by Kevin Myrick
I sometimes miss the feeling of running my hand across your bare skin as we laid naked together on the futon in my tiny apartment. You used to wiggle under my touch and complain that “it tickles” before holding me down and kissing me lightly on the lips. That was a moment I used to live for when we were together. There are other things I miss too: The smell of your hair from the coconut shampoo you used to use, the way the necklaces you always wore around your neck jingled around the apartment, reminding me of Christmas. The smell of your freshly baked cookies. I especially miss your cooking.
You left because I was a drunk and a fool, unable to see myself in the mirror for who I really am. But you were never an angel yourself, always allowing me to continue further down the rabbit hole until finally I hit rock bottom.
The fight between us was all my fault. I came home drunk from a night out with my friends from work and then vomited in your laundry basket. You woke me up disgusted the next morning and threw the soiled clothes on top of me. “You smell that? That’s what happens when you go out.”
“You have no self-restraint. I honestly don’t know why I still care about you.”
I was hurt and shot back that you were just as irresponsible when it came to liquor and life. It was fine for you to party and get drunk. It was fine that you always come back to me whenever you get yourself into a crisis. You want me to be a shoulder to cry on when things go bad. I am not that shoulder, and if you don’t like it you can go away.
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” I said as I got up and put on my coat.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here,” I said.
I stumbled down the stairs and hung over as I was I must have looked like an old man with a broken hip. I ended up in the diner down the street flirting with a waitress and coating my stomach with greasy sausage and eggs. On the way home I stopped by the package store to buy a pint bottle of Jack Daniels to even me out. I drank it on the way home from a crumbled brown paper bag. As I staggered down the block I let my drunken anger get the better of me with innocent pedestrians and blamed them for all my problems.
Once home, I found that you’d left nothing more of yourself than a scrap of paper with a note on it as I fell onto the kitchen table. All it said was “I started to feel like a liar, saying I love you.”
I guess you couldn’t think of any other way to say it was through. And now I’m all alone again, nothing more than the bugs to keep me company as the scurry across the living room floor. I got drunk for two days straight and by the end of it decided that you were never worth it. And now I’m 12 years sober.
Kevin Myrick is a writer and journalist living in Rome, Ga. His work has been featured on 52/250, The Auburn Plainsman, The Auburn Circle and his website. He plans to release an e-book short story collection in October. Myrick’s last purchase was a can of Dr. Pepper from a vending machine.
Showing posts with label WRITING PROMPT PIECES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WRITING PROMPT PIECES. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Writng Prompt: Fiction
by Geoff Munsterman
I took her virginity on my birthday. She took mine too, but never knew it. When I met Diedra, I was nineteen and a virgin but who the fuck would ever admit that. Unlike some, I didn’t invent a random girl or an ex who’d never warrant mentioning again. I had Elisha. She was Jewish, freckled, more outgoing and extroverted than me. Her sensitive nipples shrank from Kennedy dollars to dimes with the slightest flicker of my tongue. We’d been dating for three years after I saved her from a mosh pit at a rock festival. Before that, just friends. She took my virginity on Lundi Gras in the women’s bathroom of The Spellcaster Lounge. For prom, she bought a black single-strap dress and I rented a high-breasted three-piece charcoal tuxedo with a dark mint vest but our poetry teacher called us to go night fishing so we did that instead. I proposed in November, just after being accepted to schools up north. She’d been accepted to those good schools too, but chose the University of New Orleans because her pot dealer went there and gave her good rates. That night, inside the walk-in of the restaurant where she worked, she told me she’d been sleeping with her drug dealer. And his friends. And anyone he told her to sleep with. And there was video. She never held my grandmother’s depression-era ring—the only jewelry my mother’s family kept from then—and I didn’t speak to her until my first week of school in Ohio.
I don’t know why I told this lie. Part of me didn’t want to chase skirts. Part of me knew I could get away with it. Elisha was a good friend, but someone I could easily avoid for four years. Or a lifetime. I don’t know if this story helped make me more attractive to Diedra; it certainly allowed me to relate to women. I’d been hurt by a girl I loved—girls eat that shit up, even on a pudgy kid.
My dad died on October 7th. My first college girlfriend broke up with me on October 4th. We bonded over my sick dad and hers, two years dead. I probably could have fucked her after flying back to school from the wake. I spread my father’s ashes in the beginning of January and started dating Diedra at the end of January. Never took her out. Never cooked for her. We talked a lot, and watched Joe Versus the Volcano. She did visual art and I wrote poetry, so we collaborated on a project. The night I turned twenty, she showed up at my door in heels, a candy necklace, and a dress that fell off her body with the pulling of a string. All the girls in the dorm had massive bushes of pubic hair because the water pressure in the bathrooms were shit. I took her virginity. She took mine. I played the role of the experienced partner.
We dated eight months. I never took her out. I never cooked for her. All we did was fuck, but in a college as small as ours that constitutes a couple. I was grieving my father’s death and not being home for my mother—something my old man swore would happen. I hated all of my friends, who sat around talking about how awful they’d feel if their dad died. Everything was a blur, and to some extent still is. I wrote two books of poetry in four months, had my first real relationship, made the dean’s list, and can’t tell you a single moment from it except that I lost my virginity to a virgin who didn’t know I was a virgin. At some point, I must have said “I love you.” It didn’t even feel like a lie because, who the fuck was I? A dead man’s son? An artful and committed lover? A liar?
The last night before we left for home (she was Minnesotan and I am from Louisiana...fuck did I hate her accent—each ‘o’ was like getting hit in the face with an oar) we pushed my and my roommate’s beds together. It was a sweaty greatest hits of all the fucking we’d done that semester: tit-fucking, fingering, blowjobs, doggy-style, nipple biting, ass-licking, ball-sucking, hair-pulling, fondling, caressing, kissing. And I didn’t cum. In fact, I never came when we had sex. I’d fake orgasm when I felt her pussy drying up and hid the condoms. This last night of fucking I didn’t give up. She had twelve orgasms; and I know she had twelve because her left foot did this involuntary convulsion and the walls of her vagina tightened and pulsated. Virgins don’t know enough to fake that. Orgasm nine lasted ten minutes, and I didn’t cum. At least if I had lost my erection, we could have slept longer than the four hours we got.
There was talk of visiting each other but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t care about her enough to show her the places in New Orleans I loved. I went home, which was like visiting a cemetery. I worked at a bookstore in the French Quarter. I edited my two books, which were both messes of raw grief and harsh barbs of verbs. Diedra sent me a letter about her mom and her job. I went to Airline highway and picked up a crackhead who, for sixty dollars and a six-piece chicken tenders with french fries from a gas station, sucked my cock. I came instantly, hard. The next day, I broke up with Diedra via text message. Two weeks later I evacuated to Ohio because Hurricane Katrina was heading up the Gulf. More blur. Another year lost. Diedra invited me to a party to show me how much she enjoyed sticking her tongue down another man’s throat, but instead of feeling jealousy or pity I wondered if the nappy crackwhore in too-tight demin was alive or dead. All the while remembering that she snickered when, with her mouth around my cock, I muttered, “I love you."
Geoff Munsterman is a bitter, lonely man. This story is dedicated to everyone who has accused him of having 'a martyr complex.' He has achieved less than he'd intended, and lives on the wrong side of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The last thing hepurchased was a super grande mocha with five shots of espresso.
I took her virginity on my birthday. She took mine too, but never knew it. When I met Diedra, I was nineteen and a virgin but who the fuck would ever admit that. Unlike some, I didn’t invent a random girl or an ex who’d never warrant mentioning again. I had Elisha. She was Jewish, freckled, more outgoing and extroverted than me. Her sensitive nipples shrank from Kennedy dollars to dimes with the slightest flicker of my tongue. We’d been dating for three years after I saved her from a mosh pit at a rock festival. Before that, just friends. She took my virginity on Lundi Gras in the women’s bathroom of The Spellcaster Lounge. For prom, she bought a black single-strap dress and I rented a high-breasted three-piece charcoal tuxedo with a dark mint vest but our poetry teacher called us to go night fishing so we did that instead. I proposed in November, just after being accepted to schools up north. She’d been accepted to those good schools too, but chose the University of New Orleans because her pot dealer went there and gave her good rates. That night, inside the walk-in of the restaurant where she worked, she told me she’d been sleeping with her drug dealer. And his friends. And anyone he told her to sleep with. And there was video. She never held my grandmother’s depression-era ring—the only jewelry my mother’s family kept from then—and I didn’t speak to her until my first week of school in Ohio.
I don’t know why I told this lie. Part of me didn’t want to chase skirts. Part of me knew I could get away with it. Elisha was a good friend, but someone I could easily avoid for four years. Or a lifetime. I don’t know if this story helped make me more attractive to Diedra; it certainly allowed me to relate to women. I’d been hurt by a girl I loved—girls eat that shit up, even on a pudgy kid.
My dad died on October 7th. My first college girlfriend broke up with me on October 4th. We bonded over my sick dad and hers, two years dead. I probably could have fucked her after flying back to school from the wake. I spread my father’s ashes in the beginning of January and started dating Diedra at the end of January. Never took her out. Never cooked for her. We talked a lot, and watched Joe Versus the Volcano. She did visual art and I wrote poetry, so we collaborated on a project. The night I turned twenty, she showed up at my door in heels, a candy necklace, and a dress that fell off her body with the pulling of a string. All the girls in the dorm had massive bushes of pubic hair because the water pressure in the bathrooms were shit. I took her virginity. She took mine. I played the role of the experienced partner.
We dated eight months. I never took her out. I never cooked for her. All we did was fuck, but in a college as small as ours that constitutes a couple. I was grieving my father’s death and not being home for my mother—something my old man swore would happen. I hated all of my friends, who sat around talking about how awful they’d feel if their dad died. Everything was a blur, and to some extent still is. I wrote two books of poetry in four months, had my first real relationship, made the dean’s list, and can’t tell you a single moment from it except that I lost my virginity to a virgin who didn’t know I was a virgin. At some point, I must have said “I love you.” It didn’t even feel like a lie because, who the fuck was I? A dead man’s son? An artful and committed lover? A liar?
The last night before we left for home (she was Minnesotan and I am from Louisiana...fuck did I hate her accent—each ‘o’ was like getting hit in the face with an oar) we pushed my and my roommate’s beds together. It was a sweaty greatest hits of all the fucking we’d done that semester: tit-fucking, fingering, blowjobs, doggy-style, nipple biting, ass-licking, ball-sucking, hair-pulling, fondling, caressing, kissing. And I didn’t cum. In fact, I never came when we had sex. I’d fake orgasm when I felt her pussy drying up and hid the condoms. This last night of fucking I didn’t give up. She had twelve orgasms; and I know she had twelve because her left foot did this involuntary convulsion and the walls of her vagina tightened and pulsated. Virgins don’t know enough to fake that. Orgasm nine lasted ten minutes, and I didn’t cum. At least if I had lost my erection, we could have slept longer than the four hours we got.
There was talk of visiting each other but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t care about her enough to show her the places in New Orleans I loved. I went home, which was like visiting a cemetery. I worked at a bookstore in the French Quarter. I edited my two books, which were both messes of raw grief and harsh barbs of verbs. Diedra sent me a letter about her mom and her job. I went to Airline highway and picked up a crackhead who, for sixty dollars and a six-piece chicken tenders with french fries from a gas station, sucked my cock. I came instantly, hard. The next day, I broke up with Diedra via text message. Two weeks later I evacuated to Ohio because Hurricane Katrina was heading up the Gulf. More blur. Another year lost. Diedra invited me to a party to show me how much she enjoyed sticking her tongue down another man’s throat, but instead of feeling jealousy or pity I wondered if the nappy crackwhore in too-tight demin was alive or dead. All the while remembering that she snickered when, with her mouth around my cock, I muttered, “I love you."
Geoff Munsterman is a bitter, lonely man. This story is dedicated to everyone who has accused him of having 'a martyr complex.' He has achieved less than he'd intended, and lives on the wrong side of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The last thing hepurchased was a super grande mocha with five shots of espresso.
Monday, August 16, 2010
How To Be Honest
by Carolyn Nash
Sometimes I say things to myself: That's the truth. Stop it stop it stop it. Or: You're alright. Or: Let it go. Things like that -- things that people are supposed to want to hear. I say them even though I am the only person in the room, even though they aren't things that I particularly want to hear.
If there are words in my mouth, I can't hear the ones in my head. That's the truth. So I say these things over and over again, as though they are prayers, as though the rhythm will mean something when the words themselves fail. I have to move, I have to move, I have to move. I'll scream it out loud to an empty bedroom until my voice sounds like cardboard tearing.
Or if you're all tender warmth beside me in bed, I'll just say NO NO NO. It must be scary to hear that sudden scream, if you have been sleeping next to me, trying to love me. But you never try to decipher "no." It's one of those words you either believe or disbelieve. It's a word that ends itself, like a suicide.
The thing I say most, though, is I love you. When no one's around, when I'm laying in bed alone. When I'm not thinking of anyone at all. I love you! I'll say suddenly. And what it means is god please stop these thoughts, these terrible thoughts, please let these words that are supposed to change lives be enough to change mine.
There is a ghoul inside me, I told you once. I don't know if it will ever go away.
Now when I look at you in the half-dark and say I love you I don't know if I am saying it to you or saying it to strangle the ghoul, to stifle all those words in my head: the words that make me want to tear out my eyes just to set the voices free. I love you: maybe the sounds and shapes and depths are truly their own or maybe they are just a salve for the parts inside me that have ruptured. I don't know.
But when I told you about the ghoul, that was love.
That's the truth.
If there are words in my mouth, I can't hear the ones in my head. That's the truth. So I say these things over and over again, as though they are prayers, as though the rhythm will mean something when the words themselves fail. I have to move, I have to move, I have to move. I'll scream it out loud to an empty bedroom until my voice sounds like cardboard tearing.
Or if you're all tender warmth beside me in bed, I'll just say NO NO NO. It must be scary to hear that sudden scream, if you have been sleeping next to me, trying to love me. But you never try to decipher "no." It's one of those words you either believe or disbelieve. It's a word that ends itself, like a suicide.
The thing I say most, though, is I love you. When no one's around, when I'm laying in bed alone. When I'm not thinking of anyone at all. I love you! I'll say suddenly. And what it means is god please stop these thoughts, these terrible thoughts, please let these words that are supposed to change lives be enough to change mine.
There is a ghoul inside me, I told you once. I don't know if it will ever go away.
Now when I look at you in the half-dark and say I love you I don't know if I am saying it to you or saying it to strangle the ghoul, to stifle all those words in my head: the words that make me want to tear out my eyes just to set the voices free. I love you: maybe the sounds and shapes and depths are truly their own or maybe they are just a salve for the parts inside me that have ruptured. I don't know.
But when I told you about the ghoul, that was love.
That's the truth.
Carolyn Nash is fasting for Ramadan. Her belly feels seared and torn, like an exploded tire. Her last purchase was a box set of Roald Dahl's complete works, translated into Indonesian. She writes here and you can follow her on Twitter here @idontwashmyhair.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Writing Prompt: I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I don't like.
Adrift In A Sea Of Flesh
by D. Jordan
by D. Jordan
I’m looking for you again, and I’m not even sure if you’re real. I don’t think I ever met you, though you could be some friend or tertiary acquaintance. My one, true love. It has become almost cliché: True Love. We live in a world of flesh where sex and image are the number one sellers.
Fuck somebody, suck somebody, BE somebody. It makes me nostalgic. I miss the thrill of taking a lady out and wondering if I would get a kiss. I yearn to feel tension while reaching for a woman’s hand. Can you help me? I think I lost those feelings. I’m just looking for someone to give them back.
It’s my own fault, I think. I’m pretty sure I misplaced them sometime in college. Maybe I set it down to let another sorostitute into my room. I might have been too busy watching women flock to the men who treated them the worst. Perhaps I just got too busy learning the game and how easy it really was. I wish I knew; maybe I could go retrieve it. It’s somewhere in yesterday, though, and that is a damn hard place to get back to.
So I decided not to look for it. Instead I’m holding out on a one in a million chance that you’re out there. I don’t know you. I don’t know if your hair is black as onyx or as gold as a sunset. I don’t know if you will be tall or short, quiet or loud. I know you will have beautiful eyes. I know you will be beautiful in mine. I know you will make me stutter and tie my thoughts into knots. I know I will love you, if you exist.
D. Jordan is looking forward to hitting something on an athletic field. His favorite Sneakers are Dan Akroyd and Robert Redford. You get a coolness point non gratis if you get that without having to look it up.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Writing Prompt: I am that afraid I will die while spending time with someone I don't like
by Julia Davies
Yes, I am talking to you. Look at you, you sprawl there on the sofa. Sprawl doesn't begin to cover it, you slump, you spill, you slouch. You are a sibilant sloven. Your feet up on the furniture, resting on the rubbish, remains of letters, magazines, chocolate wrappers.
You sag. You age.
It's not langour, it's way beyond that, it's a life draining laziness beyond comprehension. Why would anyone choose to live like that? Why do you choose to live like that? Oh, you don't choose it? You just can't be bothered to change it.
Billowing flesh, pale and pasty pink. Hide it under the throw, pretend it isn't there as you reach for the next packet of crisps, the next gulp of alcohol.
The German word for lazy is "faul" and you know you are.
Sluggish? That doesn't sound too bad, a slow pulse but basically everything under control. Slug-like is more like it. Fat, seeping, sliding through life at the pace of a snail without even the excuse of your house on your shoulders.
No wonder no-one comes around. No wonder there is no-one who wants to probe your fleshy crevices, touch your pallid swollen skin. And you know being so fat makes those folds fleshier and deeper, the journey into your cunt a longer route to pleasure, but no-one else wants to know that now. Hell, most of the time even you don't fucking bother.
Get up off the sofa and go look in the mirror. Not via the fridge again! Go see yourself. Really see yourself, not glance and see the memory of the girl you once were. She was 20 years ago and is lost to you now. Look at yourself, see what you really look like. Nice eyes, yeah, but how many chins? Your tiny mouth looks even smaller against the expanse of your cheeks, unhealthily flushed.
Will you do something about it this time? Will you? Or will you just wonder absently where the gym card is, or whether your swimming costume would still fit? And make a half hearted resolution to go into town and buy some newer bigger clothes?
My face in the mirror, I wonder vaguely what it would be like to finish it, to put an end to it, to kill this person that I don't like, even if it means I die with her. But I know I won't do it, too much effort.
jkdavies is a practised reader & practising writer living in Germany. She doesn't have sneakers, but trainers. They are not her favourite anything as she only wears them to go to the gym. That's once so far this year... so fucking what, it's only July...
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Writing Prompt: The Last Words
by Michael Webb
“I’m getting married,” she said, her voice sounding small in the dark,
as casually as she would announce a new pair of shoes or a poem she
had gotten into a magazine. I took a deep breath, then let it out,
because I read somewhere you should do that before reacting to
anything.
There was light coming from somewhere, probably reflected streetlight
coming through my one tiny window, and it made everything look
slightly unreal. Her skin glowed in the dark, the tiny shadows of her
vertebrae climbing away from me as she sat on the edge of my bed. She
was bent from the waist, feeling around on the floor among our
discarded clothes.
“Richard?” I said into the emptiness. She had found her underwear and
was pulling it up her long, trim legs, adjusting it around her hips in
that way women do. I knew the answer.
“Yes,” she said in a singsongy way. The uneven light revealed pieces
of her to me-a curve of breast, a flared hip, a bare shoulder-as she
rummaged across the floor. They had been on and off for 2 years-I was
usually her backup when they were "off". I knew she was his in the
end, but then I saw her, I made her laugh, she followed me home, and
we wound up here.
“But what about .....….this?,” I asked helplessly. She found her bra,
a tiny strip of black fabric and buckles, and began to assemble it,
first fastening it around her small waist, then pulling it up, making
tiny adjustments so it would fit properly. I knew she would grow old
and bitter with him-clinging to him out of obligation, not passion. I
had heard her spit it at him once, mid-fight: “I don’t even LIKE you!”
“A going away present,” she said. She pulled jeans up from the floor,
tugging them and wiggling to get them to conform to her shape. She
bent again, coming up with her loose sleeveless top. She pulled it on,
picking at it and tugging it until it hung the way she wanted. She
gathered her hair, then let it fall loose again. I wanted to stop her,
but my voice seemed to catch on something in my throat. She was gone,
shutting the door firmly behind her.
Fine, I thought. Let her explain why she was wearing my pants.
Michael Webb blogs at innocentsaccidentshints.
that the best sneakers ever made were Pony's "City Wings", because who
says man was not born to fly?
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Writing Prompt: Every Day
by Shannon Peil
Every few mornings I'll wake up from one of those dreams that are so vivid, so
true, that I can't stop the resulting panic attack for hours afterward. I
realized during one of these that I wasn't terrified of death, not really. The
heart palpitations and nervous sweats staining my bed weren't from the myriad of
gruesome endings I've seen; they weren't even from the thought that at some
point I just won't have any more time. The sweats were from the details before
that. The details depicting the wrong wife, the girlfriend I settled for, the
friends I wasn't sure why I was hanging around anyways. The bad choices, the
failed plans, the loss of hope. Yesterday morning I woke up just as I died of
old age, surrounded by my three snotty children, all looking a great deal like
my bitch of a wife. It was infuriating. It was terrifying. I had only a few
breaths left in this life and I spent them unhappy. I resented all of them, but
it wasn't their fault. It was my fault.
This morning, I drove to work and wondered if it was going to come true. I
wondered if maybe everything I was worried about was moot because you'd never
say yes anyways. I wondered if I wouldn't get the chance to have a bitch of a
wife because no one would ever call me their husband to begin with. I thought
about Wednesday. I wondered if instead I was going to die like I envisioned that
night, a car accident while driving my deadbeat best friend to his latest court
date; maybe I'd get t-boned in an intersection a little too late on a yellow
light. I wondered if the last thing I'd see was this fucking stoner leaned over
me with this dazed look in his eye like "What do I do? What do I do? I'm gonna
be late to court again."
But these aren't valid concerns, not really. It's very few who pick how they
die, and I'm certain not a single person in the history of humanity has been
completely content with how it went down for them. And every few mornings I'll
wake up to the stale scent of sweat and shivering, pick the blankets and pillows
off the floor, and think of you.
I think of you because no matter how fearful I am of the day I die and how it
happens and who I'm with and what I'm remembered for, my death won't be the
tragic one. I think of you because I can't stand the smell of hospitals. I think
of you because I can't even remember what your face looks like. I think of you
because every time someone says the word 'cancer' my jaw locks up and I become
fifteen again. I think of you because I'll die some day, too. I think of you
because I never said goodbye. I think of you because I'll never be able to.
Shannon Peil lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado. His work has appeared in a
few dozen online publications and a couple in print, but more notably he edits
for people who actually know what they are doing at http://amphibi.us. He gets
referred to as Ms. more often than not in e-mails.
SSF: What is one of your favorite words in the English language?
Shannon: Torrent. I like rain, and I like downloading things, and that word is pretty
looking. Torrent.
SSF: What is one of your least favorite words in the English language?
Shannon: Vagina. There is absolutely nothing attractive about the word 'vagina' or
'vaginal' that does justice to the description of a hot cunt. It is unfortunate
that my favorite body part is named something I shudder to say.
SSF: What are your favorite kind of sneakers and why?
Shannon: I'm a product of the '90s. I still wear Vans. It's harder and harder every year
to find a pair I like, but Vans is one of the only skate companies still making
shoes that I can stand. It seems like there is this huge shift towards
multi-colored panels, ugly low tops and canvas (sorry canvas fans, they suck)
and thick, puffy sidewalls.
Every few mornings I'll wake up from one of those dreams that are so vivid, so
true, that I can't stop the resulting panic attack for hours afterward. I
realized during one of these that I wasn't terrified of death, not really. The
heart palpitations and nervous sweats staining my bed weren't from the myriad of
gruesome endings I've seen; they weren't even from the thought that at some
point I just won't have any more time. The sweats were from the details before
that. The details depicting the wrong wife, the girlfriend I settled for, the
friends I wasn't sure why I was hanging around anyways. The bad choices, the
failed plans, the loss of hope. Yesterday morning I woke up just as I died of
old age, surrounded by my three snotty children, all looking a great deal like
my bitch of a wife. It was infuriating. It was terrifying. I had only a few
breaths left in this life and I spent them unhappy. I resented all of them, but
it wasn't their fault. It was my fault.
This morning, I drove to work and wondered if it was going to come true. I
wondered if maybe everything I was worried about was moot because you'd never
say yes anyways. I wondered if I wouldn't get the chance to have a bitch of a
wife because no one would ever call me their husband to begin with. I thought
about Wednesday. I wondered if instead I was going to die like I envisioned that
night, a car accident while driving my deadbeat best friend to his latest court
date; maybe I'd get t-boned in an intersection a little too late on a yellow
light. I wondered if the last thing I'd see was this fucking stoner leaned over
me with this dazed look in his eye like "What do I do? What do I do? I'm gonna
be late to court again."
But these aren't valid concerns, not really. It's very few who pick how they
die, and I'm certain not a single person in the history of humanity has been
completely content with how it went down for them. And every few mornings I'll
wake up to the stale scent of sweat and shivering, pick the blankets and pillows
off the floor, and think of you.
I think of you because no matter how fearful I am of the day I die and how it
happens and who I'm with and what I'm remembered for, my death won't be the
tragic one. I think of you because I can't stand the smell of hospitals. I think
of you because I can't even remember what your face looks like. I think of you
because every time someone says the word 'cancer' my jaw locks up and I become
fifteen again. I think of you because I'll die some day, too. I think of you
because I never said goodbye. I think of you because I'll never be able to.
Shannon Peil lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado. His work has appeared in a
few dozen online publications and a couple in print, but more notably he edits
for people who actually know what they are doing at http://amphibi.us. He gets
referred to as Ms. more often than not in e-mails.
SSF: What is one of your favorite words in the English language?
Shannon: Torrent. I like rain, and I like downloading things, and that word is pretty
looking. Torrent.
SSF: What is one of your least favorite words in the English language?
'vaginal' that does justice to the description of a hot cunt. It is unfortunate
that my favorite body part is named something I shudder to say.
SSF: What are your favorite kind of sneakers and why?
Shannon: I'm a product of the '90s. I still wear Vans. It's harder and harder every year
to find a pair I like, but Vans is one of the only skate companies still making
shoes that I can stand. It seems like there is this huge shift towards
multi-colored panels, ugly low tops and canvas (sorry canvas fans, they suck)
and thick, puffy sidewalls.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
There Are No Answers
by Sean H. Doyle
There are no answers.
A lot of people will tell you that there are all sorts of answers out there, floating in the ether -- just waiting to be snatched up -- but they’re making that shit up. There are no answers. I know this because I have spent the majority of my adult life waiting for answers to fall into my lap, as opposed to just going out there and finding them for myself.
Yeah, I’d call me “lazy,” too.
When you’re in your twenties, you don’t really care about answers as much as you care about fine-tuning those feral parts of you. The fuckery. The imbibery. Those parts are very important. When you’re in your twenties the most important thing you can do is slide your tongue over as many different body parts on as many different people as you possibly can. Race and creed don’t matter much, nor does sexual/gender identity, really -- just go out and get your fuck on. You’re never really going to know yourself until you find yourself in as many awkward sexual situations as you can fathom. Nothing tells a person who they really are like waking up in a trailer in the woods with four or five hunters and their wives, mountains of empty Steel Reserve tallboys all around and the smell of burning latex hanging in the air.
Not that you’ll find any answers there, either.
You might think that you’d be able to find answers in speaking with your fellow humans, but that would also be a fallacy. Talking to other humans about anything usually results in them unlatching the top on their secret box where they keep their wounded ego, and then they release that Kraken on you. Kind of like this, but different. Most other humans are just shells holding broken pieces of light. Worker bees. Drones in veal fattening pens, answering phones and stuck in traffic. When they get the opportunity to wax on about the answers, you’ll get hit in the face with their dreams, their fears, and the sudden realization of “I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I do not like.”
Not an answer.
I once thought that maybe the answers were found in our blood. I was wrong about that. I cannot talk to you about what I found in my blood, because I promised I wouldn’t.
Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, New York -- where he now pays $11.50 for a pack of cigarettes. His favorite pair of sneakers ever were the pair of first edition Air Jordans he received on Christmas morning, 1985. Sean believes in working hard to get better, and most of his writing can be found on his site. Sean would also dig it if you followed him on Twitter, because The Angry Owl God knows he could use more friends in far-away lands.
There are no answers.
A lot of people will tell you that there are all sorts of answers out there, floating in the ether -- just waiting to be snatched up -- but they’re making that shit up. There are no answers. I know this because I have spent the majority of my adult life waiting for answers to fall into my lap, as opposed to just going out there and finding them for myself.
Yeah, I’d call me “lazy,” too.
When you’re in your twenties, you don’t really care about answers as much as you care about fine-tuning those feral parts of you. The fuckery. The imbibery. Those parts are very important. When you’re in your twenties the most important thing you can do is slide your tongue over as many different body parts on as many different people as you possibly can. Race and creed don’t matter much, nor does sexual/gender identity, really -- just go out and get your fuck on. You’re never really going to know yourself until you find yourself in as many awkward sexual situations as you can fathom. Nothing tells a person who they really are like waking up in a trailer in the woods with four or five hunters and their wives, mountains of empty Steel Reserve tallboys all around and the smell of burning latex hanging in the air.
Not that you’ll find any answers there, either.
You might think that you’d be able to find answers in speaking with your fellow humans, but that would also be a fallacy. Talking to other humans about anything usually results in them unlatching the top on their secret box where they keep their wounded ego, and then they release that Kraken on you. Kind of like this, but different. Most other humans are just shells holding broken pieces of light. Worker bees. Drones in veal fattening pens, answering phones and stuck in traffic. When they get the opportunity to wax on about the answers, you’ll get hit in the face with their dreams, their fears, and the sudden realization of “I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I do not like.”
Not an answer.
I once thought that maybe the answers were found in our blood. I was wrong about that. I cannot talk to you about what I found in my blood, because I promised I wouldn’t.
Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, New York -- where he now pays $11.50 for a pack of cigarettes. His favorite pair of sneakers ever were the pair of first edition Air Jordans he received on Christmas morning, 1985. Sean believes in working hard to get better, and most of his writing can be found on his site. Sean would also dig it if you followed him on Twitter, because The Angry Owl God knows he could use more friends in far-away lands.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Clean
by Carolyn Nash
Ginny says “sweet” is a word like a butter knife as she leans over and vomits again. She spits once and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, pauses with her face over the bucket. Then she leans back into the couch and explains: a butter knife doesn’t do a single thing that another knife can’t do just as well. Ginny’s face is white and damp, like a potato cut open.
The room smells like tomato paste and sour shit. Ginny pants a little as she stares up at the ceiling. Her profile is proud and elegant, the smooth lift of her nose, the doubled pink of her lips, the plunge where her sharp chin becomes her delicate throat. Looking at her, it’s hard not to think of all the ways you can hurt a person, all the things you can do to make a body fall apart, shock the blood against air.
The thing itself has already happened, I think. At least the throes of it are over, the part where Ginny’s wide open mouth let out such peels of maniacal panic I thought our neighbors would call the police. Sometimes she turned her face into the pillow and stifled the screams, but I was afraid if I forced her quiet she would suffocate. Or hit me. Through most of it, I just sat on the love seat and watched. Once she made me call the emergency number, but they said there was nothing to be done, as though she were a meteor crashing towards our earth, or an astronaut untethered, drifting away from us, beyond reclaim.
After Ginny falls asleep, I take the bucket into the bathroom and wash it. I scrub away the ring her puke has left in the toilet bowl: a small gesture, an act of necessity. When everything is clean and the smell is gone, it will be over for me. I feel how much worse it must be for her, to share this experience with someone who won’t even remember the person she was before. For a moment, I feel how alone she is, how alone I’ve let her be. I rush back to the living room to tell her I’ll remember, I’ll remember who she was, if this moment changes her forever, but when I see her sleeping, beautiful, stinking girl, my blood goes quiet, and the feeling is gone.
Carolyn Nash has a voracious appetite and intermittent insomnia. She dislikes water chestnuts and overcooked eggs. She likes Pegasus sneakers because they make her run fast. She writes here.
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