Fiction
Middle of the night, can't sleep, good time to write, right? And I have plenty of sleepless nights. Not painfully sleepless, or at least not when life calls bright and early the next morning with all its demands. I'm working on acceptance.
So, with sleepless nights, I should have no problem completing this fiction module I've taken as an independent study. I shouldn't, but I do. I joke that the "rigorous honesty" of my program makes it difficult to tell lies. It sounds like a good excuse for why I had to have my instructor defer my grade, leaving me the summer to finish. Then there's the good excuse that I also took independent studies in poetry and non-fiction, so how, in addition to tutoring and taking other classes, could I be expected to produce that much quality writing? Bottom line is that quantity is never an issue for me, and as for the quality, if I weren't so lazy and would commit to a little more editing, the quality isn't an issue, either. And fiction isn't really telling lies. It's taking a truth, some small truth, and relating it to the reader in a creative way.
Anyway, after having liberally used my backspace key to tell myself the differences between the three disciplines and concluding that I have been dragging my feet, avoiding writing down the sketch of the story that I think is a story but I'm not quite sure yet, I'm ready to start roughing out.
Trying to fall asleep a week or so ago, I figured I'd use the time to tell myself a story. Maybe it would be a good enough story to expend the effort and whittle away at the mere twenty-five pages I need for my class. Hell, I already have...nine? of them written. Sixteen pages. One short story. One short fiction story. I have to make it up. It should contain a truth, even if it's a truth only to me. Write what I know.
So, for some reason, a pack of matches popped into my head. Perhaps because I couldn't find my lighter earlier in the evening, and I had used a match from a pack I'd picked up at the H-Y-P Club (for those not in the know, that's the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club whose membership is limited to students and alumni of those hallowed institutions....my son will be a Harvard man in the fall). Only, the H-Y-P Club matches seemed to ritzy for a character I could painlessly create (Hey, this is for a lower-level writing class. Research is a bit too ambitious for the amount of effort I'm willing to put into it at this point.) So, I put the matches in the hand of a woman, perhaps a few years older than myself (say...forty....make her....forty-four), materializing from the interior of her purse as she searches for her....lipstick? Cell phone? Cell phone would work, because on the inside of the pack of matches (from where? a working class bar? someplace...will work it out), I'm going to put a phone number. A phone number, and she's going to dial it. She'll be frustrated, frazzled, in need of relaxation. Some situation...boss at work? will have left her in need of...validation. And, the owner of this phone number is going to give that to her. So, we need to introduce him.
Flashback to her sitting at the bar, this working class bar. A few seats down is 555-1234. Only she doesn't know that yet. He's going to be....not long out of college. Make him twenty-three. He's a dork. No beating around the bush here. He's entry level, probably computer field. Bad, overdue haircut, pale rather than fair skin, cheap jacket and slacks, non-descript tie askew at his neck. There's no calculated after-work coolness about him. This guy just came off the boring, mind-numbing, long-hours job that promises him a bright and successful future, but he's going to pay his dues bigtime before he gets so much as a crumb. He won't have a five o'clock shadow, really, as he's too tender for that, but there will be a little peach fuzz around his face. And some acne, too. Stress, bad diet, lack of sleep kind of acne. His nails will be bitten, and he'll be drinking something cheap and unsophistocated. What's a cheap-ass working class beer? He'll be nursing it. He wouldn't be able to hold it if he didn't.
Her mind will wander, thinking about the others like him that she's picked up in the past. One-night stands to bolster her flagging, aging ego. They were one-night stands because she has children, and only the occassional night alone will provide her the opportunity to take one of these young bucks home. She's too old to attract the more refined kind of hunk, and she picks one that, once the clothes and the dorky glasses come off, she can pretend is her knight in shining armor. She's divorced from a pretty boy who remained a pretty boy, aged with grace, and now married to a much younger, hipper, prettier wife. Her oldest son is in the...military? stationed somewhere, awaiting the arrival of his first child, her grandchild. She prefers not to think in these terms. Her youngest has just gone away to college. She remembers this and it gives her an idea.
She no longer has to stick to one-night stands. She can take one of these awkward but cute types and turn him into a real stud, one who knows how to please her. One who will be grateful for the gift she's given him: the gift of cool. She will show that ex-husband of hers. She can still have a pretty boy on her arm. She buys the young man a drink. She moves in.
There has to be another man at the bar at the same time. Perhaps our young man isn't sitting at the bar when we open this scene. Perhaps he comes in a few minutes later, after we've met the man at the other end. This is an older man, a man of some apparent refinement, at least remnants of such. He's a regular, about seventy, maybe seventy-five years old. He buys our lady a drink, and she speaks to him. She knows him. She writes him off as an old geezer. We'll need him later, but we want to know him, or have an impression of him now.
We're going to see the woman answering the door. Maybe this needs to be the first "date." A flash, I'm sure, of them twisting the sheets will be necessary. Some observations, her taking notes on his appearance, much like one would take stock of a room that is going to be renovated. She makes a mental list, then we see him appear again at her door.
She'll be working it, dressed seductively, having created a romantic atmosphere...candle light dinner? Music she thinks is hip? And after some conversation, she'll suggest...he go relax in the shower, use the shaving kit she's bought for him. This is a few dates later. The shaving kit....grooming kit...should have already been there but still a little awkward for him to use. Shot of him shaving.
After the shower...does he have his own robe? She'll present him with a blazer. I guess I'm pulling from the H-P-Y club here....a preppy blazer. We see him again. He's coming around.
She's alone again, calling. Hearing his answering machine message. Perhaps we need a phone call before this? A "before and after" answering machine message? Do I want to switch to his perspective? No...he's a symbol. She's the story. He has to behave in the logical way one in his position would behave.
Now, she needs a friend. A girlfriend. Someone to have coffee with, cry to...brag to. Move the story along, eliminate the need for the flesh and blood boy toy for awhile. Through her conversation, his improvements in bed and in his own skin will be detailed. The girlfriend has to be younger, but not a whole lot younger. Thirty-five? And still beautiful, that sexy kind of Elizabeth Hurley, "I'm over thirty but my experience hasn't been cancelled out by my sagging breasts" kind of beautiful. And girlfriend will be soaking it all up, goading on our woman.
Phone calls again. Messages left. Becoming insistent. Cold dinner going to waste.
Our woman needs to have a good laugh at herself. She needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps and show "him" who's the boss. She can replace him. She will get dressed and go out. As she's approaching her favorite working class bar, her pick up spot, she will see, across the street, at an upscale restaurant, her girlfriend and the boy walking in. He will be wearing the blazer she bought for him. She will turn and go into "her" bar. The older gentleman will be sitting at the end. She will pick up a pack of matches from the bowl on the bar, open it, write her number inside, and slide the pack down to him.
Hmm...might work? Now, to write it. Sleep first.
Till later....
So, with sleepless nights, I should have no problem completing this fiction module I've taken as an independent study. I shouldn't, but I do. I joke that the "rigorous honesty" of my program makes it difficult to tell lies. It sounds like a good excuse for why I had to have my instructor defer my grade, leaving me the summer to finish. Then there's the good excuse that I also took independent studies in poetry and non-fiction, so how, in addition to tutoring and taking other classes, could I be expected to produce that much quality writing? Bottom line is that quantity is never an issue for me, and as for the quality, if I weren't so lazy and would commit to a little more editing, the quality isn't an issue, either. And fiction isn't really telling lies. It's taking a truth, some small truth, and relating it to the reader in a creative way.
Anyway, after having liberally used my backspace key to tell myself the differences between the three disciplines and concluding that I have been dragging my feet, avoiding writing down the sketch of the story that I think is a story but I'm not quite sure yet, I'm ready to start roughing out.
Trying to fall asleep a week or so ago, I figured I'd use the time to tell myself a story. Maybe it would be a good enough story to expend the effort and whittle away at the mere twenty-five pages I need for my class. Hell, I already have...nine? of them written. Sixteen pages. One short story. One short fiction story. I have to make it up. It should contain a truth, even if it's a truth only to me. Write what I know.
So, for some reason, a pack of matches popped into my head. Perhaps because I couldn't find my lighter earlier in the evening, and I had used a match from a pack I'd picked up at the H-Y-P Club (for those not in the know, that's the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club whose membership is limited to students and alumni of those hallowed institutions....my son will be a Harvard man in the fall). Only, the H-Y-P Club matches seemed to ritzy for a character I could painlessly create (Hey, this is for a lower-level writing class. Research is a bit too ambitious for the amount of effort I'm willing to put into it at this point.) So, I put the matches in the hand of a woman, perhaps a few years older than myself (say...forty....make her....forty-four), materializing from the interior of her purse as she searches for her....lipstick? Cell phone? Cell phone would work, because on the inside of the pack of matches (from where? a working class bar? someplace...will work it out), I'm going to put a phone number. A phone number, and she's going to dial it. She'll be frustrated, frazzled, in need of relaxation. Some situation...boss at work? will have left her in need of...validation. And, the owner of this phone number is going to give that to her. So, we need to introduce him.
Flashback to her sitting at the bar, this working class bar. A few seats down is 555-1234. Only she doesn't know that yet. He's going to be....not long out of college. Make him twenty-three. He's a dork. No beating around the bush here. He's entry level, probably computer field. Bad, overdue haircut, pale rather than fair skin, cheap jacket and slacks, non-descript tie askew at his neck. There's no calculated after-work coolness about him. This guy just came off the boring, mind-numbing, long-hours job that promises him a bright and successful future, but he's going to pay his dues bigtime before he gets so much as a crumb. He won't have a five o'clock shadow, really, as he's too tender for that, but there will be a little peach fuzz around his face. And some acne, too. Stress, bad diet, lack of sleep kind of acne. His nails will be bitten, and he'll be drinking something cheap and unsophistocated. What's a cheap-ass working class beer? He'll be nursing it. He wouldn't be able to hold it if he didn't.
Her mind will wander, thinking about the others like him that she's picked up in the past. One-night stands to bolster her flagging, aging ego. They were one-night stands because she has children, and only the occassional night alone will provide her the opportunity to take one of these young bucks home. She's too old to attract the more refined kind of hunk, and she picks one that, once the clothes and the dorky glasses come off, she can pretend is her knight in shining armor. She's divorced from a pretty boy who remained a pretty boy, aged with grace, and now married to a much younger, hipper, prettier wife. Her oldest son is in the...military? stationed somewhere, awaiting the arrival of his first child, her grandchild. She prefers not to think in these terms. Her youngest has just gone away to college. She remembers this and it gives her an idea.
She no longer has to stick to one-night stands. She can take one of these awkward but cute types and turn him into a real stud, one who knows how to please her. One who will be grateful for the gift she's given him: the gift of cool. She will show that ex-husband of hers. She can still have a pretty boy on her arm. She buys the young man a drink. She moves in.
There has to be another man at the bar at the same time. Perhaps our young man isn't sitting at the bar when we open this scene. Perhaps he comes in a few minutes later, after we've met the man at the other end. This is an older man, a man of some apparent refinement, at least remnants of such. He's a regular, about seventy, maybe seventy-five years old. He buys our lady a drink, and she speaks to him. She knows him. She writes him off as an old geezer. We'll need him later, but we want to know him, or have an impression of him now.
We're going to see the woman answering the door. Maybe this needs to be the first "date." A flash, I'm sure, of them twisting the sheets will be necessary. Some observations, her taking notes on his appearance, much like one would take stock of a room that is going to be renovated. She makes a mental list, then we see him appear again at her door.
She'll be working it, dressed seductively, having created a romantic atmosphere...candle light dinner? Music she thinks is hip? And after some conversation, she'll suggest...he go relax in the shower, use the shaving kit she's bought for him. This is a few dates later. The shaving kit....grooming kit...should have already been there but still a little awkward for him to use. Shot of him shaving.
After the shower...does he have his own robe? She'll present him with a blazer. I guess I'm pulling from the H-P-Y club here....a preppy blazer. We see him again. He's coming around.
She's alone again, calling. Hearing his answering machine message. Perhaps we need a phone call before this? A "before and after" answering machine message? Do I want to switch to his perspective? No...he's a symbol. She's the story. He has to behave in the logical way one in his position would behave.
Now, she needs a friend. A girlfriend. Someone to have coffee with, cry to...brag to. Move the story along, eliminate the need for the flesh and blood boy toy for awhile. Through her conversation, his improvements in bed and in his own skin will be detailed. The girlfriend has to be younger, but not a whole lot younger. Thirty-five? And still beautiful, that sexy kind of Elizabeth Hurley, "I'm over thirty but my experience hasn't been cancelled out by my sagging breasts" kind of beautiful. And girlfriend will be soaking it all up, goading on our woman.
Phone calls again. Messages left. Becoming insistent. Cold dinner going to waste.
Our woman needs to have a good laugh at herself. She needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps and show "him" who's the boss. She can replace him. She will get dressed and go out. As she's approaching her favorite working class bar, her pick up spot, she will see, across the street, at an upscale restaurant, her girlfriend and the boy walking in. He will be wearing the blazer she bought for him. She will turn and go into "her" bar. The older gentleman will be sitting at the end. She will pick up a pack of matches from the bowl on the bar, open it, write her number inside, and slide the pack down to him.
Hmm...might work? Now, to write it. Sleep first.
Till later....
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