You have to be the best, they say. So you are. Your talent lies not just in excelling, but knowing where you'll excel. If you cannot report objective brilliance, you discard, coldly and without a second glance. You pile accolade on accolade, and they ask you to do better.

So you do. It's just focus and digging in when the time comes. You can, so you do.

You're in your twenties before you discover the ability to just love, to do for the doing and not for the dominating. But will you ever get over the fear of being average?

Temptation and Desertion (100 words)

Two lies: one I forgave you for without realising it, the other I probably never will.

I'm nearly as old as you were when she couldn't choose between you and her first boyfriend to be her "first time." I've stammered at propositions from a just-nubile con-goer and heard her delighted giggle; I know the power of the dark side. True, my son wasn't dating her, so I couldn't lie to him about it.

But leaving my mother loveless at forty? After twenty years? "Till death do us part" isn't a promise you walk away from, you son of a bitch.

Karl, we'll have to discuss that. What happens if the other person left you first? Are you bound?

Because as the third leg - the one who loved, without any of those legal promised rights that mean so much - I'm prepared to argue it.

"Till death do us part" isn't a promise you walk away from, you son of a bitch.

Ouch.

Interesting. I was reading this as fiction until reading these reactions.

Karl?

My reaction was an "ouch" to the character's pain, ita. I assumed it was fiction, too.

Deb, that fury is reserved for my own father. Your mileage will obviously vary; your situation was quite different. And I certainly never claimed that the fury was rational, or justified. I only know what him leaving did to my mother, and to me.

ita, Kristin, does it change the impact of the piece if you know it's completely autobiographical? And perhaps more importantly, does it tell you anything about me you don't already know?

(edited for a little more sense-making)

does it change the impact of the piece if you know it's completely autobiographical?

It doesn't change the impact of the piece, but it gives me a lot more insight into what makes up your character. I'm always amazed at how much the peeps here are willing to reveal of themselves. Me, I know I'm a bit of an exhibitionist (hee), but some folks aren't, yet share some of the most astounding personal pieces of themselves. I always feel very honored when I'm trusted with those key pieces to a person's innermost being.

Daddy

He never really meant it to be a lie. I was just too young to realize that surfaces are not the whole of a man.

He gave me hints, telling stories to the only child who wanted the fun things of Daddy's world--how cars work, the staticky stations on his shortwave radio, what he did during the war--as opposed to the girly things of Mother's world.

Then he was dead, and I was left with fragments: a collection of swizzle sticks from bars in World War II New York, a story of being in a plane flown by a daredevil, my mother once saying she was glad someone knew what they were doing on the wedding night.

Not that he would have told his youngest daughter anything good, but I wish he'd lived long enough for me to become smart enough to find the truth for myself.

I assumed it was autobiographical (edit: Karl's). Damned near everything I write is autobiographical, these days - it's the price of admission to my own damned midlife crisis. And there's a certain ring, a certain bite, a certain edge that seems to add to autobio pieces.

And yes, Karl, you're right - your rage may vary. For me, he'd promised her and even though she pissed all over it, he stuck to it, and I bled for it. So the whole concept has teeth. I suspect a lot of readers will react very viscerally.

Which means, of course, that the piece did its job, and very effectively, too.