Monthly Archives: June 2013

2013/06/27

The Virtues of Their Wares

By dsholloway

American Express wants everybody to know if you’re rich or poor. Depending on your income it will offer you credit cards in a variety of colors. At the top is American Express Purple maybe. At the bottom is a transparent–like your socioeconomic worth–card, which they call Blue.

The clerk, a foreigner, was oblivious to the implications of K’s transparent card. He had gotten to know her over the past long time as he  frequented her fancy store to A) have the things he wanted and have them now and B)  impress this clerk (who looked kinda like Anna Torv, upon whom K had a mild crush  not because she’s attractive (because she isn’t) but because she is interesting looking) with his false purchasing power.

This would look amazing on you. She offered K some fashionable monstrosity that in its very monstrousness made it somehow less monster-like. Unable to say no to women, K put it on. Let me zip it up for you she said and dropped to her knees.

K saw the prostitutiveness in the gesture and  grew curious: What if I were to buy something really expensive he opined. But he soon frowned. Impossible. His American Express was transparent.

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2013/06/21

Didactic Potential

By dsholloway

He listened to the sounds behind the door: a zipper, silken legs gliding against each other, a tussle, shoes falling to the floor. Then silence.

K knew the poses she struck in front of the mirror whenever she tried something on–hips  tilted, collarbones broadened, eyes carefully mixed with self-assurance and self-criticism. If she approved of what she saw she opened the door, twirled, and closed it. If she didn’t, she did not. It was sort of theatrical–at rise, performance, curtain.

She opened the door and smiled at K. She closed the door. Sounds and silence.

She opened the door and smiled at K. She closed the door. Sounds and silence.

She opened the door and smiled at K. She closed the door. Sounds and silence.

A performance in three acts.

(Intellectuals trash these moments by reducing them to the empty gestures of a populace that has gone blind in one eye. The fall of old ideologies and belief systems has precipitated a preference for a grab-bag of artificial and interchangeable identities…or something.)

When she came out of the dressing room she handed K the garments she wanted.

He pulled her in close and whispered Bravo. He kissed her. She blushed.

Curtain.

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2013/06/17

Gleeful Condescension

By dsholloway

23:26……….

I didn’t know what to do until midnight. So I began making shapes out of the sleeping pills I had dumped out all over my  table. I made a heart. I made a pig. I made an OM symbol. I made a beautiful woman. Why I chose midnight, I didn’t really remember. Probably to prove some sort of postmortem point to myself.

I waited. And I closed my eyes.

23:31……….

Hey. What are you doing? I opened my eyes kinda.

It was the woman. I told her I was waiting till midnight. She asked why, and I tried to explain that I really didn’t know anymore.

You’re going to change your mind if you wait. Just do it now.

Her voice was feminine, but also measured and mildly coercive. She seemed upset, though because she was made out of oblong sleeping pills it was hard to read her expression.

I told her I wanted to wait till midnight.

Just do it now. (I refused.)

23:35……….

If you do it now I’ll  give you a blowjob. (………….)

I gobbled her body, washed it down with vodka,  and unzipped my pants. I’m not sure if she ever followed through.

Leave a comment | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman

2013/06/06

Paternal Authority

By dsholloway

She squinted in a half-unconvinced manner at the surgeon, and as she listened to him describe the state of K’s mangled and tortured but still breathing body she became more and more unconvinced. She knew K’s body better than anybody (a bold claim but a true one nonetheless); she worshiped it like an idol still, after all these years, and whoever the surgeon was describing  wasn’t K. Couldn’t be K.

But where was K? He didn’t come home last night. And then the phone call this morning from the hospital asking her to come immediately.

She had just assumed. But now…

The surgeon, face creased with detached concern,  excused himself and she slumped back in her chair to flip through the imaginary Rolodex of male bodies she had accumulated during her “reckless years.” Countless bodies, but each distinct in its own way, even memorable.

Then it dawned on her: of all the men whose suffering might be assuaged by her presence but whose body was unfamiliar–her father.

So she stood, straightened her skirt and left.

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2013/06/05

The Cogito Itself

By dsholloway

The same four people continue to come to my funeral no matter how many times I die.

The man with the elk tattoo on one of his arms. The woman who’s prettier than your wildest dreams. The other two who aren’t really worth mentioning.

At my first funeral the man with the elk tattoo on one of his arms sat in the back of the church and the woman who’s prettier than your wildest dreams sat in the front. But with each subsequent funeral the man with the elk tattoo moves a little closer to the woman who’s prettier than your wildest dreams as though he isn’t doing it on purpose. He likes her because she’s prettier than your wildest dreams–which is a weird way to describe her beauty but whatever–and that’s really all men care about. She could be a wicked individual; she may have killed me for all he knows.

I don’t want him to go near her because I don’t like him and it bugs me that he’s doing that (it also bugs me that he keeps coming to my funeral). But if I keep dying because she keeps killing me, maybe I do after all.

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2013/06/01

Unsuitable Structures

By dsholloway

Which one am I, again?

I couldn’t remember without a glance at the date on my watch: the twenty-first.

I typically didn’t tell them what I was doing because even to me it seemed both overdetermined and creepy if I thought about it for too long. But for whatever reason I decided to tell this one and, even more startling, she still followed me back to my room after I did. It was probably the bedroom psychoanalyst in her–the same one that spoke (confidently if incorrectly) of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection at the hotel lounge, the same one that would probably tell her friends about me and my twisted mission, the same one that probably had her own hang-ups about sex (they say that people who fuck around tend to fuck people who have fucked around and that’s all kinds of gross when you think about it) and was trying to understand something about herself vis-a-vis her encounter with me; that’s probably why she came back with me.

She didn’t say anything else. And neither did I. We had sex and she left.

Nine more days in June.

Leave a comment | posted in Me, Short Fiction