The Great Write Way
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
( continues...) RICO case or something, I still won’t feel like it for a while...my detective could get a confession. She’s good at it.”
“We could play Hostile Suspect.”
“Maybe next week.”
Later that night, as he listened to Suzanne breathe(figuring out what’s wrong with democracy must be exhausting, he figured) John felt he had a reason to hate Bush and Company even more personal than John’s GPA not being quite enough to get him into Yale. It was visceral now,no question about it, they came between him and his loved ones. Just as surely as if...no, buddy, rein it in, he told himself, a few nights of missed carnal pleasure does not equal a hitch in Iraq. Maybe, if they slept apart for a year, it would begin to feel equivalent. Minus the fear, of course, he would always be(fairly) sure of where she was and what she was doing. She just wouldn’t be doing him. Think of all the reading he could get done. Considering the Democrats wouldn’t get another shot at Congress until 2006, he might even consider pulling Infinite Jest out of its lair under the bed, but the idea of an extended metaphor of pleasure and addiction at such a time depressed him. He wasn’t sure he understood it anyway, but he had read that celibacy was supposed to give a person great mental clarity, but that was probably a satisfied person’s consolation prize.
He would join the fight. He definitely had the energy.
erika?
I stone love this.
NOW you're cookin' with gas, honey: breakdown, flow, continuity, closure.
I'll check it over for minor stuff later, when I stop grooving on it for five minutes, but right now, I'm in love.
What deb said. That is fantastic, erika. I need to revel a little, first.
>Um,ok, Cindy...what kind of outfit am I thinking of? My clothes vocabulary isn't good.
I don't know, because I had to google "tube dress" to make sure my objection was sensible, and not just on account of my low-fashion brain. I wear jeans and sweaters in the winter, and shorts and t-shirts in the summer. But you know what, erika, now you have this:
And she got up and put on one of his shirts, which was long enough to leave her both frustratingly covered and tantalizingly undressed, and stood by the bedroom window.
which is probably better. You're writing it from his POV, and he's not likely to be sure what kind of dress it resembles either, beyond 'hawt'.
That's one of the things that nails it into place: the masculine POV. She's the usual horndog, she's now serious about the election theft, he's now watching her puzzling it and getting the resentment.
It's a beautiful turnabout.
Ok. A painful one, for me at least, on Teppy's breath theme:
Undamaged, as it Happens...
The two doctors stand there, talking.
"So, damage extent? I'm betting paralysis - certainly some shortening of limb. You?"
They aren't bothering to lower their voices. Why should they? I'm five years old, with polio; they're sure I'm going to die.
"I doubt she'll pull through. But I'm betting severe bone impairment."
My head, the only thing not encased in the iron lung, wants to swivel toward them. I want to be able to tell them to drop dead.
Instead, I decide to survive unimpaired, just to annoy them. Around me, the machine shifts pressure, forcing my lungs to function.
Damn, Deb.
I can't relate exactly, but in a way I can. And,ION, I still don't know what word I was fishing for, but some night it 'll wake me up or be on television.
And another memory, which deserves a longer piece, but is getting this one, which is still a bit long for the 100-word rule:
Self-Defense, 1972
I'm visiting a friend in western Marin county when the call comes from the dialysis lab.
Something's gone wrong. I don't understand the technical jargon, but the message is clear: if I don't get to San Francisco fast, I may not see him alive again.
The friend's car is dead. I thumb a lift, taking the first ride offered: a small man, driving a Buick, sympathetic. I explain the situation.
Five miles from nowhere, he pulls the car offroad. Seems the nice man is a would-be rapist.
The last thing I remember, before the red mist of murderous rage settles over my mind, is the look of horror on his face as my fingers close around his trachea, and his breathing shortens and stops.
erika, I was always an ornery little bitch....
Survivors are, a lot.
There are a lot of pictures where you'd swear I'd be too young for the "You can't be serious," look on my face. But there is no denying...it's a photo.
I wish I could scan the photo of me taken - I think - a few months before I was had the nice little live serum shot that put me in that stupid contraption in the first place. It lives on my fridge, a tiny black and white photo, of about a four-year-old child, very pretty, with short dark red hair, and the little moo-cow is glaring, scowling really, and you can tell, it's the Basic Deb Look. And my father - this was during a rare period when I actually spent a couple of weeks in company with my real live parents - is sitting behind me, laughing his ass off.
If I hadn't been such a pretty kid, it probably wouldn't have been nearly so surprising and so comical. But at age four, I'd already had diptheria (too young too remember it, luckily), scarlet fever, pneumonia and then the delightful little incident with the bee and the stinger and the allergy and the glayvin.
I scowled a LOT.
