Cocaine Calm
I don’t know how I forgot about this story; I honestly thought I’d posted it. I wrote this on October 22nd, 2012 during a creative writing class. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
Cocaine Calm
There was a smirk on the bastard’s face as he watched the woman across the table, reviewing what looked like some sort of contract, red pen in hand, occasionally ticking off an item here or making a note there. She wore glasses with a thick, black frame, tipped at the corners with diamonds and gold, though her eyes twinkled at least as brightly as the stones. Glasses tinked here and there in the background as other diners toasted their own affairs; golden-tinged silverware clinked rhythmically on plates of fine china, carving warm flesh into consumable portions while perfectly groomed violinists performed Holst’s “Mars” darkly in the background. Robbie Benz leaned close as he gracefully deposited a pair of wine glasses upon the table, neither the man nor the woman taking notice. With a perfectly rehearsed motion, he conveyed his serving tray to the nameless busboy assisting him, opened the bottle of champagne, and prepared to pour at the discretion of his guests.
He poured the lady’s glass first, filling it just halfway; the man, his eyes narrowed, stopped him with a single finger laid across the top of his own glass, a silent swish of his head from left to right indicating disinterest. The busboy, overeager, piped up in a feigned snobby accent, smiling as he said, “But please sir, surely you wouldn’t make the lady drink alone, for if there’s one thing less satisfying than a glass half full, it’s a glass never filled at all.” Robbie Benz closed his eyes and breathed out; the man turned to the busboy and replied only, “Speak when spoken to, boy. Keep your place and maybe you’ll keep your job.”
A Turgid Vacancy
The truth of the matter is this: I’m not exactly sure where the hell this came from, so I’m not even going to try explaining it. Let me know what you think in the comments if you love it, hate it, or hell, even if you’re ambivalent about it.
A Turgid Vacancy
Ball Barton leaned wistfully against the tube wall. His back and various joints ached, but his eyes traced the line of his wife’s beautifully sculpted curves from behind, craving her. She stood several places in line ahead of him. Ball, running late as usual, was at the back of the line. ‘Finishing last, again,’ he thought. Today’s trip should have been yesterday’s, but immersed in his work, Ball had forgotten, and they’d missed their flight. He smiled and admired his wife, wishing he were close enough to enjoy the warmth of her hand on his. Donna was a breathtaking woman, and he wanted her, wanted to be enough for her, but for whatever wretched reason, age and Mother Nature denied him. A hand jammed in his pocket, he thoughtlessly rubbed his slack member and sighed, remembering the wasted virility of a youth spent in introverted solitude.
A voice startled Ball from his introspection. “Fucking pervert.” Ball’s heart dropped, and his face burned with embarrassment. He turned and looked into the dour face of a young woman, perhaps twenty five, glaring down at him from no more than two feet away. She was taller than he, her body thick framed and busty. Though the look on her face expressed disgust, there was something about her that Ball could not quite read, and she smirked ever so slightly at his flummoxed expression.
“I-I-I’m s-sorry,” Ball stammered, his voice, like his uncooperative gonads, hovered just outside of his control. “I w-w-was just being absent minded, n-n-no offense intended.” The girl paused for a moment, smirked, and in a quick motion flipped her blouse open and momentarily exposed her breasts to him.
Six Twenty Seven
This was the final in-class writing assignment for my Creative Writing class: Write one scene using the following words: Money, ocean, planet, aggravate, grease, paddle, rooster, leer, gift, pillow, avocado, shoulder, wedge, planet, fortify. The first draft took about twenty minutes, and I polished this version with another twenty or so after I got home. Tell me what you think in the comments!
Six Twenty Seven
“Six twenty seven.” Don thumbed through his wallet, counting what little money remained for food after buying his final bus ticket, the one that brought him here, to California from Kansas. This was the last leg of a three year journey that had taken him across continents in a quest to surf the waves of every ocean, on every coast it touched. He had exactly five dollars to his name, a pillow strapped to his back with a leather belt that had been a gift from his mother, and a simple digital camera, which hung from a strap on his left shoulder. From the corner of one eye he glanced toward the corner of the small building before him, where his surfboard leaned, its waxed and polished surface glinting in the sunlight as it rested comfortably on the warm, golden sand of the California coast.
A Night in Memory
This piece emerged from a prompt in my creative writing class, which asked for a story about a man or woman who’s had an affair in a hotel room the night before, only to wake up beside their spouse. The action was to take place entirely inside the hotel room, with no significant back story.
I got through about 3/4 of the writing of this piece while in class and had a decent response to it during the sharing and workshopping session, so I decided I’d go ahead and finish it up. I did that just this evening, along with a little polishing on the first section from the night before, and all in all I’m fairly pleased with it. What I wanted to get at in this piece is the idea that people don’t (usually) cheat merely out of a desire for simple sex or orgasm, but because they have a deep need inside that isn’t being met in their home life. That’s not an indictment of blame, incidentally; sometimes it’s just a matter of how people’s lives evolve, and my take is that mutual understanding and meeting of needs, not blame, guilt and penance, is the more mature way of coping.
I hope you like it; please feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think!
–Jason
A Night in Memory
Carl awoke with a start, the unexpected warmth of sunlight playing across his eyes through the half-open blinds of the Prudence Hotel and Bakery. He breathed deeply and smiled, reveling in the warm scent of sex that still permeated the room, a remnant of a night spent entwined with the most passionate, intense woman he had ever met. Still afflicted by the hazy, early afternoon sunlight that danced across his face, he closed his eyes for a moment and remembered, with fondness and an emerging desire for round four, the beautiful, vivacious redhead he pictured sleeping quietly beside him. She was everything his wife had never been: adventurous and experimental, open to touch and be touched in ways and places the mother of his children never had, for hour after hour into the night. The way her body responded to his worship of her every sensual part made him feel, for the first time in years, like a powerful, competent lover, like the man he thought he’d forgotten how to be. This new woman, he thought, was a little piece of bliss.
Out of Respect for the Pump
So, this one needs some explanation. In my creative writing class we occasionally do various in-class exercises, and this story grew from one of these in about an hour. In this case, the exercise was to write scene with a character with “the opposite gender, as different from yourself as possible.” As I think you’ll see, this character’s gender is about as different from a typical male human as you’re likely to find here on Earth. As to the quality of the story, well…I guess that’s up to you to decide. I’ve given up judging my own work worthy, I just can’t see it objectively 
.
Out of Respect for the Pump
I tug upward on the collar of my blouse, my cheeks flushed and red with a strangely embarrassed discomfort at the long, salacious glances of the man seated across from me. I close the catch on my purse and press it down, nestled safely in my lap, and hope the mechanic will finish my oil change soon. The man watches every motion, and his hands, stained by some kind of black grease, leave black-smudge fingerprints on the cover of the Car and Driver magazine over which his eyes, furrowed with grey and black smattered caterpillars above, undress me over and again. On most days I’m proud of the body I have, an accomplishment I earn with countless hours sacrificed at the gym, but not today.
I shift in my seat and reach for a magazine, Popular Science, my blouse slipping down again as I do so. His eyes are down my shirt, reveling in the smooth flesh I work so hard to keep clean and smooth and healthy. I think of the dollars spent on moisturizers and personal trainers and form-adoring undergarments, of sweat and tears and aching muscles, and my heart sinks as his tongue slides across chapped lips and chipped teeth. I tug upward on the collar of my blouse again and wince as his gravelly voice catches in my ears: “Nice tat. Know whatcha want, right?”
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