I am your employee, and you can discharge me at will, a possibility that is not far from my mind. But I am also an educator, and I would rather be unemployed and in possession of my scruples than continue to work for you and destroy an ideal I hold very dear."
"I am told a member of this board objected to a book I chose for your children to read because it contains a certain word. It is not a pleasant word, and not one I choose to use regularly. But it is a word that is chosen because the book contains descriptions of soldiers, and it is a word that soldiers use. It is a word I have used in the past, and it is a word I can guarantee you everyone in this room has used. And it is a word, sadly, our students use."
"That word, ladies and gentlemen, is motherfucker."
"You pay me to educate your children, and that is something I take very seriously. I expose them to different ideas and ways of thinking, and thus prepare them to be good citizens, and, hopefully, gentler and less warlike than my generation and yours has been. Sometimes that involves them learning something unpleasant. I show them these parts of life not for any prurient thrill, but because I am not doing my job if I don't."
"In short, the only scandal here is the presence of closed minded idiots in the educational process."
"Thank you."
The young woman in the modest blue dress, pearls, and low heels was used to public speaking, being a teacher. But she didn't speak before groups of adults like this, so her voice wavered a little bit as she began.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the school board, I was told that you wanted me to appear before you in order to address the issue of certain reading material I assigned. I appreciate the gravity of this situation. I am your employee, and you can discharge me at will, a possibility that is not far from my mind. But I am also an educator, and I would rather be unemployed and in possession of my scruples than continue to work for you and destroy an ideal I hold very dear."
"I am told a member of this board objected to a book I chose for your children to read because it contains a certain word. It is not a pleasant word, and not one I choose to use regularly. But it is a word that is chosen because the book contains descriptions of soldiers, and it is a word that soldiers use. It is a word I have used in the past, and it is a word I can guarantee you everyone in this room has used. And it is a word, sadly, our students use."
"That word, ladies and gentlemen, is motherfucker."
"You pay me to educate your children, and that is something I take very seriously. I expose them to different ideas and ways of thinking, and thus prepare them to be good citizens, and, hopefully, gentler and less warlike than my generation and yours has been. Sometimes that involves them learning something unpleasant. I show them these parts of life not for any prurient thrill, but because I am not doing my job if I don't."
"In short, the only scandal here is the presence of closed minded idiots in the educational process."
"Thank you."
Monday, April 09, 2012
Real Toads Challenge: "Ready Or Not"
Thanks to Maid Marian at Runaway Sentence, I learned about the fine folks at Real Toads, who issue, you'll never guess, prompts for writerly inspiration. The inspiration is Vic Chestnutt's song "Granny", and this piece is called "Ready Or Not"
I kept thinking, "it's too soon." It wasn't too soon. When it happens, it happens. There isn't any real age when it's time to, exactly. People try to say that there's an ideal age for it, and there probably is, but once you're in it, you're in it. It's too late to cry about it, but you often do that anyway.
I had whipped up some snacks, little finger foods like pizza rolls and crab puffs along with some potato chips and sodas. Simple stuff, easy and quick, but in all honesty, all I could afford and all I had time for. I laid it all out as people started to arrive, then basically stood out of sight as she opened gifts and oohed and aahed and fluttered about.
There was a lot of fluttering, raised voices and animated conversation. I tried to stay out of the way, but our small living space quickly filled with her friends, filling our apartment with skinny jeans and fashionable boots. My daughter was the first or second girl she knew to get pregnant, which made a visual contrast, all their flat bellies and tight shirts making her swollen form stand out.
When you have children, you learn before anything else that it is no longer about you. You share your body with them, and then they are this separate entity, but they never really leave you. Every defeat wounds you, every heartbreak punches you in the gut. I watched her socialize, laughing and letting them rub her belly, and I thought about all the versions of her I had known. I wanted to yell out that this cannot be, that this is all happening too fast, that the little girl who stamped her foot when her shoes wouldn't stay tied can't be old enough to have a child.
I left her to her crowd, and went back into the kitchen. The red wine I had poured for myself was still half full. I brought it to my lips and swallowed. I'm not ready to be a grandmother, just like I wasn't ready to be a mother. But just like the first time, it's coming at me full speed, ready or not.
I kept thinking, "it's too soon." It wasn't too soon. When it happens, it happens. There isn't any real age when it's time to, exactly. People try to say that there's an ideal age for it, and there probably is, but once you're in it, you're in it. It's too late to cry about it, but you often do that anyway.
I had whipped up some snacks, little finger foods like pizza rolls and crab puffs along with some potato chips and sodas. Simple stuff, easy and quick, but in all honesty, all I could afford and all I had time for. I laid it all out as people started to arrive, then basically stood out of sight as she opened gifts and oohed and aahed and fluttered about.
There was a lot of fluttering, raised voices and animated conversation. I tried to stay out of the way, but our small living space quickly filled with her friends, filling our apartment with skinny jeans and fashionable boots. My daughter was the first or second girl she knew to get pregnant, which made a visual contrast, all their flat bellies and tight shirts making her swollen form stand out.
When you have children, you learn before anything else that it is no longer about you. You share your body with them, and then they are this separate entity, but they never really leave you. Every defeat wounds you, every heartbreak punches you in the gut. I watched her socialize, laughing and letting them rub her belly, and I thought about all the versions of her I had known. I wanted to yell out that this cannot be, that this is all happening too fast, that the little girl who stamped her foot when her shoes wouldn't stay tied can't be old enough to have a child.
I left her to her crowd, and went back into the kitchen. The red wine I had poured for myself was still half full. I brought it to my lips and swallowed. I'm not ready to be a grandmother, just like I wasn't ready to be a mother. But just like the first time, it's coming at me full speed, ready or not.
100 Word Song: "Retreat"
My buddy Lance, whose blog is more than willing to accept an 8 seed in the Stanley Cup Playoffs as long as it gets a chance to beat up your blog, renews the 100 Word Song Challenge with Jefferson Starship's "Runaway". This doesn't really have much to do with the song except the title, but I nonetheless submit it. I call it "Retreat".
The captain told us, listening to the explosions and the angry bees of bullets zipping near us, that anyone who deserted would be hung. Right after he said that, his throat exploded, and he made a gurgling sound and fell over onto his back in the brown dirt. I looked at Stevenson, and he looked back at me. The whole world seemed to pause for a second, and I thought about home and the way Momma's bacon used to fill the whole house with that smell, and then suddenly I was running. I heard yelling, and I kept running.
The captain told us, listening to the explosions and the angry bees of bullets zipping near us, that anyone who deserted would be hung. Right after he said that, his throat exploded, and he made a gurgling sound and fell over onto his back in the brown dirt. I looked at Stevenson, and he looked back at me. The whole world seemed to pause for a second, and I thought about home and the way Momma's bacon used to fill the whole house with that smell, and then suddenly I was running. I heard yelling, and I kept running.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Indie Ink Writing Challenge: "Visiting Hours Are Over"
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Sir challenged me with "You remove your fear of the abyss by spending time looking into it." and I challenged Brad MacDonald with "'A story has no beginning or end.' -Graham Greene"
"They say when you look into the abyss, it looks back into you," I said. I looked at her. She was watching the TV screen above her head. It was something that popped into my head, apropos of nothing, sitting in a hard plastic chair and not reading the book I had brought.
"Who says that?" Her voice was weak, thready, like she had to clear her throat.
"I say that," I said. It was a cheap joke, but I made it anyway.
"No, that's not what I meant. I know you said it. Who said it before you?" She looked annoyed.
"Nobody important." The sun was high in the sky, slanting through the curtains and making patterns on the floor.
"Come on, somebody famous said that. Who was it?"
"Nietzsche. I think." I dimly remembered that from a philosophy class.
"He was an asshole." She said that like she knew him.
"Nietzsche?"
"Yes, Nietzsche. You know he was. He was the one philosopher frat boys could get into, because he always said it was OK to do whatever you wanted." There were noises out in the hall, and I looked at the door, thinking someone was about to come in. No one did.
"I think it was a little more complicated than that," I said. I hope she didn't press me, because I don't know how it is more complicated. I was just proud I pulled the name.
"Of course it was! Remember that scene from 'A Fish Called Wanda'? Kevin Kline says he's not an ape because apes don't read philosophy? Then Jamie Lee Curtis says, 'Yes, they do. They just don't understand it.' ? Remember?" She remembered everything.
"Yeah, I remember. Good movie." We used to watch it on videotape, sitting together on the floor, eating homemade bread with imported cheese, laughing at jokes we had already heard a dozen times.
"It was. That's why I say Nietzsche is an asshole, because he's a tool that dumb people use to make excuses for the dumb things they do. He makes dumb people think they sound smart." That seemed unfair, but I let it stand.
"That's not really Nietzsche's fault, though." She hated selfishness, which was what I had always thought Nietzsche boiled down to. But I wasn't totally sure.
"Yeah, but he's dead. I'm sure he doesn't care if I call him an asshole." She said the word dead flatly, like she was tossing a hot dog wrapper into the trash. I winced when she said it.
"What?," she said. She was looking at the four o'clock news, watching the anchor in a purple dress explain how to get 20% off of a manicure.
"I don't like that word."
"Asshole?," she said, smiling.
"No, not that." I looked out the window, watching a truck back up to a loading dock.
"You mean dead?"
"Yeah."
"You don't want me to talk about the Grateful Dead? Or 'Dawn of the Dead'? Or the Mexican Day of the Dead?," she said, smirking.
"You're not helping," I said. "But no, no I don't."
"Why? We both know I'm going to die. So are you. So is Dr. Perez, and that cute nurse you keep flirting with."
"I'm not flirting with her." She was tiny, absurdly tiny for an adult. Absolutely professional and smart and calm and very gentle, but just very very small. Shorter than me. I found her charming, but I wouldn't admit it.
"Oh, yes you are," she said triumphantly. "You know you are. You won't admit it. But you are."
I didn't say anything. That was often the best choice.
A busty Latin woman came in, wearing green scrubs and carrying what looked like a small fishing tackle box. "Hi honey," the newcomer said. "Time for some blood!"
"Seriously?," my wife said. She put out her arm. "That's like the seventeenth time today. I swear you're selling it to the blood bank." Always with the quip.
"You're so funny," she said, preparing her tools, the taut elastic, the vials and the stickers to label them.
"One thing about dying," my wife said. "At least I won't have to put up with this crap anymore," she said archly. She could make jokes about anything. She was already asking nurses if they had any single sisters, because, as she put it, "I have to help him pick out his next wife. He can't even pick his own clothes."
The woman in green had a name tag around her neck that said Rosa. "Oh no," she said. "You hurt my feelings when you say that, honey."
"You know I'm kidding, Rosa. It's not your fault." Rosa finished and bandaged the spot.
"You're not going to die, honey."
"Yeah, Rosa, I am. It's OK."
"No," Rosa said, sterner. "I prayed for you last night. You're not going to die, honey. I know it."
"Thank you," she said, and Rosa left without another word.
It was mostly quiet. If you listened, you could hear a phone ring, or an alarm chime. But those noises became part of the background. You mostly didn't hear them.
"I wonder if this woman knows it isn't prom night," she said to the screen. The news anchor was walking across the studio as they prepared to sign off. Her dress did look a little formal for a news anchor, but I supposed she would know better than I would.
"You better go," she told me. "You have to work early tomorrow."
"I know that," I said. I didn't move. I looked down at the library book in my lap. It was about Imperial Japan at the end of the Second World War, when everything started to come apart all at once.
"I'll be fine," she said. "I think I want to close my eyes for a little while."
"You don't need anything else?," I asked.
"No, you got me those magazines," she said, yawning. "I'm good."
I sat there and watched her for a while, ready to be upbraided for not obeying. But she didn't say anything, so I just sat there and listened to her breathe. I remembered something else Nietzsche said, that the living are just a species of the dead. I knew about ashes to ashes and dust to dust, that everyone who had ever lived would die. Babies are just adults to be, and living people are just corpses to be.
There was a difference, though, between knowing something was true, and really feeling it, knowing it all the way to your core. That was what I did when I thought about death-I knew it without knowing it. I read my Vonnegut, and my hyper smart science fiction stories about the perils of living forever, and I knew that human life was just an eyeblink in the lifespan of the universe. But something deep inside me made me feel like these rules didn't apply to me, that I was special. I watched her breathe, long after she fell asleep, listening to the tinny audio from the TV tell about catastrophe and war and sadness. I watched, and I wished and prayed for a reprieve that I knew would never come, until the sun finally set and I got up and went home to an empty house.
"They say when you look into the abyss, it looks back into you," I said. I looked at her. She was watching the TV screen above her head. It was something that popped into my head, apropos of nothing, sitting in a hard plastic chair and not reading the book I had brought.
"Who says that?" Her voice was weak, thready, like she had to clear her throat.
"I say that," I said. It was a cheap joke, but I made it anyway.
"No, that's not what I meant. I know you said it. Who said it before you?" She looked annoyed.
"Nobody important." The sun was high in the sky, slanting through the curtains and making patterns on the floor.
"Come on, somebody famous said that. Who was it?"
"Nietzsche. I think." I dimly remembered that from a philosophy class.
"He was an asshole." She said that like she knew him.
"Nietzsche?"
"Yes, Nietzsche. You know he was. He was the one philosopher frat boys could get into, because he always said it was OK to do whatever you wanted." There were noises out in the hall, and I looked at the door, thinking someone was about to come in. No one did.
"I think it was a little more complicated than that," I said. I hope she didn't press me, because I don't know how it is more complicated. I was just proud I pulled the name.
"Of course it was! Remember that scene from 'A Fish Called Wanda'? Kevin Kline says he's not an ape because apes don't read philosophy? Then Jamie Lee Curtis says, 'Yes, they do. They just don't understand it.' ? Remember?" She remembered everything.
"Yeah, I remember. Good movie." We used to watch it on videotape, sitting together on the floor, eating homemade bread with imported cheese, laughing at jokes we had already heard a dozen times.
"It was. That's why I say Nietzsche is an asshole, because he's a tool that dumb people use to make excuses for the dumb things they do. He makes dumb people think they sound smart." That seemed unfair, but I let it stand.
"That's not really Nietzsche's fault, though." She hated selfishness, which was what I had always thought Nietzsche boiled down to. But I wasn't totally sure.
"Yeah, but he's dead. I'm sure he doesn't care if I call him an asshole." She said the word dead flatly, like she was tossing a hot dog wrapper into the trash. I winced when she said it.
"What?," she said. She was looking at the four o'clock news, watching the anchor in a purple dress explain how to get 20% off of a manicure.
"I don't like that word."
"Asshole?," she said, smiling.
"No, not that." I looked out the window, watching a truck back up to a loading dock.
"You mean dead?"
"Yeah."
"You don't want me to talk about the Grateful Dead? Or 'Dawn of the Dead'? Or the Mexican Day of the Dead?," she said, smirking.
"You're not helping," I said. "But no, no I don't."
"Why? We both know I'm going to die. So are you. So is Dr. Perez, and that cute nurse you keep flirting with."
"I'm not flirting with her." She was tiny, absurdly tiny for an adult. Absolutely professional and smart and calm and very gentle, but just very very small. Shorter than me. I found her charming, but I wouldn't admit it.
"Oh, yes you are," she said triumphantly. "You know you are. You won't admit it. But you are."
I didn't say anything. That was often the best choice.
A busty Latin woman came in, wearing green scrubs and carrying what looked like a small fishing tackle box. "Hi honey," the newcomer said. "Time for some blood!"
"Seriously?," my wife said. She put out her arm. "That's like the seventeenth time today. I swear you're selling it to the blood bank." Always with the quip.
"You're so funny," she said, preparing her tools, the taut elastic, the vials and the stickers to label them.
"One thing about dying," my wife said. "At least I won't have to put up with this crap anymore," she said archly. She could make jokes about anything. She was already asking nurses if they had any single sisters, because, as she put it, "I have to help him pick out his next wife. He can't even pick his own clothes."
The woman in green had a name tag around her neck that said Rosa. "Oh no," she said. "You hurt my feelings when you say that, honey."
"You know I'm kidding, Rosa. It's not your fault." Rosa finished and bandaged the spot.
"You're not going to die, honey."
"Yeah, Rosa, I am. It's OK."
"No," Rosa said, sterner. "I prayed for you last night. You're not going to die, honey. I know it."
"Thank you," she said, and Rosa left without another word.
It was mostly quiet. If you listened, you could hear a phone ring, or an alarm chime. But those noises became part of the background. You mostly didn't hear them.
"I wonder if this woman knows it isn't prom night," she said to the screen. The news anchor was walking across the studio as they prepared to sign off. Her dress did look a little formal for a news anchor, but I supposed she would know better than I would.
"You better go," she told me. "You have to work early tomorrow."
"I know that," I said. I didn't move. I looked down at the library book in my lap. It was about Imperial Japan at the end of the Second World War, when everything started to come apart all at once.
"I'll be fine," she said. "I think I want to close my eyes for a little while."
"You don't need anything else?," I asked.
"No, you got me those magazines," she said, yawning. "I'm good."
I sat there and watched her for a while, ready to be upbraided for not obeying. But she didn't say anything, so I just sat there and listened to her breathe. I remembered something else Nietzsche said, that the living are just a species of the dead. I knew about ashes to ashes and dust to dust, that everyone who had ever lived would die. Babies are just adults to be, and living people are just corpses to be.
There was a difference, though, between knowing something was true, and really feeling it, knowing it all the way to your core. That was what I did when I thought about death-I knew it without knowing it. I read my Vonnegut, and my hyper smart science fiction stories about the perils of living forever, and I knew that human life was just an eyeblink in the lifespan of the universe. But something deep inside me made me feel like these rules didn't apply to me, that I was special. I watched her breathe, long after she fell asleep, listening to the tinny audio from the TV tell about catastrophe and war and sadness. I watched, and I wished and prayed for a reprieve that I knew would never come, until the sun finally set and I got up and went home to an empty house.
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