Greta had already published four novels when I met her. "It's not like it's made me rich," she explained when we got around to the subject of 'what do you do'. She was short with ocean blue eyes you would want to fish in that were framed with long waving black hair tinged with streaks of premature gray. She had a voice that reminded me of a moth that would flirt with the flame of a candle but was yet sensible enough not to fly too close. I read her books later. The first was quite good, but the rest, while not terrible, explained why she would never get rich from them. Our children were the same age and went to the same school and that is how we met. The sporting events, music recitals, evening art shows. She was separated, acrimoniously, from her husband who was the Dean of Something or Something at the University and I was as well, though more congenially, from my wife who was striving to be a Something or Something though she was decidedly unsure of what that something should be. So Greta and I went on a date, drank copious amounts of Tequila and then made love in a furiously passionate manner that later made me think that it wasn't sex at all that we had engaged in but rather a competition of whom could write the best paragraph. I think fondly still of the punctuation from that night.
Maybe if Greta had been a dancer or a painter or even a ceramic artist things would have turn out differently but she was what she was and it didn't turn out differently and there is no sense thinking about it anymore than there would be reflecting on how my nose would look better than if I had gotten drunk and and broke it when ran into that parked car. Some things you cannot change though I think if she had been a dancer she may have broken my nose during that night of carnal adventure. We never had sex again. We did kept seeing each other spending nights listening to Oscar Peterson and Artie Shaw and old blues artists. Sometimes we went to clubs when there were decent jazz groups. No more tequila. She switched to gin and I drank beer. I occasionally had sensory flashbacks on how nice her ass had looked in the candlelight that time and once even suggested we give it a go again. She just grinned and said that I was an atheistic ex Catholic and she was an atheistic Jew and that " We would have to NOT believe in the same religion to make THAT work again.", which had just enough irony in it that I never brought up the subject again though thinking about it did give me a twinge behind the zipper.
~
more later..... perhaps
6 comments:
I liked that. Don't know if that was your first piece of writing but it was pretty steady. There were a few long sentences that could do with being broken down and a bit of editing but, yes, I enjoyed that and would be interseted in reading some more.
Nicely done. Made me smile all the way through right up to that clever 'twinge behind the zipper'.
Tequila huh. Is this a story or is this true? Is it perhaps both? Yes, to nice ass in candlelight is all I gotta say ;~)
David... I have published before... but long long ago. I am deliberately working on the style as it is. Unsure how it will work. I have twenty years of sentences, paragraphs & characters.... none who mesh well presently.
Susan.... glad you like it.. so incomplete. I hope to add more.
Libs... //Is it perhaps both?// hmmmmmmmmmmm
If this is incomplete, well, an expansion of it wouldn't be a bad idea, but I kind of dig this fragment, this Polaroid of an emotional moment in time, fleeting, but in that drawn out, lingering way.
Randal.... I really got tired (and frustrated) by trying to write a story from a-z and realized that most stories, at least for me, start in the middle and then seem to back track to the beginning... and then only end when you have done that. So now, like a box of leggos, I have all these pieces and am trying to see what I can make of them.
& lissen... from you... that whaz a very nice thing to say. Tankz.
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