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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Fiction in Progress

Here's a draft of Part I of Gimlet. Part II will be in the second person and III will be in third, or maybe the other way round. It was supposed to be a short/flash satire of the typical hyper realistic flash fiction so popular these days, but it's going to turn into something that (I hope) will surprise me as much as any readers who happen upon it.

Gimlet

I.

I felt like I wanted to hit her. Hard. All the time. Big little long face like her horsefly dad’s.

I was getting out of control, my skin erupting. So it was good I’d sent her away. She was with him, my wide-eyed daughter the eating machine. Better he should spend money on her. Me all I had was unemployment checks and looking like jailbait.

Nightmare mother I should’ve drowned myself in the shit creek back of Wally’s Motel. Instead, I’m sitting in this roadside bar so I don’t need to listen to myself talk to myself. Like I know some stupid stud’s going to come around to help me get me out of myself. Like killing the brain cells to kill time. In my new too red dress pushing my boobs out. All about galabout with a red bow in my hair. Like dressed for trouble, stupid me. And all around, the same boring desert. One shredded brown palm tree still in no wind. Should’ve used the knitting needle he bought me. Well anyways theoreticly.

And that’s when I seen this guy. This guy as opposed to some other guy. Some other guy this guy eenie miney mo, like luck of the drawer.

You look like a gimlet girl, he says, leaning over so close I can smell bad pizza in his moustache.

Like Stinky Pete the bartender ever heard of a gimlet. To be fair, maybe he seen one on tv. Once.

You look like Bug Eyes Eddie, I don’t say. Big Eyes Eddie was a kid from elementary school that did nasty stuff to girls and got away with it. Like real horror story stuff. See his dad was the sheriff. Scum. Just my luck this is the guy.

So where did you ever have gimlet, suga? I reply, like I can’t help it ‘cause I don’t give a dang. I’m staring into whiskey like it was my paramour. Neat word paramour. Sounds like sour like whiskey sour. The ex is a lawyer failed the bar exam nine times. At least. Maybe ten. So anyways I’m fondling the glass like it’s my paramour. Thinking the guy probably got gimlets in the penitentiary. You know with his connections.

I been all over the world and back, Maybelline, BEE says.

Bet you still bite people, no matter how sophistercated you reckon to be, I think. Funny how he reminds me of grandma like the thought just occurs. It’s the eyebrows that don’t stop where they’re supposed to.

Well, then buy me a gimlet and hold the olive with the little red thingy in it, I say. Wondering why I said it. On account of there’s no reason to think he’s not going to bite me. And I love those olives with the red thingies poking out of them like clitorises.

Gimlets don’t include olives, Maybelline, BEE responds, inching his stool closer to mine. Maybe you want a whiskeye sour or bourbon with coke … or, heh heh, a double Southern Comfort?

My name’s not Maybelline and Down Dirty Martini’s the specialty of the house. I mean specialiteee. A double would be real nice, I suggest, smiling like I mean to smile. Like I got enough sour in my mind. And I mean I really want to smile but can’t figure out why I want to. Also figuring I shouldn’t be there. But what the heck. I need maybe three triples is why I’m here. So I like two-step to the jukebox and like nature the guy follows. With the double. Loves my toilet water, eco-friendly septic tank specialiteee. So we stare at the options as he gets comfortable with my waist. And he chooses some real stupid Bing Crosby song.

We sway a bit. Then sit. So close I can tell where he got polyester implants tacked into his gums. As supposed to his real teeth all yellow and irregular. What big teeth, he has! And sharp! We sit and I almost fall all over him. Like I want to be eaten. He calls me Little Red and pinches me all over. After my third double. I think my head’s out of orbit. Time to go to the can and puke my guts out. Crying over my little fat girl. What the heck.

Scuse me, I say, like I need to go and when you got to go, I say, ya know the rest.

Sure, Little Red, I’ll save your seat. Your HOT little seat! Real gentleman with his big fat tongue hanging out as I try to like extrapolate myself from the bar stool. All his teeth showing like, false and true, he whispers something dirty nasty I forget and I think of grandma again, who always says: Beware of men in bars.

Oh boy I miss grandma. I take the way out less traveled through the dirty little girl’s bathroom window and run all the way home. And there she is in bed. All comfy snoring in her white lace bonnet.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I really liked the hints at accent and vernacular. I liked the woman's point of view and some of the story turns were very unexpected. The end caught me way off guard. Entertaining and enjoyable, but it made me re-evaluate things as well. Great write Carol.

Johnny B. said...

Great little piece of writing, Carol! I guess what the previous commenter called "the woman's point of view" is goddamn complicated. Strange, I keep reading stuff from women writers conveying the same mixture of an equal measure of attraction and revulsion felt at the same time that your character's feelings seem to convey. Which makes ME feel that at the ripe of 65, after all kinds of attachments, affairs, couplings and uncouplings, let alone 32 years of marriage, I don't know the first thing about women. :-)

ROBERTA ALLEN said...

I liked this a lot Carol. Great voice.
I especially like that she leaves. Looking like "jailbait"? The mother? Loved description of his teeth. "dang" seemed out of tone. You might like Barry Hannah, very good Southern writer.

Roberta