Tag Archives: affect
K enjoyed the night shift because it was quiet. You’d think suicidals (as they called them) would be most active at night when you’re alone with your thoughts. You’d be wrong, though. The serious suicidals do it during the day when everyone else is busy.
K enjoyed the nightshift because at 11:45 PM every night a woman would call. The first time she called, she was patched through at random. “Hello, my name is K.” etc.
Every night thereafter, she would ask for K, telling whoever might answer her call that she felt most comfortable talking to K and, do you really want to risk not letting her talk to him?
K anticipated her call even if he was otherwise preoccupied. Her life being at stake and all, he looked forward to talking her down from the ledge every night.
One night, she didn’t call. K should have presumed the worst. Instead, he presumed that she was mad at him or that she didn’t “need” him in that way anymore. He tracked down her phone number and called her, not finding anything ironic.
She answered after one ring, an unfamiliar cheer in her voice. K hung up immediately, his worst fears confirmed.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, emotions, fear, intimacy, phone, suicide | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
The woman got stranded in Iceland once, after following a guy she “loved” onto a raft.
She went to a casino in the capital and shoved what little money she had down the throat of a slot machine. Finding that she had a knack for that kind of thing, she won big: she bought a ticket back to the US and even had enough money left over to try and get her life back together after love fucked everything up for her. She moved to Las Vegas.
She had this favorite slot machine in the corner of her favorite casino. It was always good to her. They first met on a whim; she had a feeling about it, that’s all. They liked each other immediately and spent evenings and weekends together. She told the slot machine about being stranded in Iceland. She told the slot machine about other bad stuff, too. The slot machine was extra generous at times like those.
One day she told the slot machine about this friend that was worried about “[her] gambling addiction or whatever.” The slot machine was silent for a moment. Then it smiled a big smile and offered her more money than usual.
2 Comments | tags: addiction, affect, casino, desire, gambling, Iceland, Las Vegas, money, relationships, slot machine | posted in Short Fiction, Woman
He stopped, about halfway between here and there, at a country gas station. A pretty(ish) girl was working behind the counter. He asked for directions even though he knew were he was going. Her voice was kind of cute if handled in short bursts.
He stopped again, the next year, at the same country gas station. An awful fast food restaurant had been tacked onto the outside, bringing in a fair number of travels on their way from here to there. The pretty(ish) girl was working again. She had highlights in her hair and paint on her fingernails. He asked for directions again just to see. She didn’t remember him. Besides, thanks to the fast food restaurant she had more menial duties than last year and didn’t have time for guys doing guy things.
He stops again a few years later. The country gas station is now flanked by a motel and a 24 hr. breakfast place. It is busy and he gets kind of sad. He decides not to go in to ask for directions because he feels left behind, somehow, even though he probably shouldn’t.
He pays for his gas outside (something he had been unable to do previously).
Leave a comment | tags: affect, change, gas station, progress, relationships, time, traveling | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
He orders a Kyoto cold brew because, served as it is in a snifter, he thought it was a cocktail of some sort.
……….
Two young people are sitting across from each other, he notices, conversing in strained registers. The guy has on an Interpol T-shirt and wears a barcode tattoo on his left forearm. The woman is carefully tanned and obviously out of his league. She is drinking something from a straw. She tells him about chiropractic school and drug addiction. The guy doesn’t say much. The woman continues to tell him about how intellectuals often suffer from some sort of spinal disorder because they’re hunched over “all the fucking time.” She seems nervous; it’s probably their first date, or whatever. The guy doesn’t seem like much of a swearer–despite his Interpol T-shirt and tattoo.
……….
How did these two people find each other, he wonders from the other side of his Kyoto cold brew. They’re togetherness is off-putting, he decides. Nevertheless, it’s probably interesting–whatever happened to bring them together. But of course, it is totally not happening. Silence envelops the pair.
She looks across the room and her eyes settle on a man drinking a Kyoto cold brew. She smiles.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, cafe, coffee, date, drug addiction, Interpol, Kyoto, relationships, tattoo | posted in Him, Man, Woman
“Why did you bring that thing back,” she asked, knowing the answer. “What would you have done,” K replied, reminding her that she had been present that evening at the fat man’s house; reminding her that she had been present when the fat man forced the painting on them, exclaiming, “This one is my favorite and I want you to have it.”
How the fat man could tell “this one” apart from the others was anyone’s guess: countless framed images of Nordic women in various states of ecstasy–heads cocked, hair tousled, etc.–and undress adorned the walls of his modest middle-class home.
(Although she pretended not to overhear, she had heard the fat man whisper something like, “This one reminds me of your girlfriend,” before handing K the painting that now occupied a prominent space in their alcove.)
“It’s creepy,” she huffed before marching into the bedroom.
“I’ll throw it out tomorrow,” K said meagerly.
When K woke up in the morning his girlfriend was gone from their bed. He found her in the painting next to the Nordic, face in a frozen, forced smile, eyes pleading but also seductive, body contorted erotically and unnaturally.
He decided to keep the painting.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, domesticity, erotic, fat, Man, Nordic, painting | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
There was one bottle of wine in her wine thing that was off limits. Other wines would be bought, drank, bought again; but this particular wine was not to be quaffed unless the most spectacular occasion presented itself. She waved away his contention that the opening of a nice bottle of wine was its own occasion, offering instead: “Do something deserving of recognition, and I will open this bottle. Just for you.” An obstinate sort, he committed to doing not one “…thing deserving of recognition,” but rather many:
He cured cancer. He deflected that big meteor that was projected to destroy earth. He saved poor children. He repaired her ugly relationship with her family. He was, like, totally okay with her guy friends. He fought with rebel forces.
She was impressed by the things he did and readied to open said bottle of wine, one evening, over candlelight. “Wait,” he said, touching her hand. “Everything bad is in there–poverty, jealousy, illness. If you open that bottle the world will go back to how it was.”
She set the bottle down and moved to kiss him. But she set it too close to the edge of the dining room table.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, cancer, family, poverty, romance, wine | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
I didn’t have much money–in fact, but a lowly cog in the T education system, I still don’t. So after my parents were cremated I kept their ashes at my local temple; temples allow you to “temporarily” stash remains there if you can’t afford a decent(ish) burial plot. See, when death happens, it is customary to offer proper closure. Which seems to require an expensive whole in the ground.
I didn’t really need closure–it’s such a subjective concept, besides. But, you know, closure is what’ done. So whatever; I stashed my parents in the corner of my aforementioned local temple until I had enough money for closure.
But my particular profession promises no riches–in contrast to, say, selling drugs or sex–so I had to find other means.
I called K.
“Kill these people.” He named three people. “I’ll give you X dollars and you’ll be able to put your parents to rest.”
So I did. And I was handsomely compensated, thus. But on my way to get my parents I passed in front of a particular department store that sells things I like.
Three hours later I phoned K again. He seemed to understand. Then he named two more names.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, buddhism, burial, capitalism, class, death, money, temple | posted in Me, Short Fiction
K wondered why she kept herself in the dark,why she never bothered to turn on a lamp or overhead light or why she never lit one of the countless candles with which she had peppered her upper-middle class residence. Indeed, when he joined her for an evening cocktail or whatever, they were never alone, for the darkness kept them company until the sun (he often stayed the night because there were totally serious) chased it away.
He asked her once: “Why don’t we light a candle?” She rebuffed him: “Those candles are all made from the bodies of former lovers. For obvious reasons I don’t want to burn them.” It kinda made sense. To sit in the darkness, indeed to embrace it, seemed to suggest to K’s petulant intellect that her world was–figuratively–lighted by the affections of men.
But K grew uncomfortable with the idea of old flames hanging around during their intimate moments. He talked himself out of burning her house down. Instead, after dinner one evening he doused himself in her finest vodka and lit himself on fire. She was probably impressed with his devotion; but she never found jealousy to be an attractive quality.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, burn, candle, fiction, fire, flame, love, relationships, romance, tundish, vodka | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
It took him much too long to realize that his new tufted-back chairs were eating his other pieces of furniture. In fact, it was not until the girl he, like, was totally in love with said to him one morning, K, your dresser looks sad, that he realized the ordinariness of his world was creeping toward impasse.
Or whatever.
She was right, the girl he, like, was totally in love with: his dresser did look sad. An inquisitive sort, she pried further: Why did you get such a sad dresser? She figured it was some sort of high intellectual thing to surround oneself with negative affect–K being a high intellectual and all. The truth was that K’s dresser was less sad than afraid–fearful that today would be the day that K’s new tufted-back chairs would decide to eat him. K hadn’t really noticed that his furniture was slowly disappearing: he was in love and when one is in love, one doesn’t really notice things.
But there is one thing K will notice: tomorrow his tufted-back chairs will decide to go after the girl he, like, is totally in love with. He’ll notice, too, tears falling from his dresser’s eyes.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, chairs, dresser, fear, furniture, intellectual, love, Man, melancholy, sadness, woman | posted in Short Fiction, Woman
The clerk scrawled something on my receipt before stuffing it in its pretty envelope and handing it to me: her phone number. Call me. She made the shape of that with her mouth before guiding me to the door in that way that clerks do at snobby retail joints.
……….
Hello? You could tell she wasn’t used to talking on the phone.
Hi. This is K. From earlier today. You gave me your number.
I let her lead the conversation since this was her doing. She asked who the scarf was for. I told her. She asked how long we had been together. I told her that too. She asked if I loved her. I told her yes very much.
Then she told me about the flood. The poor are liquifying, she said. We don’t have much time.
She told me about the tallest building in the city. All the exclusive retailers are moving to the top floor so our most special clientele can continue shopping. The poor won’t rise that high. She was confident. We appreciate your business and look forward to your continued patronage. She hung up.
How thoughtful, I thought. But I don’t know how to swim.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, capitalism, class, flood, luxury, poor, relationships, shopping | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
There was something sinister waiting for K. He sensed it when he pulled up to the woman’s house. He sensed it when she greeted him at the door. She gave K a warm hug, and though he was outwardly receptive to it the way heterosexual men are always receptive to any sort of physical contact with attractive women, his insides recoiled from her touch.
He didn’t understand. While there had always been something incongruous about the woman, K had attributed it to the fact that she owned a hideous scarf that forestalled otherwise sartorial perfection. Worse, she insisted on wearing it.
The woman led K to the kitchen where she was readying a stilted romantic dinner. Wine? she offered, uncorking a bottle of Q.
She handed him a glass. K jostled its stem and watched the red liquid agitate. He used to drink Q regularly because it matched some girl’s lipstick. After she killed herself, he stopped drinking it for that reason. The woman offered a toast, her smile smeared with the perfect shade of red.
K put his wine on the counter and dove inside. The undertow pulled at him, as the woman brought his glass to her lips.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, date, lipstick, relationships, scarf, suicide, wine | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
She told me to go to a bookstore on the corner of this street and that one. She knew I liked to read. I’ll meet you there, she texteded.
Men were milling around inside, perusing pedantic books they’d never read or understand. I approached a bookshelf and pulled on a tome called The History of Madness. I opened to page whatever. In the margins somebody had scribbled in red pencil: you can never go back.
She saddled up next to me. I shut the book and gave her a platonic hug. She was impressively dressed in black and white: I missed the memo–I was not in any decent color scheme. Do you know what this place is, she asked. It’s a speakeasy. She smiled.
A man emerged from behind the poetry section to lead us into the bar, where we both got really drunk. I told her about my problems: money, cocaine, you. We drew inane pictures of interspecies struggles. Then it was time to go.
I gave her another platonic hug. She faded into the night and I thought about that anonymous red message. Then I didn’t go after her. To do otherwise would have been madness.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, books, bookstore, cocaine, Foucault, history, literacy, madness, Michel Foucault, poetry, relationships, speakeasy | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
Fatness doesn’t photograph well. That’s what I told her when she asked to be my muse. She shied from my gaze after that, hiding herself under blankets and layers of clothes. I walked in on her when she was in the bathroom doing something naked in front of the mirror. She screamed at me. That was in the summer.
She fucked somebody while I was away, somebody who liked fat women. I didn’t care. I fucked a skinny woman while I was away. She cared. She screamed at me. That was in the fall.
In the winter she approached me, wanting to be my muse again. Take your clothes off. I hadn’t bothered to look at her in months; her body–barely a body at all now–both horrified and aroused me. Let me get my camera. She fucked somebody again, recently. I cared this time. I hadn’t fucked anybody since the last time I did that, but that wasn’t why I cared.
In the spring she died of starvation. I took one last photo before having her buried.
3 Comments | tags: affect, body image, cheating, death, deception, fat, photo, photography, relationships, romance, seasons, skinny, starvation, thinness | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
With concerned fingers she traced the wounds on K’s back. What happened?
…
He made up his mind some time ago to stop lying to women, even to the ones who lied to him and to the ones who lied to themselves.
So he told her about the woman who had evil in her skin, the woman who dug her fingernails–always immaculately manicured and long enough to make Trent Reznor jealous–into his back whenever they groped and pawed at each other. The marks the woman left always turned into festering sores that gave way to sinewy scars. He saw a doctor once. A woman did this? He never went back.
He told her how he stopped taking his shirt off in hot yoga classes or going to the beach or otherwise appearing half naked in public (men like to do all those things). He told her how intimate moments with subsequent women ended before they began because his refusal to take his shirt off when he fucked them bespoke serious mental problems.
…
I like this scar the best, she said, and bit into it.
K jerked away, but by then it was too late; she had already disappeared into his wound.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, beach, doctor, hot yoga, masochism, Nine Inch Nails, romance, scars, wound | posted in Her, Him, Woman
I sent a glass of vodka over to the woman like they do in the movies, primarily because she didn’t have a drink in front of her but also because men do those things hoping for sex. She was sitting at the bar in an expensive dress probably purchased by a guy no longer around. The bartender set the glass down in front of her and gingerly gestured my way while saying something appropriate. The woman said nothing and neither did she raise her gaze from where it was–down. The bartender shrugged her shoulders and went about her business.
The woman took the glass in one well-maintained hand and with eyes still downcast poured it [the glass of vodka] out all over the bar top. She then set it [the glass empty of vodka] back down in front of her. What she did next was odd: she rose from her bar stool, unzipped her dress, and let it fall from her shoulders. She was wearing Agent Provocateur; I could tell because I once bought the same matching underwear set for a girl no longer around.
She turned and walked away from the dress at her feet and also, from me.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, emotions, lingerie, prosthetic, vodka, woman | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
This is a/the brief story of K’s brief love affair with an expensive watch.
K bought a watch once that was way too expensive. But he just had to have it.
He took very good care of it. But one day he was careless and scratched it. Maybe he hit it on something or something. K was upset for a long time over that scratch. But scratches are like this: the first one is always awful but they get easier with time. They become a record of occurrences–a temporal journey or some such.
So eventually he would scratch the shit out of it doing something impractical and end up caring all the more for his watch. And when it would break down, he would rush to get it fixed (it’s expensive to fix an expensive watch). Because that’s love.
But one day his watch betrayed him. When he wasn’t looking it vanished. (Yes, just like that.) He was sad and didn’t understand.
So he shrugged his shoulders and went to the mall to buy a new one. That’s when he realized that his watch must have also stolen his wallet.
How would he ever tell time again?
1 Comment | tags: affect, capitalism, consumerism, scratch, thief, time piece, watch | posted in Uncategorized
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.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, american express, Anna Torv, capitalism, credit card, debt, money, shopping, transparency | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
The very last conversation they had went like this probably:
K: Why are you being mean to me?
Her: I’m not being mean. I’m trying to be indifferent.
K: Trying to be indifferent? Seems like a contradiction to me.
Her: [Slams door.]
The next morning, K zipped his suitcase, folded the linens, and left. He made sure to wake before dawn so she wouldn’t hear. But he knew she was awake and listening from inside the guest bedroom, where she had taken to ensconcing herself everyday since all the bad stuff happened.
By now she had monsterized K to her friends. He could do the same, you know? But who would he tell? And who would care? And wasn’t there some kind of implicit confidentiality pact, besides?
As a final menacing gesture to prove a point that was mediocre at best, K nicked her brand new Clearasil before he left. Later, he will smother his cat o’ nine tails in it before flogging himself.
Much later he will hear–through the usual outlets–that the man she met on the internet two days after they broke up kidnapped her and demanded a handsome ransom.
K will try to be indifferent.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, break up, Clearasil, indifference, internet, kidnapping, ransom, relationships, thief | posted in Her, Him
A tattoo artist by trade, but also a bit of a creep, the woman had long fantasized about kidnapping an unwitting man, drugging him, and tattooing a large cock on his back. She theorized that in doing so, the man would absorb the qualities of the animal. She was also totally into astrology.
She envisioned the perfect man: he was neither too tall nor too muscular; he was probably not very nice, and probably did not have a tattoo on his back already. As fate would have it, she spied such a man one night at a bar. Pressing her breasts together, she approached him….
….sucking face, or whatever, as they danced across her foyer, she extracted from her back pocket a cloth soaked in chemical and pressed it to the man’s face. He then fell to the floor.
She readied her tattooing things and began undressing the man. Removing his shirt, she frowned, for there on the man’s back was a tattoo already–an erect penis and accompanying testicles. [You saw that coming.]
What a dick, she muttered with a sigh. [That too.] A naturally pleasant woman, she called him a cab and rolled his body out to the curb.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, artist, astrology, chickens, relationships, sexuality, tanizaki, tattoo, tattoos | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
