From my Pen
Because I'm not feeling it today, after a week during which technical difficulties prevented me from posting much, I'm going to post the first two scenes fo a play I wrote a few years back. Any and all feedback is, of course, welcome.
We open on a spare stage, with unfinished, earthy, sticky even pine the dominant feature. A raised dais, hexagonal in shape, sits center stage, constructed entirely of this naked pine. The dais is about two feet high in the center, with a square platform of about 6 feet on a side on top. Two steps lead up to the dais on all sides. A large cross, also naked pine, dominates the rear wall of the stage. The Christ upon it should ideally be carved directly from the wood, that is the crucifix and Christ would all be one contiguous piece of wood. The Christ should be somewhat abstract, but still clearly Christ. The scent of incense should be faint on the air. The lights should be of muted purples and reds, as if all the stage lighting had been strained through stained glass. The wood that dominates the set should have a well-oiled look to it, strong and sturdy pine; the dais and the Christ should be constructed from thick and solid pieces of wood with a weight to them. As the curtain rises or as the lights dim we hear music in the background. The music should straddle the romantic and modern eras, retaining clear tonality but with definite experimental aspects to it – perhaps some Schoenberg or Barber. The music will continue throughout the entirety of this opening scene, always faint and never dominant. Perhaps there is a slight haze in the air. The feeling should be of an unadorned and stolid holiness, a strong sacred and holy feeling – the set and atmosphere should, as much as possible, evoke not just a church, but a church of ancient and unmoving strength and sacredness. At the front of the dais are two wooden chairs set side by side and facing the audience. A simple wire frame, much like a rolling hanger rack, sits between the chairs, perpendicular to the audience. Hung on this rack is a thick, black cloth.
Seated on the SR chair is FATHER CASTANELLA, an elderly priest. FATHER CASTENELLA is gray-haired and well-fed, if a bit gaunt in the face nonetheless. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and is a short man, perhaps 5 foot 4 or 5. His hair is wispy and thinning but still ample for a man of his age. Seated on the SL chair is FATHER OSTRAUSKAS. FATHER OSTRAUSKAS is a younger priest, in his later twenties. He has dark hair and the hint of stubble on his cheek. Taller, perhaps 5 foot 10 or 11, and wiry. FATHER OSTRAUSKAS looks nervous, agitated, and he fidgets in his chair. He is dressed in black dress pants and a black t-shirt, but wears no priestly collar. While it should be clear to the audience that FATHER CASTANELLA is a priest, it should not be clear at the outset that FATHER OSTRAUSKAS is one.
Scene One
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
Bless me Father, for I have sinned.
FATHER CASTANELLA
How long has it been since your last confession?
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
Six days, Father.
FATHER CASTANELLA
And what is your confession?
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
Pause. Then, more to us than to FATHER CASTANELLA. I walked through the park yesterday. It’s been my custom to walk through the park ever since I came to this city, every Sunday, whenever I’m able. This was a nice one. Sunny and bright, a beautiful spring day. There were children playing, squealing and shouting like excited convicts afforded their first glimpse of freedom in years, and each step I took felt right, felt pre-ordained and perfect. The air was as sweet as I’ve ever smelled it here, not a hint of smog or smoke or garbage, just clean, fresh spring air. I could feel the grass, feel each blade bend and give, even underneath the rubber soles of my sneakers, and it had a spring to it, an almost palpable sense of life as it bent underneath my weight. I looked up at the sky so many times I could not count, there was one single, solitary cloud hovering in the corner of the sky, like a bad child made to sit in a corner. The rest of the sky was a pure and sinless blue, clean and fresh. The sun was warm at my neck, and I could feel the pleasant sensation of moisture as the sweat seeped up through my pores at its touch. At one point I was walking past a group of children playing soccer and the ball came out of bounds to my side. Immediately, all the children started yelling for me to “Kick it! Kick it!,” and I smiled at them. I used to play soccer, back home, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that. Grinning, I kicked the ball towards the children over their outstretched arms and into the opposite goal. They cheered, erupted almost, and I raised my arms in victory before walking on. It was that kind of a day, Father, do you know the kind of day I speak of?
FATHER CASTANELLA
I do, Kostas. Indeed, I do.
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
It was a perfect day, and after a bit I took a rest by the lake, sitting near the bank and watching the small boats crisscross in sharp geometric patterns underneath that frightfully blue sky. And, as is always my custom on these walks, I turned my thoughts to Jesus and prayed to him, to thank him for the gift of such a day, the gift of such a beautiful place to call home. Pause I was scared, Father, as I began to do this, to engage in this small and meaningless prayer – not even a prayer, just a quick word of thanks to our savior - fear filled my heart, Father. I hesitate to call it terror for fear of making you laugh, and yet it was perhaps that just the same. Do you know why I felt this fear, this almost-terror, Father?
FATHER CASTANELLA
No, my son. Why?
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
Throughout the following, FATHER OSTRAUSKAS becomes more emotional, but never hysterically so. Because I knew not what I might find. I was scared that there would be no one there to answer my prayer, I was scared that Jesus would not be there to answer, that I would be greeted by nothing but silence, that the connection I’ve always felt with God, that I’ve always been able to call upon in prayer and reflection, would be gone. This scared me, no, terrified me, Father, because, for the first time in my life, I am not sure that he IS there. Do you understand, Father? I am not sure I even believe in him anymore, I am not sure if I believe in the resurrection, the passion, I am not even sure if I believe in God at all!
FATHER CASTANELLA
Was he there to answer your prayer?
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
Pause, then, almost terrified
No.
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS stands up and, slowly, reaches into his back pocket , pulls out his collar and puts it on. These motions should have a very ritualistic sense about them, and coincide with the music either increasing in volume or climaxing, whichever makes the most sense. Blackout.
Scene Two
Lights up on FATHER OSTRAUSKAS standing at the center dais, in front of a podium with a microphone atop it. He is now dressed in full priestly robes. Seated to his right is FATHER CASTANELLA, also dressed in full gear. Opened on the podium is a Bible. As the lights come up, FATHER OSTRAUSKAS reads from the Bible:
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS
Steadily, but not with great passion, either. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” The Word of God
A chorus of voices responds, “The Word of God.” FATHER OSTRAUSKAS closes the Bible, takes the microphone from the stand and walks in front of the podium. Addressing the audience.
I have a computer. Perhaps many of you do as well, own a computer. I’ve had it for some years now; I wrote the first draft of tonight’s homily, in fact, on this very same computer. Yes! Priests use computers. It’s true. One of our deep, dark secrets – promise you won’t tell. I’ll let you in on another. I even have a (exaggerated stage whisper) TV! (Loud) Yes! And I’ve WATCHED it! But – back to my computer, or, computers in general, actually. I’d like you, those of you who own a computer, anyway, to think back to when you first got that computer, when you first opened that box, when you first plugged it in and turned it on. I remember that day. My brother Phil was over, he helped me to set it up. Actually, it didn’t take much to set up. He plugged it in, connected the mouse and the keyboard and the monitor, flipped it on. There was some activity to be done with a password, I remember that, and then . . . we were in. It was on. Working. I asked my brother-in-law, and this I remember very specifically, I asked him, “Where are the programs?” I had really gotten the computer primarily for word processing, it was the main reason I had gotten it, and I asked him, “How de we load the word processing program? Where’s the disc?” He laughed and, with a few clicks, up came a word processing program. It’s already in there, he said, it’s been hardwired. (Pause) HARDWIRED. Now – THIS was a concept I understood, my brothers and sisters, and I think you all understand it as well. HARDWIRED. We didn’t need to teach the computer word processing by feeding it a program, no!, it had been HARDWIRED. Word processing was one of the many things it had been given at birth, been created with. I ask you, my brothers and sisters, as I asked myself that day, are we HARDWIRED with anything? We’re HARDWIRED to eat, are we not? To drink? To sleep, to suckle, to cry? These are things we have been HARDWIRED with, no one teaches us to do any of these, we just . . . KNOW them. They’ve been - say it with me, congregation - HARDWIRED! And today’s readings tell us that something else has been HARDWIRED into us, don’t they? “ . . .Because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” God in his infinite wisdom has seen fit to HARDWIRE into us knowledge of him. Now – I hear your thoughts already my brothers and sisters, “then WHY AM I HERE!!!???” Why do we come to church together, why do we put our young through the endless Sundays and drills and sermons, if knowledge of God is already HARDWIRED? Well, brothers and sisters, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, the teachings of Christ are NOT HARDWIRED, the details of His story are not HARDWIRED, but the knowledge of God, the knowledge of his existence, of his goodness, of his love for us – THAT is HARDWIRED. And that is a glorious thing. We have knowledge of God at birth, from the moment we spark into existence like fireflies spontaneously generating into a cool summer night, we KNOW God. We may not yet know his name, or his story, or even precisely what he asks of us, but we know him and we hear him and we feel him. We are full of him.
FATHER OSTRAUSKAS pauses here. Almost as if hesitant about plunging forward. Soon enough, however, he does, almost nervously.
This is a glorious thing, is it not? A glorious thing. For imagine a world, imagine, my brothers and sisters, a world in which we were not HARDWIRED. Can you? What would that world be like? A world in which the identity of God was ours to discover, a world in which His presence was not ingrained into us, a world in which it was . . . open to question. Would we believe in a God in such a world?
As he progresses through the following, FATHER OSTRAUSKAS becomes more agitated and theatrical in tone and gesture, until at the end, he is fairly screaming, or, more precisely, over emoting
Looking at the world around us, at the evidence in front of us, hearing on the news of the child who’s killed by his Mother, of the war and violence man commits against man, hell, of great tragedies caused by the earth itself, earthquakes trembling and spitting us out like rotten teeth, hurricanes and tornadoes and ice storms and lightning and lava and locusts and plagues and disease and cancer, AIDS, heart attacks, epidemics, freak occurrences of nature that take life on a whim the fragility and capriciousness of human existence the very wispiness of our lives with no control or discernible order rhyme reason logic fairness system structure – NOTHING!!! (Bitter) In all of this NOTHINGNESS would we still believe in an almighty God if he had not seen fit to burn it into our brains with no more thought given to the branding of cattle? Would we? HARDWIRED, my brothers and sisters. HARDWIRED.
He drops the microphone to the ground and walks off.
Until Whenever
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Friday, September 26, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
It was a dark and stormy night . . .
Another in a rare series of short fiction by Tosy and Cosh. I wrote this story for a Master's Class years ago. The professor found it slight and melodramatic, and it probably is, and yet I've always kind of loved it, obvious Stephen King influence or no obvious Stephen King influence.
On the Beauty and Danger of Cell Phones
“Timmy, put that down this instant!” Mary’s nerves had progressed beyond frayed and had achieved the shredded and loose consistency of a piece of twelve-year old cheesecloth. Timmy was (much to her chagrin) completely and utterly fascinated with the winter sale brochure that had come that Saturday from Victoria’s Secret, and Mary, who was dreading the day when she had to worry about inadvertently catching her little boy in the bathroom with materials far more embarrassing than an underwear catalog, was most certainly not ready for his nascent six-year old interest in the Wonderbra. At her sharp admonition, and with a hint of shame that Mary felt instant guilt for, Timmy dropped the verboten sales flyer and the treasures it contained within and went back to his trucks.
It had been one of those days. Mary and Timmy had returned home from after-school care only an hour before, and already, in addition to the Victoria’s Secret incident, Timmy had spilled a large glass of chocolate milk, which had somehow found its way into the illicit living room, directly onto the cream-white sofa; been caught torturing the cat; and, in direct correlation to the cat incident, spoken his first dirty word. A banner day for young Master Timothy. And, since days like this were never content with just an hour’s worth of misery, the Timmy-related incidents were hardly the beginning. Mary’s day at the office had consisted pretty much entirely of an interlocking chain of unfortunate and maddening incidents, not the least of which was getting her ass groped by Jim from accounting after a two and a half hour meeting on the evils of sexual harassment. Ha-ha.
So it was with a little less than what would be the usual amount of guilt that Mary noticed Timmy very quietly and disinterestedly playing with his toys in the corner. She knew something was wrong because the bulldozer wasn’t making its strange cat-coughing-up-a-hairball engine sounds as it trundled up and down the pile carpet. She could tell from his slow, measured, deliberate breaths that Timmy was trying not to cry. She hadn’t meant to snap at him, especially not as loud as she did, it was just that, as she had been very surprised to discover when he was only three months old, a mother’s love was not so big as to preclude the occasional frayed-nerves explosion. Mary walked over to Timmy and knelt down, carefully avoiding the red Tonka fire truck.
“Hey, bud. What’s wrong?”
“Nuttin.”
Another sure sign that she had upset her normally energetic son was the one-word answer. He had inherited his chattering tendencies from her, and ever since he had learned to do so, he loved to talk.
“Nuttin, huh? You wouldn’t be mad at Mommy for yelling at you would you? Maybe Mommy shouted a little too loud?”
“Ahdunno.”
“I think you do, buddy. You know what I always tell you. If you think Mommy’s not being fair, you can tell me. And most times, you know what? I’ll tell you that, sorry, but Mommy was being fair. But sometimes, just sometimes, mind you, even Mommies can be unfair. If you think maybe I was being a little unfair when I shouted about the magazine, you can tell me. But you have to ask.”
Slowly, her little son turned to her, with a scared and hurt look on his Charlie Brown face. “Mommy, were you unfair, ‘bout the magazine?”
Mary picked her son up, a task that she was deathly afraid would soon be beyond her strength, and hugged him. “Yeah, bud. I think I was. No more magazine though, OK?”
“’Cause it’s for Daddies?”
“That’s right. Cause it’s for Daddies. And speaking of Daddies, it’s his late night at work, isn’t it? So how’s some McDonalds’ sound, huh? Sound good?”
With the solemnity rightly afforded such a momentous decision as where to eat out on one of those rare occasions that Mary’s standard anti-fast food edict fell, Timmy nodded.
“McDonalds. Yes.”
It had been a nice McDonald’s trip. No spilled soda, no fight over the meal and, miracle of miracles, Timmy had actually waited to open the toy until he finished eating, as he was told. Was it possible for a six-year old to be growing up already? Mary smiled at the thought as she tucked Timmy in.
“I love you buddy.”
“I love you too Mommy. Will Daddy be home soon?”
“Soon enough, but not until you’re asleep. So get to sleep, you. Deal?”
“Deal. ‘Night Mommy.”
“‘Night buddy.”
Mary sat on the bed, her attention divided evenly (well, truth be told, perhaps not quite evenly) between a stack of bills that needed attention and a riveting docudrama on the tragically overlooked story of übergroup the Bangles on VH-1. Mary felt bad about the lack of attention the bills were getting, but not too bad; after all, if any story demanded attention it was The Bangles’. Timmy was fast asleep and Jeff was speeding home to her on the late train, due to arrive in about half an hour. Another part of married life that she never would have anticipated on those altar steps six years ago was how much she enjoyed and looked forward to those minutes she could catch that were hers and hers alone. A quietly steaming cup of boysenberry-enhanced herbal tea sat on the night table beside her; the stack of bills, open checkbook and uncapped pen on the bedspread gave off the necessary air of time not spent foolishly; and Suzanna Hoffs was looking as old and not-twenty-five anymore as she was. All was right with the world.
The phone rang.
Not really taking her eyes or attention off of the TV, she picked up the receiver and muttered a hello.
“Honey?”
It was Jeff. He sounded distant, quiet somehow, almost as if he was telling her a secret. In the background she heard an undecipherable mass of sound. It was a strange and foreign-sounding dim cacophony that was at the same time oddly familiar; it gave her a palpable sense of déjà vu and she shivered.
“Jeff? What’s up hon?” Bringing her attention to the phone, she hit mute on the remote sitting next to the cup of tea. The phone and remote looked like subjects for a still-life, like models waiting for the painter, she thought. A Study of Tea and TV in Oils. Mary shook the somewhat disturbing and unsettling image away and turned her attention to the phone.
“Honey?” Mary felt a pit, like a hard, black wrinkled stone, form in the middle of her stomach. It was almost as if her inner organs had psychic abilities that her brain lacked and knew what was going on already, even though she herself did not.
“I’m right here Jeff. What is it?”
“There’s been an accident.”
The pit hardened. That wall of sound in the background, muted but still very present, had started to gel into a recognizable pattern. She thought she dimly heard sirens, with staccato, panicked shouts piercing their high-pitched clarinet wail like a syncopated jazz rhythm.. “What kind of accident?,” she asked, as the pit grew heavier, blacker and harder.
“The bad kind.” This last came through the receiver in a hiss, as if her husband was speaking to her through gritted teeth.
“Jeff, where are you, what do you mean the bad kind?” The pit had started to blossom, green earthy tendrils of panic bursting forth from cracks in its glossy surface and snaking their way through her lower abdomen.
“I’m on the train, on the cell. It was in my pocket, in my jacket pocket, it actually fell out at some point, when I came to it was right in front of me. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
The tendrils had bloomed in full now, the buds at their ends unfolding into brittle flowers, their paper-thin petals whispering against her lung walls. “Came to? What do you mean, came to, what do you mean, Jeff, what’s going on, what . . “
“Mary, the train crashed, it derailed. It’s a mess here.” He coughed then, a syrupy and chunky wet cough, and even over the staticky cell, with that maddening buzz of what were now clearly sirens and shouts of pain in the background, she could hear a sharp wince of pain in his voice.
“Ambulances, Jeff, are the ambulances there yet? Jeff, what’s hurt, are you OK, are you?” Mary fought the hysterical edge that had intruded its way, uninvited, into her voice.
“Mary, I love you. That’s all that matters. That’s all I wanted to say. Listen, hon, listen, I can’t hold the phone much longer, it’s slippery and it’s hard to concentrate. Tell Timmy his Daddy loves him, will you? Just tell him.”
“Jeff, the ambulances are coming, they must be, just hang in, just keep talking to me, keep talking Jeff, keep talking . . .”
“No Mary. I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry, but no. I – no. No time for ambulances. No time. Just tell me you love me, that’s all, just say it.” There was a pause and with all the strength she had Mary fought the urge to start screaming into the phone. Then Jeff started speaking again, but fainter and with less strength than before. “I’m not gonna make this hon. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I’m not gonna make it. I just wanted to hear you. Hear my Mary. One more time."
Mary heard a distinct thud on the other end, as if the phone had dropped.
Slippery.
She shook in the bed; as The Bangles silently walked like Egyptians on the TV across the room, she trembled with a feverish chill. Mary vaguely noticed that her face was cool, much cooler than the rest of her body, and she started to panic before she realized that it was only the tears that had been streaming down her face, unnoticed.
“Jeff,” she hoarsely whispered into the receiver, the words barely making their way out. That same hysterical, mashed-up wall of sound was there, but Jeff wasn’t. “I love you.” Through a salty film, Mary looked at the phone in her hand. She felt the feverish trembling start to spin and accelerate out of control, felt her body start not to tremble but to shake, epilepsy the connection she made in her mind now, not a fever. And, as she started to scream, Mary dropped the phone.
Until Whenever
Another in a rare series of short fiction by Tosy and Cosh. I wrote this story for a Master's Class years ago. The professor found it slight and melodramatic, and it probably is, and yet I've always kind of loved it, obvious Stephen King influence or no obvious Stephen King influence.
On the Beauty and Danger of Cell Phones
“Timmy, put that down this instant!” Mary’s nerves had progressed beyond frayed and had achieved the shredded and loose consistency of a piece of twelve-year old cheesecloth. Timmy was (much to her chagrin) completely and utterly fascinated with the winter sale brochure that had come that Saturday from Victoria’s Secret, and Mary, who was dreading the day when she had to worry about inadvertently catching her little boy in the bathroom with materials far more embarrassing than an underwear catalog, was most certainly not ready for his nascent six-year old interest in the Wonderbra. At her sharp admonition, and with a hint of shame that Mary felt instant guilt for, Timmy dropped the verboten sales flyer and the treasures it contained within and went back to his trucks.
It had been one of those days. Mary and Timmy had returned home from after-school care only an hour before, and already, in addition to the Victoria’s Secret incident, Timmy had spilled a large glass of chocolate milk, which had somehow found its way into the illicit living room, directly onto the cream-white sofa; been caught torturing the cat; and, in direct correlation to the cat incident, spoken his first dirty word. A banner day for young Master Timothy. And, since days like this were never content with just an hour’s worth of misery, the Timmy-related incidents were hardly the beginning. Mary’s day at the office had consisted pretty much entirely of an interlocking chain of unfortunate and maddening incidents, not the least of which was getting her ass groped by Jim from accounting after a two and a half hour meeting on the evils of sexual harassment. Ha-ha.
So it was with a little less than what would be the usual amount of guilt that Mary noticed Timmy very quietly and disinterestedly playing with his toys in the corner. She knew something was wrong because the bulldozer wasn’t making its strange cat-coughing-up-a-hairball engine sounds as it trundled up and down the pile carpet. She could tell from his slow, measured, deliberate breaths that Timmy was trying not to cry. She hadn’t meant to snap at him, especially not as loud as she did, it was just that, as she had been very surprised to discover when he was only three months old, a mother’s love was not so big as to preclude the occasional frayed-nerves explosion. Mary walked over to Timmy and knelt down, carefully avoiding the red Tonka fire truck.
“Hey, bud. What’s wrong?”
“Nuttin.”
Another sure sign that she had upset her normally energetic son was the one-word answer. He had inherited his chattering tendencies from her, and ever since he had learned to do so, he loved to talk.
“Nuttin, huh? You wouldn’t be mad at Mommy for yelling at you would you? Maybe Mommy shouted a little too loud?”
“Ahdunno.”
“I think you do, buddy. You know what I always tell you. If you think Mommy’s not being fair, you can tell me. And most times, you know what? I’ll tell you that, sorry, but Mommy was being fair. But sometimes, just sometimes, mind you, even Mommies can be unfair. If you think maybe I was being a little unfair when I shouted about the magazine, you can tell me. But you have to ask.”
Slowly, her little son turned to her, with a scared and hurt look on his Charlie Brown face. “Mommy, were you unfair, ‘bout the magazine?”
Mary picked her son up, a task that she was deathly afraid would soon be beyond her strength, and hugged him. “Yeah, bud. I think I was. No more magazine though, OK?”
“’Cause it’s for Daddies?”
“That’s right. Cause it’s for Daddies. And speaking of Daddies, it’s his late night at work, isn’t it? So how’s some McDonalds’ sound, huh? Sound good?”
With the solemnity rightly afforded such a momentous decision as where to eat out on one of those rare occasions that Mary’s standard anti-fast food edict fell, Timmy nodded.
“McDonalds. Yes.”
It had been a nice McDonald’s trip. No spilled soda, no fight over the meal and, miracle of miracles, Timmy had actually waited to open the toy until he finished eating, as he was told. Was it possible for a six-year old to be growing up already? Mary smiled at the thought as she tucked Timmy in.
“I love you buddy.”
“I love you too Mommy. Will Daddy be home soon?”
“Soon enough, but not until you’re asleep. So get to sleep, you. Deal?”
“Deal. ‘Night Mommy.”
“‘Night buddy.”
Mary sat on the bed, her attention divided evenly (well, truth be told, perhaps not quite evenly) between a stack of bills that needed attention and a riveting docudrama on the tragically overlooked story of übergroup the Bangles on VH-1. Mary felt bad about the lack of attention the bills were getting, but not too bad; after all, if any story demanded attention it was The Bangles’. Timmy was fast asleep and Jeff was speeding home to her on the late train, due to arrive in about half an hour. Another part of married life that she never would have anticipated on those altar steps six years ago was how much she enjoyed and looked forward to those minutes she could catch that were hers and hers alone. A quietly steaming cup of boysenberry-enhanced herbal tea sat on the night table beside her; the stack of bills, open checkbook and uncapped pen on the bedspread gave off the necessary air of time not spent foolishly; and Suzanna Hoffs was looking as old and not-twenty-five anymore as she was. All was right with the world.
The phone rang.
Not really taking her eyes or attention off of the TV, she picked up the receiver and muttered a hello.
“Honey?”
It was Jeff. He sounded distant, quiet somehow, almost as if he was telling her a secret. In the background she heard an undecipherable mass of sound. It was a strange and foreign-sounding dim cacophony that was at the same time oddly familiar; it gave her a palpable sense of déjà vu and she shivered.
“Jeff? What’s up hon?” Bringing her attention to the phone, she hit mute on the remote sitting next to the cup of tea. The phone and remote looked like subjects for a still-life, like models waiting for the painter, she thought. A Study of Tea and TV in Oils. Mary shook the somewhat disturbing and unsettling image away and turned her attention to the phone.
“Honey?” Mary felt a pit, like a hard, black wrinkled stone, form in the middle of her stomach. It was almost as if her inner organs had psychic abilities that her brain lacked and knew what was going on already, even though she herself did not.
“I’m right here Jeff. What is it?”
“There’s been an accident.”
The pit hardened. That wall of sound in the background, muted but still very present, had started to gel into a recognizable pattern. She thought she dimly heard sirens, with staccato, panicked shouts piercing their high-pitched clarinet wail like a syncopated jazz rhythm.. “What kind of accident?,” she asked, as the pit grew heavier, blacker and harder.
“The bad kind.” This last came through the receiver in a hiss, as if her husband was speaking to her through gritted teeth.
“Jeff, where are you, what do you mean the bad kind?” The pit had started to blossom, green earthy tendrils of panic bursting forth from cracks in its glossy surface and snaking their way through her lower abdomen.
“I’m on the train, on the cell. It was in my pocket, in my jacket pocket, it actually fell out at some point, when I came to it was right in front of me. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
The tendrils had bloomed in full now, the buds at their ends unfolding into brittle flowers, their paper-thin petals whispering against her lung walls. “Came to? What do you mean, came to, what do you mean, Jeff, what’s going on, what . . “
“Mary, the train crashed, it derailed. It’s a mess here.” He coughed then, a syrupy and chunky wet cough, and even over the staticky cell, with that maddening buzz of what were now clearly sirens and shouts of pain in the background, she could hear a sharp wince of pain in his voice.
“Ambulances, Jeff, are the ambulances there yet? Jeff, what’s hurt, are you OK, are you?” Mary fought the hysterical edge that had intruded its way, uninvited, into her voice.
“Mary, I love you. That’s all that matters. That’s all I wanted to say. Listen, hon, listen, I can’t hold the phone much longer, it’s slippery and it’s hard to concentrate. Tell Timmy his Daddy loves him, will you? Just tell him.”
“Jeff, the ambulances are coming, they must be, just hang in, just keep talking to me, keep talking Jeff, keep talking . . .”
“No Mary. I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry, but no. I – no. No time for ambulances. No time. Just tell me you love me, that’s all, just say it.” There was a pause and with all the strength she had Mary fought the urge to start screaming into the phone. Then Jeff started speaking again, but fainter and with less strength than before. “I’m not gonna make this hon. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I’m not gonna make it. I just wanted to hear you. Hear my Mary. One more time."
Mary heard a distinct thud on the other end, as if the phone had dropped.
Slippery.
She shook in the bed; as The Bangles silently walked like Egyptians on the TV across the room, she trembled with a feverish chill. Mary vaguely noticed that her face was cool, much cooler than the rest of her body, and she started to panic before she realized that it was only the tears that had been streaming down her face, unnoticed.
“Jeff,” she hoarsely whispered into the receiver, the words barely making their way out. That same hysterical, mashed-up wall of sound was there, but Jeff wasn’t. “I love you.” Through a salty film, Mary looked at the phone in her hand. She felt the feverish trembling start to spin and accelerate out of control, felt her body start not to tremble but to shake, epilepsy the connection she made in her mind now, not a fever. And, as she started to scream, Mary dropped the phone.
Until Whenever
Monday, March 05, 2007
On Paper!
As I think I've mentioned before, I dabble in fiction writing and have been published by a few on-line literary journals in the past. The now-defunct site E2K published a poem of mine entitled "Thirteen Pianos" back in 2002 and the site New Works Review published my Star Wars-themed story "A New Hope" several years back. (I posted that story here). And now the literary journal Canadian literary chapbook Tickled by Thunder has published my short story "TKO." The story was actually published last winter, but I just last week got my contributor's copies. It's funny; this is hardly the big time (I'm not sure what Tickled by Thunder's circulation is, but I'm guessing low hundreds, if that), and yet seeing for the first time a story of mine in print - even if it's photocopied, stapled print - is quite the thrill.
If you go the the website, you'll see that they don't publish stories on-line, so for the curious, here is my first "published-on-paper" story, "TKO."
TKO
Samuel lay on the slightly springy floor of the ring, blood running into his right eye through an open cut directly above the eyebrow. Through the currently swelling left eye, the one not being overrun with blood, he could dimly make out the ref’s hands dramatically demarcating the final ten seconds of his long and uneventful career.
He still remembered the first time he had gone to a gym with his father. In his twenty some odd years as a professional boxer, he’d talked with a lot of other fighters about their first memories of the sport, bullshit sessions in dank and moist bars buried in the pits of cities too numerous too remember. Most of them said that their first memories were of the sound. That incessant thwap-thwap of the bags around the gym being hit. But for Samuel, it was the smell. Even now, thirty three years later, every time he walked into a gym that particular mélange of sweat, dull and basic, like weak ammonia, mixed with just a pinch, a barely-there memory, of the coppery sharp penny smell of blood, brought him back to that first day with his father.
*
“Stick with me, Sammy, just stay right here, you hear?” Sammy didn’t need to be told; he knew enough, even at five, to be intimidated by the half-naked, glistening men that ringed the room like notches on a numberless clock. Primarily, it was the harsh and painful-sounding grunts they made as they punched bags, each other and the air itself; the room sounded dangerous, sounded like something Sammy instinctively knew he wanted no part of. Walking across the crowded floor to the ring, Sammy couldn’t help but imagine, hard as he tried not to, what it would feel like to be hit by one of those punches, what it would feel like if it were his face at the other end of the glove instead of the bag. With the shuddery delight familiar to all five-year olds attempting to torture themselves, Sammy tried to figure out exactly what such a punch would feel like. Would it sting, like the time last month his mother had slapped him for trying to grab a pot of boiling water off of the burner? He had been surprised then by the stinging quality of getting hit; it was almost as if he had been to the doctor and gotten a shot, only in his cheek instead of arm or ass. Or would it be more like the time he had fallen and hit his head on the stairs? A dull and aching pain that throbbed instead of burned?
As these ponderings passed through his young consciousness, Sammy passed relatively close to one of the boxers hitting the bag. To most other boxers, never mind five-year olds, this one would have been huge; from Tommy’s vantage point, weighing in at 3’9 and at barely fifty pounds, he was gigantic. Perhaps the numbers were inaccurately inflated by the sheer difference in scale, but Sammy guessed that he must have been about 6’8 and at least 275 pounds. At least. The route he and his father were taking toward the ring brought him close enough to this large boxer to make out details, and while he couldn’t tell you anything else about the boxers present that day, how many there were or what they were doing, even with his consciousness graying there on the mat, seven seconds at the ref’s count away from retirement, Sammy could still see every detail of Rudolph that day in the gym.
His hair was shaggy and unkempt, a dirty blonde that seemed truly a dirty blonde, twisted into dreadlock-like strands by the sweat of his workout. The stringy ropes hanging down his neck were streaked different colors not by a lifeguard’s bottle of peroxide, but by sweat. Sammy would have looked over his face without incident, not noting the brown eyes, large vertical forehead or incongruously long and dainty eyelashes at all, were it not for the man’s nose. It had been broken, two or three times at least, but Sammy didn’t know that. All he knew was that it looked like someone had taken it off and put it back on wrong, as if a game of “got ‘yer nose,” that kid’s game he sometimes played with his little sister, had gone horribly awry.
In any case, nose or no nose, it was really the punching that had so captured Sammy’s attention. The man holding the large, duct-tape-patched bag for the giant was a small, older man; many years later Sammy would be sitting in a dark movie theater, slowly snaking his hand down his girlfriend’s blouse, when he would be spooked by the uncanny resemblance between Burgess Meredith’s character in Rocky and the old man with the giant that day. What had so grabbed his attention was that the small old man was being lifted clean off the ground, almost two feet into the air, with each punch of the bag. The giant’s arms were monstrous, and as he pounded the bag Sammy could only imagine what a punch like that would feel like. Perhaps his head would explode. Sammy grinned slightly at the thought, at the idea of his head just cracking apart and splashing the ring, his father suddenly covered with Sammy-brain and Sammy-blood.
"Wait here, Sammy. Just sit and don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Lost in his thoughts, Sammy hadn’t noticed his father talking to the man by the ring. He watched as his father hurried off towards the back of the gym, lime-green gym bag in hand. Doing as he was told, Sammy sat down in one of the old aluminum chairs next to the ring, choosing one that, not coincidentally, gave him a clear view of the giant working out. Sammy found himself entranced by the way the sweat flung off of the giant’s back and shoulders as he moved; in the way it was effected by his repetitive movements it was almost dance-like. Sammy found himself trying to predict when the next splash would come, when enough sweat would have trickled between the fighter’s shoulder blades to be thrown off in a sprinkler-like spurt. It was while Sammy was deep within this particular pondering that his father returned. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of red boxing shorts with a white stripe down the sides and a pair of gleaming white sneakers; that is, unless you counted the black headgear he wore as clothing, which Sammy did not.
“You ready to watch your old man kick some ass?” The question startled Sammy - the trip to the gym had not been explained. His father had merely said, as Sammy sat watching Spider-Man do whatever a spider can on the TV, “we’re going to the gym, let’s go,” and, of course, Sammy had went. It hadn’t occurred to him that his father would be fighting.
“I thought you were old enough to see a little sparring up close kiddo, you know, see the old man in action. Thought you might enjoy it.”
Silently, Sammy nodded. He didn’t know quite what to think about his father fighting. It could be exciting; on the other hand, and this last was not quite a conscious thought, Sammy realized that if his father were to lose this “sparring match” he might not be the most pleasant companion for the rest of the afternoon. After all, if he got angry enough to shout and curse at the TV when a fight he was watching wasn’t going the way he wanted it to, what might he do if he was the losing fighter?
“Rudolph – you’re up.” The giant that Sammy had been so studiously observing stopped his frenetic bag workout and stepped into the ring.
“You’re fighting him!” They were the first words Sammy had spoken since entering the gym.
“Yea, you don’t think I can take him?” Sammy’s father was grinning and Sammy just shook his head.
“No, Dad, I know you can take him.” It was the first time Sammy could remember deliberately lying to his father.
They were well into the third round of the match and his father was getting pummeled (Sammy had no idea how many rounds there would be; he just hoped that there weren’t that many left). Even with the protective headgear, his face was cut up and raw in a number of places. He was breathing heavily, with sweat coating his entire body, not in the healthy sheen Sammy had noticed on the other boxers, but in an oddly greasy looking layer of sludge. Rudolph hardly looked as if he had been fighting for three rounds; his breathing wasn’t anywhere near as labored and strained-sounding as Sammy’s fathers. Sammy just sat and watched, cringing with each blow that landed. His father was by no means a small man, but even he looked miniature next to the giant. Most of the blows that Rudolph landed staggered Sammy’s father enough so that he took a few steps back; Sammy could only think of the old man being lifted into the air.
And, then, without warning, Rudolph managed to land a solid, square blow. Not quite an uppercut, it nonetheless lifted Sammy’s father into the air and sent him crashing onto the ring floor.
Sammy screamed. In the noisy gym, with all the shouting, grunting and hitting that was going on, not to mention the loud outburst that had erupted at the blow from the small crowd that had gathered to watch the sparring match, no one heard him. And it was a short scream, as soon as it had started Sammy stopped it, knowing that his father would not approve of such a reaction. Sammy cautiously looked down to the mat to see how his father was, afraid of seeing blood, or worse. Instead he saw his father leap to his feet and charge at the giant.
He had a look on his face that Sammy was thankfully not too well acquainted with - he was furious. Sammy looked on in awe as his father reached the giant in two long strides and started hitting. Taken by surprise, the larger man let a few of the early blows land clean, big haymakers squarely hitting his head and face, and in the end those few were enough to do him in. Had he been able to fend off one or two of those early blows, no matter how furious Sammy’s father had been, he wouldn’t have been able to do much damage. But, with those two or three landing clean and hard, Rudolph, slightly dazed, wasn’t able to screen out all of the rest of them, and with each furious, hard hit, he got a little more dazed. Within a minute of the knockdown, a minute in which Sammy’s father let up for not even one second, Rudolph was down, to the astounded cheers of the gathered fight fans.
Leaping off of his chair and smiling broadly, Sammy cheered along with them. He had never seen a display like that, especially from his father, and he found it indescribably thrilling. Without even realizing it, he had clenched his little five-year old hands into tiny fists, and he shook them as he jumped up and down. It was quite an introduction to the sport of boxing, and many times throughout his career, Sammy would reflect on what an insidious gift that one day was. After all, without such a thrilling and emotional introduction to the sport, would he have kept with it for all of those years, would he even have tried it out in the first place? Who knew? All Sammy knew was that, in the end, he had.
*
Sammy lay bleeding on the mat, waiting for the ref to finish the interminable count, and realized that there would be no heroic late charge from him. He had spent the last twenty years trying to relive that one feat of his father’s, and had gotten beaten harder, and knocked out more times, because of it than he cared to, or even could, remember. So it was with a certain amount of peace and resignation that Sammy closed his eyes.
“Ten!!”
Until Whenever
As I think I've mentioned before, I dabble in fiction writing and have been published by a few on-line literary journals in the past. The now-defunct site E2K published a poem of mine entitled "Thirteen Pianos" back in 2002 and the site New Works Review published my Star Wars-themed story "A New Hope" several years back. (I posted that story here). And now the literary journal Canadian literary chapbook Tickled by Thunder has published my short story "TKO." The story was actually published last winter, but I just last week got my contributor's copies. It's funny; this is hardly the big time (I'm not sure what Tickled by Thunder's circulation is, but I'm guessing low hundreds, if that), and yet seeing for the first time a story of mine in print - even if it's photocopied, stapled print - is quite the thrill.
If you go the the website, you'll see that they don't publish stories on-line, so for the curious, here is my first "published-on-paper" story, "TKO."
TKO
Samuel lay on the slightly springy floor of the ring, blood running into his right eye through an open cut directly above the eyebrow. Through the currently swelling left eye, the one not being overrun with blood, he could dimly make out the ref’s hands dramatically demarcating the final ten seconds of his long and uneventful career.
He still remembered the first time he had gone to a gym with his father. In his twenty some odd years as a professional boxer, he’d talked with a lot of other fighters about their first memories of the sport, bullshit sessions in dank and moist bars buried in the pits of cities too numerous too remember. Most of them said that their first memories were of the sound. That incessant thwap-thwap of the bags around the gym being hit. But for Samuel, it was the smell. Even now, thirty three years later, every time he walked into a gym that particular mélange of sweat, dull and basic, like weak ammonia, mixed with just a pinch, a barely-there memory, of the coppery sharp penny smell of blood, brought him back to that first day with his father.
*
“Stick with me, Sammy, just stay right here, you hear?” Sammy didn’t need to be told; he knew enough, even at five, to be intimidated by the half-naked, glistening men that ringed the room like notches on a numberless clock. Primarily, it was the harsh and painful-sounding grunts they made as they punched bags, each other and the air itself; the room sounded dangerous, sounded like something Sammy instinctively knew he wanted no part of. Walking across the crowded floor to the ring, Sammy couldn’t help but imagine, hard as he tried not to, what it would feel like to be hit by one of those punches, what it would feel like if it were his face at the other end of the glove instead of the bag. With the shuddery delight familiar to all five-year olds attempting to torture themselves, Sammy tried to figure out exactly what such a punch would feel like. Would it sting, like the time last month his mother had slapped him for trying to grab a pot of boiling water off of the burner? He had been surprised then by the stinging quality of getting hit; it was almost as if he had been to the doctor and gotten a shot, only in his cheek instead of arm or ass. Or would it be more like the time he had fallen and hit his head on the stairs? A dull and aching pain that throbbed instead of burned?
As these ponderings passed through his young consciousness, Sammy passed relatively close to one of the boxers hitting the bag. To most other boxers, never mind five-year olds, this one would have been huge; from Tommy’s vantage point, weighing in at 3’9 and at barely fifty pounds, he was gigantic. Perhaps the numbers were inaccurately inflated by the sheer difference in scale, but Sammy guessed that he must have been about 6’8 and at least 275 pounds. At least. The route he and his father were taking toward the ring brought him close enough to this large boxer to make out details, and while he couldn’t tell you anything else about the boxers present that day, how many there were or what they were doing, even with his consciousness graying there on the mat, seven seconds at the ref’s count away from retirement, Sammy could still see every detail of Rudolph that day in the gym.
His hair was shaggy and unkempt, a dirty blonde that seemed truly a dirty blonde, twisted into dreadlock-like strands by the sweat of his workout. The stringy ropes hanging down his neck were streaked different colors not by a lifeguard’s bottle of peroxide, but by sweat. Sammy would have looked over his face without incident, not noting the brown eyes, large vertical forehead or incongruously long and dainty eyelashes at all, were it not for the man’s nose. It had been broken, two or three times at least, but Sammy didn’t know that. All he knew was that it looked like someone had taken it off and put it back on wrong, as if a game of “got ‘yer nose,” that kid’s game he sometimes played with his little sister, had gone horribly awry.
In any case, nose or no nose, it was really the punching that had so captured Sammy’s attention. The man holding the large, duct-tape-patched bag for the giant was a small, older man; many years later Sammy would be sitting in a dark movie theater, slowly snaking his hand down his girlfriend’s blouse, when he would be spooked by the uncanny resemblance between Burgess Meredith’s character in Rocky and the old man with the giant that day. What had so grabbed his attention was that the small old man was being lifted clean off the ground, almost two feet into the air, with each punch of the bag. The giant’s arms were monstrous, and as he pounded the bag Sammy could only imagine what a punch like that would feel like. Perhaps his head would explode. Sammy grinned slightly at the thought, at the idea of his head just cracking apart and splashing the ring, his father suddenly covered with Sammy-brain and Sammy-blood.
"Wait here, Sammy. Just sit and don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Lost in his thoughts, Sammy hadn’t noticed his father talking to the man by the ring. He watched as his father hurried off towards the back of the gym, lime-green gym bag in hand. Doing as he was told, Sammy sat down in one of the old aluminum chairs next to the ring, choosing one that, not coincidentally, gave him a clear view of the giant working out. Sammy found himself entranced by the way the sweat flung off of the giant’s back and shoulders as he moved; in the way it was effected by his repetitive movements it was almost dance-like. Sammy found himself trying to predict when the next splash would come, when enough sweat would have trickled between the fighter’s shoulder blades to be thrown off in a sprinkler-like spurt. It was while Sammy was deep within this particular pondering that his father returned. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of red boxing shorts with a white stripe down the sides and a pair of gleaming white sneakers; that is, unless you counted the black headgear he wore as clothing, which Sammy did not.
“You ready to watch your old man kick some ass?” The question startled Sammy - the trip to the gym had not been explained. His father had merely said, as Sammy sat watching Spider-Man do whatever a spider can on the TV, “we’re going to the gym, let’s go,” and, of course, Sammy had went. It hadn’t occurred to him that his father would be fighting.
“I thought you were old enough to see a little sparring up close kiddo, you know, see the old man in action. Thought you might enjoy it.”
Silently, Sammy nodded. He didn’t know quite what to think about his father fighting. It could be exciting; on the other hand, and this last was not quite a conscious thought, Sammy realized that if his father were to lose this “sparring match” he might not be the most pleasant companion for the rest of the afternoon. After all, if he got angry enough to shout and curse at the TV when a fight he was watching wasn’t going the way he wanted it to, what might he do if he was the losing fighter?
“Rudolph – you’re up.” The giant that Sammy had been so studiously observing stopped his frenetic bag workout and stepped into the ring.
“You’re fighting him!” They were the first words Sammy had spoken since entering the gym.
“Yea, you don’t think I can take him?” Sammy’s father was grinning and Sammy just shook his head.
“No, Dad, I know you can take him.” It was the first time Sammy could remember deliberately lying to his father.
They were well into the third round of the match and his father was getting pummeled (Sammy had no idea how many rounds there would be; he just hoped that there weren’t that many left). Even with the protective headgear, his face was cut up and raw in a number of places. He was breathing heavily, with sweat coating his entire body, not in the healthy sheen Sammy had noticed on the other boxers, but in an oddly greasy looking layer of sludge. Rudolph hardly looked as if he had been fighting for three rounds; his breathing wasn’t anywhere near as labored and strained-sounding as Sammy’s fathers. Sammy just sat and watched, cringing with each blow that landed. His father was by no means a small man, but even he looked miniature next to the giant. Most of the blows that Rudolph landed staggered Sammy’s father enough so that he took a few steps back; Sammy could only think of the old man being lifted into the air.
And, then, without warning, Rudolph managed to land a solid, square blow. Not quite an uppercut, it nonetheless lifted Sammy’s father into the air and sent him crashing onto the ring floor.
Sammy screamed. In the noisy gym, with all the shouting, grunting and hitting that was going on, not to mention the loud outburst that had erupted at the blow from the small crowd that had gathered to watch the sparring match, no one heard him. And it was a short scream, as soon as it had started Sammy stopped it, knowing that his father would not approve of such a reaction. Sammy cautiously looked down to the mat to see how his father was, afraid of seeing blood, or worse. Instead he saw his father leap to his feet and charge at the giant.
He had a look on his face that Sammy was thankfully not too well acquainted with - he was furious. Sammy looked on in awe as his father reached the giant in two long strides and started hitting. Taken by surprise, the larger man let a few of the early blows land clean, big haymakers squarely hitting his head and face, and in the end those few were enough to do him in. Had he been able to fend off one or two of those early blows, no matter how furious Sammy’s father had been, he wouldn’t have been able to do much damage. But, with those two or three landing clean and hard, Rudolph, slightly dazed, wasn’t able to screen out all of the rest of them, and with each furious, hard hit, he got a little more dazed. Within a minute of the knockdown, a minute in which Sammy’s father let up for not even one second, Rudolph was down, to the astounded cheers of the gathered fight fans.
Leaping off of his chair and smiling broadly, Sammy cheered along with them. He had never seen a display like that, especially from his father, and he found it indescribably thrilling. Without even realizing it, he had clenched his little five-year old hands into tiny fists, and he shook them as he jumped up and down. It was quite an introduction to the sport of boxing, and many times throughout his career, Sammy would reflect on what an insidious gift that one day was. After all, without such a thrilling and emotional introduction to the sport, would he have kept with it for all of those years, would he even have tried it out in the first place? Who knew? All Sammy knew was that, in the end, he had.
*
Sammy lay bleeding on the mat, waiting for the ref to finish the interminable count, and realized that there would be no heroic late charge from him. He had spent the last twenty years trying to relive that one feat of his father’s, and had gotten beaten harder, and knocked out more times, because of it than he cared to, or even could, remember. So it was with a certain amount of peace and resignation that Sammy closed his eyes.
“Ten!!”
Until Whenever
Monday, October 16, 2006
An Indulgence
This is a story I wrote several years back that I always had a special fondness for.
All This Useless Beauty
"What shall we do, what shall we do, with all this useless beauty?" – Elvis Costello
Grace stared at the dress. It was black, a clean black unshaded by blues or violets, almost an homage to a classic black dress out of a black and white film noir classic from the forties. It lay on the white comforter of their queen-size bed like a black hole. A small exaggeration only; perhaps light was managing to escape its pull, but her attention was unable to evade its grasp. The hem of the dress, she could tell just from looking at it, would barely descend to the level of mid-thigh; sitting in it would be next to impossible. She could already see how it would cling to her shoulders with a greedy firmness, gripping her flesh with squared black straps the width of a piece of Juicy Fruit gum, straps that connected to a perilously low neckline. Hesitantly, as if it were infected, she picked up the dress and held it to her body, observing in the mirror. Just as she had predicted, the neckline would reveal a more-than ample swath of her not inconsiderable bosom. Sighing, she dropped the dress to the bed, sat down beside it and tried to keep from crying.
At twenty-eight, Grace was still a young woman. And, while perhaps not down to her fighting weight, she hadn’t gained that much during the six years of her marriage. She had a round face, reminiscent not of an apple, but a pumpkin. Her blonde, still-full hair hung down to her soft white shoulders, shoulders that mirrored the face with their roundness. While she didn’t know it (and, if she were being honest with herself, she would have thought herself over the edge), Grace, at twenty-eight at least, hovered pretty much exactly on that thin line that separates the mildly attractive from the extremely attractive. In other words, as she walked down the street on a summer day in a tank top and shorts, she turned most of the men’s heads she passed, but not all of them. Her figure was similarly precariously posed. She was round in the right places, and generous in her curves, and stopped just short of what, to the peculiar standards held by the majority of men in the twenty-first century, would be considered heavy. And yet, even taking into consideration her slight (and only slight, mind you) overestimation of her own visual appeal, Grace did not enjoy showing herself off.
Dimly, through the closed door, she could hear the shower running. She and Jim didn’t fight often; they’d done it enough, however, for her to know that he’d be in there for a considerable length of time. Especially after this one; it had been quite a row. She had been laying out her clothes for the Christmas party when he came home. She was quite impressed with the dress she had found only hours before; it was a floor length red number, elegant, refined and demure. In her mind’s eye it was of a similar class to the dresses the stars wore, the ones that made the best-dressed lists anyway, to the Oscars each year – a throwback to the days of glamour and class. It had called out to her on the rack, just at that moment when she had been about to admit defeat, and she had gladly answered. When he entered their bedroom, she had just emerged from the shower, a pink towel lazily encasing her in a three-foot tall tube. Having been sure to leave enough time for Jim to get ready after he arrived home, his early arrival surprised her. As she emerged, Jim was standing in the bedroom, still in his white shirt and blue tie. In his hands was a garment bag, and she had been simultaneously charmed and repulsed by the strange grin he had on his face as he, with an awkward wink, motioned to her with it. In the bag, of course, was the little black dress; he had, so it would seem, taken it upon himself to pick out her clothes for the Christmas party that night. The fight had started before he had even opened the bag; he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t even look at it, especially since all she was able to find was, as he so dismissingly put it, “that old maid’s thing sitting on the bed.” And with that, they were off. She had been upset enough before he took the dress out of the bag, even as she asked him, and asked him, and asked him, not to. But once she got a look at what he expected, no, what he was in fact demanding that, she wear, all hell broke loose. And so it was that she sat on the bed, listening to the shower and contemplating the, to be frank, whore’s dress she was supposed to impress his associates with that night.
It wasn’t always like this, Grace knew. Once upon a time, a time long ago, a time when legends and history had collided, she had been a princess. She had been wed to a handsome, noble and wonderful prince. And, during the first year of their marriage, in order to celebrate their union, a ball had been scheduled. And her prince had been determined that she be, not the most beautiful maiden at the ball, for, as he assured her, that would undoubtedly be the case, but also the most beautifully attired.
And so it was that, months before the ball, her prince made it his duty to seek out the most talented dressmaker in all the kingdom. This was no easy task because, at the time of his father’s reign, the kingdom comprised a vast and far-reaching territory, overrun with craggy mountains, vast lakes and even, in the far Northwest corner, an arid and scorching desert. Yet, undaunted, he had struck out, searching the land for the most talented dressmaker he could find. She had kept track of his progress through the messages he had sent via hawk; each morning bore a new message from the prince, and each message a new disappointment. As for the disappointments, she couldn’t quite understand what her love was disappointed with, as the sketches he passed along as proof of the various dressmakers’ incompetence seemed stunning to her. And yet, she was content, for she knew that when he finally found an artist he was satisfied with it would be an artist to rival all artists, and she nearly shuddered in anticipation of the gown that she would wear to the ball.
Sure as the sun rises in the sky, the time finally came when her prince returned to the castle, a wizened old man in tow. The wizened old man, upon meeting her, had gasped and proclaimed it an honor to be given the privilege of designing a gown for one as beautiful as she. The days passed, and she was nearly overcome with curiosity at what the man would produce. She was allowed no hints, no peeks; now that the artist had been chosen, she was presented with no sketches of the man’s work, future or present. The night of the ball eventually, as it had to, came and it was with a wonderfully tingling and heightened sense of nervous anticipation that she awaited the masterpiece in her dressing room.
With a knock on the door, her prince came in, bearing in his arms the most delicate piece of gossamer ever spun by mortal hands; the merest sight of it took her breath away and, when it returned, it brought with it tears of joy. What the gown was made of she had no idea; if she didn’t know any better she would have been convinced that the golden clouds of heaven itself had provided the raw material the dress had been spun from. When she slid into it, slid into a fit so perfect that the gown might as well have been peeled directly from her body, the feel of the fabric on her soft and scented skin gave her pause, and led her to think that perhaps those golden, heavenly clouds had been involved after all.
After it was in place, she turned and looked at the mirror. This time, her breath was not so quick to return. She fairly glowed in the beauty of the gown; it truly was a part of her, and she instinctively knew that it would have nowhere near the same radiance and transcendent quality on another. Tears still in her eyes, she turned and kissed her prince, and thanked him for such a wondrous gift.
Still on the bed, Grace shook herself from memories of memories past and contemplated the twin dresses, the elegant red and the revealing black. She thought of the people who would be at the party, her husband’s boss and coworkers, strangers from other departments and spouses and girlfriends and boyfriends, dates and companions as lost as she would be. And she thought of the stares, the looks, lascivious, offended and intrigued, she would garner, with her smooth but not whippet-thin thighs pushing and slightly straining against the thin tight mesh of the fabric and her cleavage all but pouring out of the bodice, tightly pressed and taut, the nipples hanging on to the dark edge of that neckline for dear life. She thought of Jim, his two-beers-a-night potbelly tucked cleanly away by the double-breasted jacket of his tuxedo, telling her that she must wear the dress he had bought, that he didn’t want her hiding her body behind that “red thing.” And she thought of the golden gown that she had worn in antiquity, the barest molecule of a memory of the way it had felt on her skin floating through her consciousness.
The shower stopped, and she looked at the clock. Slowly, Grace reached out , picked up the red dress and started to put it on.
Until Whenever
This is a story I wrote several years back that I always had a special fondness for.
All This Useless Beauty
"What shall we do, what shall we do, with all this useless beauty?" – Elvis Costello
Grace stared at the dress. It was black, a clean black unshaded by blues or violets, almost an homage to a classic black dress out of a black and white film noir classic from the forties. It lay on the white comforter of their queen-size bed like a black hole. A small exaggeration only; perhaps light was managing to escape its pull, but her attention was unable to evade its grasp. The hem of the dress, she could tell just from looking at it, would barely descend to the level of mid-thigh; sitting in it would be next to impossible. She could already see how it would cling to her shoulders with a greedy firmness, gripping her flesh with squared black straps the width of a piece of Juicy Fruit gum, straps that connected to a perilously low neckline. Hesitantly, as if it were infected, she picked up the dress and held it to her body, observing in the mirror. Just as she had predicted, the neckline would reveal a more-than ample swath of her not inconsiderable bosom. Sighing, she dropped the dress to the bed, sat down beside it and tried to keep from crying.
At twenty-eight, Grace was still a young woman. And, while perhaps not down to her fighting weight, she hadn’t gained that much during the six years of her marriage. She had a round face, reminiscent not of an apple, but a pumpkin. Her blonde, still-full hair hung down to her soft white shoulders, shoulders that mirrored the face with their roundness. While she didn’t know it (and, if she were being honest with herself, she would have thought herself over the edge), Grace, at twenty-eight at least, hovered pretty much exactly on that thin line that separates the mildly attractive from the extremely attractive. In other words, as she walked down the street on a summer day in a tank top and shorts, she turned most of the men’s heads she passed, but not all of them. Her figure was similarly precariously posed. She was round in the right places, and generous in her curves, and stopped just short of what, to the peculiar standards held by the majority of men in the twenty-first century, would be considered heavy. And yet, even taking into consideration her slight (and only slight, mind you) overestimation of her own visual appeal, Grace did not enjoy showing herself off.
Dimly, through the closed door, she could hear the shower running. She and Jim didn’t fight often; they’d done it enough, however, for her to know that he’d be in there for a considerable length of time. Especially after this one; it had been quite a row. She had been laying out her clothes for the Christmas party when he came home. She was quite impressed with the dress she had found only hours before; it was a floor length red number, elegant, refined and demure. In her mind’s eye it was of a similar class to the dresses the stars wore, the ones that made the best-dressed lists anyway, to the Oscars each year – a throwback to the days of glamour and class. It had called out to her on the rack, just at that moment when she had been about to admit defeat, and she had gladly answered. When he entered their bedroom, she had just emerged from the shower, a pink towel lazily encasing her in a three-foot tall tube. Having been sure to leave enough time for Jim to get ready after he arrived home, his early arrival surprised her. As she emerged, Jim was standing in the bedroom, still in his white shirt and blue tie. In his hands was a garment bag, and she had been simultaneously charmed and repulsed by the strange grin he had on his face as he, with an awkward wink, motioned to her with it. In the bag, of course, was the little black dress; he had, so it would seem, taken it upon himself to pick out her clothes for the Christmas party that night. The fight had started before he had even opened the bag; he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t even look at it, especially since all she was able to find was, as he so dismissingly put it, “that old maid’s thing sitting on the bed.” And with that, they were off. She had been upset enough before he took the dress out of the bag, even as she asked him, and asked him, and asked him, not to. But once she got a look at what he expected, no, what he was in fact demanding that, she wear, all hell broke loose. And so it was that she sat on the bed, listening to the shower and contemplating the, to be frank, whore’s dress she was supposed to impress his associates with that night.
It wasn’t always like this, Grace knew. Once upon a time, a time long ago, a time when legends and history had collided, she had been a princess. She had been wed to a handsome, noble and wonderful prince. And, during the first year of their marriage, in order to celebrate their union, a ball had been scheduled. And her prince had been determined that she be, not the most beautiful maiden at the ball, for, as he assured her, that would undoubtedly be the case, but also the most beautifully attired.
And so it was that, months before the ball, her prince made it his duty to seek out the most talented dressmaker in all the kingdom. This was no easy task because, at the time of his father’s reign, the kingdom comprised a vast and far-reaching territory, overrun with craggy mountains, vast lakes and even, in the far Northwest corner, an arid and scorching desert. Yet, undaunted, he had struck out, searching the land for the most talented dressmaker he could find. She had kept track of his progress through the messages he had sent via hawk; each morning bore a new message from the prince, and each message a new disappointment. As for the disappointments, she couldn’t quite understand what her love was disappointed with, as the sketches he passed along as proof of the various dressmakers’ incompetence seemed stunning to her. And yet, she was content, for she knew that when he finally found an artist he was satisfied with it would be an artist to rival all artists, and she nearly shuddered in anticipation of the gown that she would wear to the ball.
Sure as the sun rises in the sky, the time finally came when her prince returned to the castle, a wizened old man in tow. The wizened old man, upon meeting her, had gasped and proclaimed it an honor to be given the privilege of designing a gown for one as beautiful as she. The days passed, and she was nearly overcome with curiosity at what the man would produce. She was allowed no hints, no peeks; now that the artist had been chosen, she was presented with no sketches of the man’s work, future or present. The night of the ball eventually, as it had to, came and it was with a wonderfully tingling and heightened sense of nervous anticipation that she awaited the masterpiece in her dressing room.
With a knock on the door, her prince came in, bearing in his arms the most delicate piece of gossamer ever spun by mortal hands; the merest sight of it took her breath away and, when it returned, it brought with it tears of joy. What the gown was made of she had no idea; if she didn’t know any better she would have been convinced that the golden clouds of heaven itself had provided the raw material the dress had been spun from. When she slid into it, slid into a fit so perfect that the gown might as well have been peeled directly from her body, the feel of the fabric on her soft and scented skin gave her pause, and led her to think that perhaps those golden, heavenly clouds had been involved after all.
After it was in place, she turned and looked at the mirror. This time, her breath was not so quick to return. She fairly glowed in the beauty of the gown; it truly was a part of her, and she instinctively knew that it would have nowhere near the same radiance and transcendent quality on another. Tears still in her eyes, she turned and kissed her prince, and thanked him for such a wondrous gift.
Still on the bed, Grace shook herself from memories of memories past and contemplated the twin dresses, the elegant red and the revealing black. She thought of the people who would be at the party, her husband’s boss and coworkers, strangers from other departments and spouses and girlfriends and boyfriends, dates and companions as lost as she would be. And she thought of the stares, the looks, lascivious, offended and intrigued, she would garner, with her smooth but not whippet-thin thighs pushing and slightly straining against the thin tight mesh of the fabric and her cleavage all but pouring out of the bodice, tightly pressed and taut, the nipples hanging on to the dark edge of that neckline for dear life. She thought of Jim, his two-beers-a-night potbelly tucked cleanly away by the double-breasted jacket of his tuxedo, telling her that she must wear the dress he had bought, that he didn’t want her hiding her body behind that “red thing.” And she thought of the golden gown that she had worn in antiquity, the barest molecule of a memory of the way it had felt on her skin floating through her consciousness.
The shower stopped, and she looked at the clock. Slowly, Grace reached out , picked up the red dress and started to put it on.
Until Whenever
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