
art by Geoff McFetridge
When you tell them your name, they laugh, they say, what a wonderful name, like the fault was yours. In your head, you tap dance to Nabokov: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
Anthony stares at you throughout dinner, which makes you drink too much wine. His friends ignore this goatish behaviour because he is off to Oxford next week on a research grant, gone for a year. Tonight, they’ll get pissed in his parents’ house and pretend to be interested in you, the Asian he met at the bookstore last week.
Later, while his friends debate whether to change into their swimsuits or dance on the rooftop, Anthony pulls you into a coat closet. You turn your back to him and press your palms against the warm wood. You rub your cheek against a dead animal’s coat.
Anthony hikes up your dress, pulls down your underwear and enters you from behind. It is erotic for five minutes, but he finds his rhythm and it is too fast and his cock is bent to the right and the pressure kills your building orgasm. He comes, slumps against you and licks your nape. You’re so fucking sexy, he says. You twist your head and give him a long kiss to stop yourself laughing. You don’t understand why he talks like he’s in the movies.
You straighten your dress and feel for your knickers with your toes. Anthony opens the door quiet as possible but he needn’t have bothered. The other guests have all migrated upstairs. Let’s have a shot of tequila, he says. You nod and wave for him to go ahead then gesture to the loo.
You take a glass of white wine from a passing maid and drink it in one gulp. In two minutes you’re out the door. Anthony will look for you, but Lisa with her horse face and common sense will distract him.
Your moped is squeezed between a Benz and a new Volkswagen. You are careful as you back it out. Then you pull on the throttle and pretend you’re escaping a crime scene.
Halfway home, you decide you need coffee and head to your local. They serve your cappuccino with a ginger cookie because they ran out of chocolate. You take out your notebook and write three poems because this is the only thing that protects you from yourself.
When you can breathe again, you look up and notice that the cafe is empty and the staff are huddled around a television set watching a film about zombies. You feel alone. But there is nothing dangerous here, not anymore.
Holy shit. I FELT this.
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Haha that’s a great thing to say.
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Hehe. I’m having so many men frustrations… And I local so many coffee shops… So it spoke to me on a level.
Keep doing ya thang,
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Ah men. And coffee. They’re both stimulants… Thanks. You too.
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The illustration is a perfect match to your story – those knickers could be going up or coming down.
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The illustration did inspire the story.
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Cool! š
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I think she’s my hero. To put up with how things just are is kind of heroic, isn’t it? Meh, maybe heroism is overrated, but I admire the hell out of her.
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Yes, she puts up with a lot. But she’s also responsible.
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Both put upon and a put outer?
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What’s a put outer? Sounds like the Deluminator in Harry Potter.
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One who “puts out”. So, nothing to do with Potter really (unless he’s all grown up and swilling and chugging and screwing his way through your story…). š
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In that case, she ‘puts out’. I’m not sure why she does it. But she doesn’t need protecting from anything.
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Yes. I’m getting that sense.
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Great wriite – a real sense of both emotion and isolation.
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It always makes me happy when a reader gets it. š
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Sublime details. And “the only thing that protects you from yourself”–haunting.
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You picked out my favourite line. š That is, if we writers are allowed to favourite our own pieces. I thought about that line a long time…
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Yes, we must have favorites, for our writing is but sharing parts of our very unique souls. That line resonates with me as the finest slice of revelation in the piece š Great to read your work again!
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And it is brilliant to hear from you. I do miss your steamy writing. xxx
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I feel an intriguing sort of propelling heaviness in the narration here that suggests something habitual in the narrator’s experience, as though she is accustomed to (and weighed down by) the monotony of another disappointing encounter that met her (low) expectations and has left her, yet again, unsatisfied. And empty.
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Yes the sex and the cafe scene reflects this emptiness in her.
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And yet it is also in the emptiness of the last scene that she is safest because there is nothing there that she can use to hurt herself.
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Yes. I am interested that you say “safest because there is nothing… she can _use_to hurt herself” and was thinking earlier, too, that one of the images that sticks it out in my mind from this story is her pretending to leave a “crime scene” when she takes off on her moped. That detail left me wondering if on some level she considered herself the criminal, looking for a meaningless fuck with a guy in a closet, to temporarily fill the void, _using_ him, in a way (although it appears of course that he is using her) to prop herself up for a moment, but in the end, as always happens with a serial self-saboteur, brings herself further down.
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That is brilliant reading. Haha. You got her down pat. I loved that label ‘serial self-saboteur’. If I write this into a longer piece, I shall nick this for my title…
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Thank you for your lovely and insightful comment Lemony.
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You are welcome, Babe. It’s absolutely my pleasure. I so enjoy your writing!
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Thanks, Babe! I miss it too, LOL. BTW–I like your use of POV in this one.
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There are some delicious details in this, Babe, bravo! xx
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thanks MBB. š
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Horse faced people are the ones with the most common sense. I like that my moped is stuck between two German cars and I have to eat spicy ginger instead of soothing chocolate. Another brilliant read! And I liked being the main character.
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Your artist friend Babe, phew, heady stuff! Perfect match w this. Can we have a hell to the yeah?!!!
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Thank you, Candice. It is a terrific illustration and did inspire this story.
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Which did it honor
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