Tag Archives: alcohol
The dazzle of the evening – fancy cocktails, lots of cleavage, rolled up sleeves – was eclipsed by the weight of inevitable failure.
She took me to a french restaurant, where we sat rooftop and looked out at the decaying skyline. Ever the portrait of dark sophistication, she sat contemplatively in the embrace of the day’s remaining shadows, her gaze drawn to something beyond my right shoulder.
“There’s a building on fire over there,” she said, removing the olives from her martini. “It’s pretty bad.” When I first met her, she was, to me, impossibly unapproachable. I made up a bullshit story about wanting to adopt her dog.
“Is there a lot of smoke,” I replied, losing myself in her eyes.
“Yeah.” She lifted her martini. “People are jumping.”
“I imagine it’ll spread soon.”
She scrutinized the scene behind me. “Probably. We’re the only ones left up here. At least we won’t have to pay. But my martini is almost gone.”
She was right. I could feel an uncomfortable warmth biting at my neck.
“Do you want some of this?”
“I think mezcal is disgusting.”
“Are we in trouble?”
She nodded silently, took my hand and pressed her lips to my knuckles.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, death, disaster, fire, flash fiction, french, french food, martini, mezcal, relationships, rooftop, Short Fiction, short story, smoke | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
By degrees, the night swallowed us, leaving her luxury SUV to grope its way to civilization. Her relatives didn’t live far, but in the rural midwest it doesn’t take much to transport you to the edge of the world.
“I need a drink,” I said, taking her hand. “Let’s never do that again. Until next year of course.” I glanced at her profile.
She was crying inaudibly, eyes focused on the crisp white beams of light projecting from the front of her Volvo.
“You need a drink, too,” I said gently.
When the city emerged later, we were dismayed to find nothing but empty streets and solemn lampposts.
Still we drove, desperate for an alcoholic reprieve from our holiday traumas. We settled on a kitschy hotel on the border of the bad part of town. In the bar was a handful of middle-class refugees like us. The bartender, the Death Star tattooed on his forearm, looked inexplicably tragic in his vest and bowtie.
I ordered our drinks and followed her to the end of the bar. Less than ten minutes later I ordered two more drinks. This was a blatant attempt at escape. She put her head on my shoulder.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, bow tie, Death Star, drink, drinking, family, fiction, flash fiction, holidays, luxury, Moon Rise, relationships, Saint Louis, Short Fiction, short story, Star Wars, SUV, trauma, vest, Volvo | posted in Short Fiction
I made myself a drink with his expensive scotch and lay on his expensive couch. For some reason, I felt uneasy. “K?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “K?” I asked again, deciding that he, under the influence of too much alcohol, passed out somewhere out of view. I turned on the television and watched a show about winter in upstate New York.
I fell asleep.
When I woke up, my coat had been thrown over me. K was banging around in the kitchen.
I sat up. “What time is it?”
“Five,” he called from behind me.
“What are you doing up?”
“Making waffles. Want some?”
“I guess,” I whined.
He dropped a plate of waffles on my lap, returned to the kitchen.
We hadn’t spoken about what had happened several nights prior, and amidst the lunacy of the waffle conversation, I felt the need to speak up.
“K,” I said from his couch. “I’m going to kill you.”
“Huh,” he replied cooly. “I feel the same way.”
I didn’t get the joke he was trying to make. He continued: “How are the waffles?”
“Fine,” I replied, not yet aware of what had just happened.
Then an uncomfortable silence settled in.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, breakfast, couch, death, flash fiction, murder, relationships, Rochester, scotch, Short Fiction, short story, Upstate, Upstate New York, waffles, winter | posted in Short Fiction
And so we went to Thirsty Thursday, as her short-haired friend liked to call it. Thirsty Thursday was the cutesy name for the four of us gathering around her friend’s dining room table making stilted, domestic chit-chat and drinking poorly made gin-and-tonics.
Thirsty Thursday used to just be three, but her friend went and got herself a boyfriend – bald, midwestern, decently friendly. He worked in a train yard, kept a tally of how many vagrants he busted riding the rails.
I drank six poorly made gin-and-tonics, slept until 2 pm. I woke up with a terrible headache and a half-baked plan to take up model railroad.
“Enjoy yourself last night?”
Her voice rattled against the insides of my skull, causing me to wince. “I always do.”
“You wouldn’t shut up about trains and” – a dramatic pause – “their symbolism as great modernity or some shit.”
I dropped my head back on the pillow. “Sounds like something I’d say. Trains are always going forward after all. Progress.”
“Whatever.”
I closed my eyes. “Remember how I used to live next to some tracks?”
“Yeah. I used to fantasize about your death by train.”
She heard me sigh, then added: “Now that would be progress.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, death, domesticity, fiction, flash fiction, gin, Gin and tonic, hang over, modernity, murder, progress, railroad, relationships, Short Fiction, Thirsty Thursday, thursday, train, travel | posted in Me
For a moment neither of us spoke. She had taken up smoking, was practiced in exhaling through her nose. It was cool, I admit. She leaned hard on her elbows, took a moment to glare at me, and jammed her cigarette violently into its ashtray. Music from a neighbor’s stereo was stirring somewhere outside.
“It’s a terrible thing, what happened,” she sighed, lighting another cigarette.
I couldn’t disagree, but I said nothing. She had painted her apartment this odd shade of light blue. Through the haze (she had been smoking all night), the walls took on a dinghy, worn look – like a discarded Tiffany’s bag.
“What did you expect,” she said abruptly, pissed that I wasn’t listening. “You left. I had to stay here. I threw out all your shit and painted over your poems. They were good, really good. But they had to go.”
My eyes burned from the smoke, and from fourteen hours of driving. I swallowed the rest of my martini.
“I write fiction now,” I said in a way that I found impressively detached. Then I walked to her desk and unearthed a Sharpie from under a pile of cords, papers, and letters (unopened) from me.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, art, cigarette, fiction, flash fiction, heart break, life, love, martini, music, poetry, relationships, Sharpie, Short Fiction, short story, smoking, Tiffany & Co. | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I refused to finish the bottle of sake she brought over.
I didn’t like her much, and neither did she care for me. We were bored, worn out by too much solitude. So I cooked her dinner, touched her elbow. She left before dark and before I could touch her in better places.
“Keep the sake,” she said with false candor.
“Gladly,” I replied, flatly.
Alone in my apartment, I snatched up the glimmering green bottle of alcohol, held it close. My distorted reflection mocked my equally distorted existence.
Then, following protocol, I wrote her name on the bottle before putting it in the refrigerator with the other unfinished bottles of refrigerated alcohol other women had brought over and left behind. Countless kinds of cheap white wine, expensive vermouth, decently sophisticated beer, pretentious red wine. Now fancy sake.
I examined each bottle, touched carefully and purposefully each bottle, as though handling the delicate women whose feminine names adorned each bottle.
Satisfied that my record of romantic failures was still in tact, and indeed growing, I closed the refrigerator and spent the night – just like every night – curled up next to it, lulled to sleep by its gentle and accusatory hum.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, date, dating, failure, flash fiction, red wine, refrigerator, relationships, sake, Short Fiction, short story, vermouth, white wine, women | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“You know,” she said, curling up in the passenger seat and pressing her cheek against its red leather, “I had this dream last night. You were made of pizza and I ate you.”
She reached across the console and rested her hand on mine, concernedly.
She continued: “It was awful. I felt like calling you, but I knew you were sleeping.”
Bullshit, I thought. She hadn’t called me in months. She only agreed to go out with me tonight because I told her – to my karma’s horror – that I was dying. We drank too much wine, and, in her drunken state, she decided that her dream portended my demise. Then she asked if I thought she had gotten fat.
In our months apart she got a new boyfriend and I got a new car. I stuffed her in the passenger seat and drove her home.
My car idling in her driveway, its headlights glaring at the back of an unfamiliar vehicle, she refused to remove her hand. Her house was dark.
“If K is so great,” I huffed, “where is he tonight?”
She sighed, said nothing. Then she moved to kiss me but sank her teeth into my face instead.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, boyfriend, break up, cannibalism, dream, flash fiction, girlfriend, house, leather, love, new car, pizza, relationships, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
The sommelier scoffed when I asked for a bottle of her boldest red. “It’s very exclusive,” she said with arrogance.
I found her whole performance to be off-putting. But I held my tongue.”I’ll take it,” I said, holding her gaze.
The sommelier disappeared momentarily before returning with a dark bottle splayed on a fluffy white towel, like a newly born aristocrat being presented in court.
“This way, sir,” she said, indicating a private room. “As I said, this bottle is very exclusive.”
The sommelier led me into the room, which contained only a small table and corkscrew. There was no wine glass.
“Take your time,” she said, disinterest hanging in the air long after she closed the door behind her.
I corked the bottle and a woman climbed out.
“What can I do for you,” she asked.
“Put things back how they used to be,” I pleaded. I wanted her to fix everything that went wrong. I wanted her to make me someone deserving of the love of the woman who haunts my dreams.
“Very well,” she said, misunderstanding, and disappeared back into the bottle of wine.
I fell to my knees in despair, but hoping for a refund.
3 Comments | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, fiction, flash fiction, love, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, sommelier, wine, women | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
Overcome with self-loathing, K nevertheless continued to coax the girl. He sighed to himself, wondering what he got out of these rituals. He sighed again, then ordered her another martini.
A practiced man in this regard, K already knew what she would look like underneath her top. Her breasts would be decent, her stomach would be tight. She would have a tattoo decorating some body part. This did not excite K. But he pressed on. He had already determined that she was wearing a thong and made inferences about her grooming customs that were probably correct.
He knew what it would feel like. The bodies of women are always the same on the inside. He knew that she would thrash and moan and that he would respond accordingly. She would say amazing things under his spell. He would do the same in kind.
The charade bored K. It even disgusted him. Yet after tonight, he would do it again. He was probably already thinking about it.
“Be rough with me,” said the girl. K sighed and retrieved a knife from the kitchen, eliciting a frown from the girl – not that rough!
K handed her the knife and closed his eyes.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, body, boredom, flash fiction, knife, martini, masochism, sadism, sadomasochism, sex, sexuality, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
K designed a high rise in the likeness of his favorite girlfriend. She wasn’t actually his girlfriend, however – more of a fetish object, a “girlfriend.” In fact, he had gone out with her only once.
She had agreed to a second date and then proceeded to stand him up. He waited for two hours at the fanciest rooftop lounge in the city.
That’s when, staring absently at the skyline over a double shot of something expensive, he decided to design a building in her image. Every Tuesday at 9 pm – the day and time of the second date that never was – he ascended to the rooftop lounge to watch poorly paid workers labor over the construction of his favorite girlfriend.
But one night, after too much expensive alcohol, he got angry at her and ordered her demolition.
He watched with coldness in his eyes as the wrecking ball tore holes in her half-completed body. He thought he heard her cry out – from somewhere under all that concrete, glass, and metal.
He was sad to see her fall. He knew he would miss her. But he was also sad because he knew that, next Tuesday at 9, he would have nothing to do.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, architect, bar, body, City, death, demolition, flash fiction, love, relationships, romance, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Man, The Woman
“I feel her perfume on me still,” K said, fidgeting and gasping. “I don’t know, it’s just…on me.”
The date he went on went poorly. The woman sat politey in her chair and drank the expensive drink K dutifully purchased. Then she went home while he was busy paying the tab. He never touched her – the goal of any date, unachieved. Not even a handshake.
Later, not entirely sure what happened and not necessarily upset about it, he began to feel the effects of her perfume. It was pleasant to the nose (expensive, K could tell), but heavy on the skin, like a flak jacket or the lead thing you wear at the dentist during x-rays.
K spent an agonizing evening on the floor of his modest apartment, air seeping in fits from the holes in his body. She was beautiful and K would have pleasured himself over the toilet, making up for intimate contact denied. But the weight was crippling. So he left even himself untouched.
Sitting in front of me, K’s body leaned like a dying flower.
“Can I have her number,” I asked.
“Fuck off,” he replied with his last breath. “I think she likes me.”
1 Comment | tags: affect, alcohol, body, death, dentist, flash fiction, masturbation, perfume, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
“What are you reading,” I inquired in my best disinterested voice.
Silently, she held her book to her face to reveal its title: An Exegesis on Repressed Masculinity.
I suppressed an eye roll. “Is it interesting?”
“Interesting enough,” she shrugged. “It’s probably the story of your life: sex and anguish, sex and decay, sex and self.”
“That sums it up.”
She smiled.
“May I?” I extended a hand across the bar top.
My name, in elegant font, was printed along the book’s spine. And my photo – an old one, taken with my now dead dog – was on the back.
“Where did you get this?”
“That guy over there. He’s the author. And” – she raised her ring finger – “my husband.”
He kissed her on the cheek and drank the rest of her martini. “Ready,” he asked in my voice.
She nodded, and then addressed me: “Keep it. I’ve read it eighteen times.” She had written her number on the first page.
We had sex two days later.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she breathed heavily afterward, “but my husband would like to join us now. Come on out, K.”
I watched in terror as I stepped out of her bedroom closet.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, book, dog, flash fiction, martini, masculinity, picture, relationships, sex, Short Fiction | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
We hadn’t seen each other since college. Our friendship ended abruptly because we were in love with the same woman. He wanted to fight over her. I politely declined and wished him well.
I wasn’t surprised when he told me of their breakup. Everybody knew that this particular woman had been adamant about remaining a virgin until marriage.
“You lucked out, K,” he said with a mouthful of vodka. “She never caved.”
The way he described their sexless courtship – hours of cuddling and making out – was rather charming.
His eyes lit up. “I saw her last week. She called and told me that she’s married now. Then she invited me over. Before we broke up, she promised to have sex with me once she was married – even if she wasn’t married to me. I guess she was serious.”
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
“And her husband?”
“She told me that you’re her husband and that you’ll probably kill me. She said you’ll have a sharp knife with you.”
I put the knife on the table and shrugged. “I’m not going to kill you with this.” I nodded toward his empty martini glass and watched his throat tighten. “Thanks for the drink.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, body, death, flash fiction, love, marriage, martini, murder, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story, virgin, virginity, vodka | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Uncategorized
“If I had anywhere better to be, I’d be there. Believe me.”
The bartender shrugged. “Get yourself a girlfriend or something. You’ve been here every day this week. It’s getting pathetic.”
It was my turn to shrug: “I’m too narcissistic. I wouldn’t know what to do with a girlfriend. I mean, I’d have to stop thinking about myself so much.”
She scoffed. Then she took her arm off and put it on the countertop. “Problem solved.”
I was amazed by her insight. With her arm, I was free to indulge my deepest narcissistic desires and find comfort in a woman’s touch without giving anything in return. I snatched her arm up and left a bigger tip than usual.
Back in my apartment I caressed the arm and pressed it to my face. I kissed the back of its hand. I put its fingers in my mouth.
“Fuck me,” it moaned. Instinctually, I ripped my right arm off and threw it to the floor.
……….
“What’s wrong,” it asked disappointedly.
……….
“I don’t want this.” I put her arm back on the countertop. “It wanted to have sex.”
“And?”
“Sex leads to complications,” I huffed, proud that my ego was still in tact.
3 Comments | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, body, ego, flash fiction, narcissism, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me
“Nervous much? Or do you always never look a girl in the eye?”
Her grammar—not necessarily incorrect—bugged me. It reminded me of the way a graduate student would address some pressing social concern.
“Sorry, habit I guess.” I attempted to elaborate on a study some sociologist conducted that proves men are poor at maintaining eye contact.
She rolled her eyes. “Here,” she said, grabbing the expensive vodka from my bar cart without asking. I had upset her. Moments earlier she had gone on a rant about how women shouldn’t wear underwear when they wear tight dresses. I, naturally, hadn’t minded the conversation, though I did wonder about sanitation.
But now she sat before me with her head cocked way back like you do when you catch the rain in your mouth. She filled her mouth with vodka and waited for me to drink from it.
I didn’t want to, having the day prior watch a documentary about birds feeding their young. I made a joke about liking “my martinis dirty.”
She displayed two fingers, reached under her dress, and then used them to stir the vodka in her mouth.
She tried to meet my gaze. I looked away.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, dress, eye contact, flash fiction, gaze, gin, martini, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, underwear | posted in Her, Me, Woman
“I’ll have that ‘up’ please,” I said, shooting my thumb into the air as though I were a hitchhiker. The bartender smiled. I watched her limbs labor over my cocktail.
“Would you like a garnish,” she asked, transferring my cocktail from shaker to glass.
“A woman. Blonde. Green eyes. Thin.”
Without a word, the bartender snatched my cocktail and disappeared somewhere behind the bar, leaving me with a muted TV broadcasting the finance channel and a juke box that played only Soundgarden songs.
She returned a moment later. “Here you are sir,” she said through grated teeth, slamming my glass on the bar top.
I felt her eyes on me.
I grabbed the stem of the glass and readied to swirl the liquid inside.
“Careful sir,” the bartender said. “She might drown if you do that.”
Bringing my cocktail to my face, I looked closely at the woman inside: blonde, light eyes. She was treading water and growing tired. I looked at the bartender.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” She forced the words.
I scrutinized the woman swimming in my cocktail. “Actually,” I began, “she looks a little fat. I hate to be difficult, but would you remake this?”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, body, cocktail, death, drink, flash fiction, Short Fiction, short story, Soundgarden | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
She came back from her trip to the coast with tan legs and a long scar across her face.
We drank cocktails at midday, avoiding the obvious topic: the scar on her face. “Thank you for not getting fat,” I said in all seriousness. “You’re welcome,” she replied.
The scar told a violent story I only partially understood. I had never seen her drink more than two cocktails at a time. She finished her third–orange and pink, too much ice–and yanked her skirt down an inch. She must have caught me looking for tan lines.
“I was attacked by a shark,” she said. She had been too far out. She waved off the Coast Guard when they tried to retrieve her. She swam further. Then the attack.
“I think a bull shark attacked me,” she explained. I said nothing.
She pulled a pen from her purse and began sketching on the back of our bill.
“This is what a bull shark looks like.”
I examined the figure. “That’s my friend K,” I said.
“Well he’s dead now. The Coast Guard killed him.” She stood, yanked her skirt down again and left.
I grabbed my cellphone and punched his number in.
Voicemail.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, death, phone, scar, shark, vacation | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
Holding my chocolate peanut butter cups in a gingerly fashion–the way you might handle an injured pigeon–, I waited patiently at the register. I was the only customer, and the cashier was nowhere in sight. Having no urgent business to tend to (except, of course, my chocolate), I felt no real need to shout for attention. I had never been in before today. But K, who already calls himself a “regular,” told me that the cashier was pretty.
I thought about just stealing my peanut butter cups; who would know? My devious train of thought was interrupted, however, by a quiet sobbing coming from somewhere toward the back of the shop, from behind a curtain that was ostensibly where employees sought refuge from their customers.
I pulled the curtain back. It was the cashier, her back toward me, her shoulders heaving. Her cellphone, still illuminated, was in her hand. Not wanting to startle her, I dutifully scurried back to my spot at the register. Moments later she emerged. Her eyes were red and vulnerable. I wanted to say something bold and heroic. I wanted to buy her a drink or offer a tissue.
Instead: “Just these peanut butter cups, please.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, candy, cashier, cell phone, chocolate, desire, love, relationships, retail, sadness, tears, thief, tissue | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
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
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
