Welcome to the Jumpstart Blog! Here you can post your work from class and also make comments on other people's work.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Writing Prompt #1
Write about the experience of losing something. The lost thing can be something material or intangible. If you can, try to also include the experience of finding something unexpected in the process.
Here's what I wrote in class, transcribed but not really edited...
She wasn't the type to lose things. In fact, she didn't even understand how people misplaced car keys, umbrellas, leather gloves. Her home was tidy--keys on the hook by the door, laundry sorted, folded, neatly returned to bureaus and closets, legos and Matchbox cars back in their bins. At work, she was the one people turned to to keep projects on track--she knew where every magazine page was supposed to be and who was, and wasn't, meeting their deadlines.
But her journal wasn't in the side pocket f the bag she carried to work every day. She had set the bag down beside the front door, below the hook for the keys. Her Blackberry was still there, it its pocket. So were the pages she brought home, planning to check that their colors were accurate after her son went to bed. Her sunglasses were there, tucked neatly in their case, always close at hand for protection from the blazing Phoenix sun.
But not the journal. Not the pages she filled night after night, trying to make sense of her emotions. Not the entries where she questioned whether she ever really loved her husband, where she sorted out the not-quite-guilty feelings she felt about the one night stands, where she found herself slowly finding her friendship with another man becoming more than that, when she and he became lovers. The journal was not where it belonged. In it, night after night for the past few weeks, she had written about how she was going to come clean, to tell her husband about the affair, the next day. And day after day she came up with an excuse not to--he already had a bad day at work, she was tired after a sleepless night, their son would hear them arguing.
Her lover, patient, had already left his wife, had faced the accusations, the tears, the financial threats. He had rented an apartment close to where they both worked, a place they'd slip away to at lunchtime or for a stolen hour at the end of the day. But she had not found the courage to tell her husband.
He was in the bathroom, taking far too long to shave and shower, a white line of steam shooting out from under the bathroom door. She knew he had it, knew he was reading every work about him, about her, about their marriage, about her lover. How she had longed to break free of the tidy house, the sorted laundry, the order of it all. How she had built her own prison for herself, and the only way out was to leave it--and him--behind. But now he knew.
She was free, she realized. She didn't have to tell him. Her journal had done it for her. She didn't have to worry about what to say, what to hold back, what to leave unsaid. Maybe she wouldn't have mentioned how she wasn't sure she ever loved him, and she surely would have skipped over the one night stands, but the thoughts and images were there now, in his head like a tumor. He would be angry, she knew, but when he read her thoughts about her lover, about the depth of their passion, she knew he would come to understand that she needed to do this, needed her freedom, needed her escape.
She grabbed her purse and her work bag, she kissed her son on the top of his head and she left, leaving her old life behind like a pile of dirty laundry.
Steph, this is an unnerving vignette--in the best possible way. I sympathize with this woman's predicament, and the thought that her husband has her journal is very anxiety-inducing. I would love to see this story developed further. I want to know whether he actually has the journal. Maybe she isn't completely sure, and he doesn't mention it for awhile, and she wouldn't know what to do...There are a lot of directions to take this, and I think it's an exciting beginning.
Hi Steph, I was attracted to the idea that the "loss" of the journal frees the woman from having to orchestrate what and how to tell her husband. ("She didn't have to worry about what to say, what to hold back, what to leave unsaid . . . ") That must feel very liberating, in a way, for someone who obviously micromanages just about everything in her life. I was attracted to that idea as, in odd way, thrusting her on the path to growth. Maybe she even planned the "loss" of her journal?
If it were not for the child-sized bed, the dimensions of which were more appropriate for the copulations of two elves, he probably would have succeeded in the act, or should he say acts (the first two of which, however, would be most aptly referred to as mere opening scenes), and displayed the gracefulness of a boxer, but alas his head had found his way into hers, and twice into the wall, prompting her to quip, “well if sex doesn’t work out for us, you’ll always have rugby.” But he wanted the sex “to work out,” and would not think twice when she spoke of sexual experiences with a former partner as a basis for what might feel good. He never complained of the pains radiating across his thighs that resulted from the position he needed to hold, and the will power with which it took to “hold out.”
When they were finally settled, his right thigh no longer cramped (never in his life had he had such a cramp, not even from autumn days spent on the soccer field, when one might easily justify a similar injury, rather than from the awkward maneuverings of two weary-bodied greenhorns attempting to find some sort of semblance of rhythm) he rose above her body and propped open his bedroom window. It was only then, and in this capacity, when the night had come to a standstill, that he could he address the smell, which he hesitated, in the most gentlemanly of ways, to ascribe to her. It was an odor that could tell a story, perhaps one might call pre-consummation, and it was surveying the room like a spirit in purgatory, awaiting an acknowledgement. He hoped to bring it some closure.
What struck him though, beyond the smell, which mind you was still present, and yet unacknowledged, or even the most obvious of revelations, the sheer sensuality and pleasure of the act, or perhaps a theologian might point to the incarnations of love, and that kind, was the revival in his spirit, even the transformation in his level of clairvoyance. When pre-coital, he could be described as a man with modest need for expressiveness, (only once had he admitted to loving her, and withheld all previous inclination to confess his three-year-long-bout of infatuation, before they’d become a “thing”), he was now post-coital, a man with vast perspective and ambition. Would this remarkable feeling dissipate, and he’d return to his default disposition, one with moderate expectation in life, and little yearn to express himself? Is this what it meant to be a eunuch he wondered, to rid oneself of the most beastly of temptations, and for the moment where libido meets it’s tamer, finds itself subdued and confined into a cage for which he possesses a spare key?
He yearned to expose his weaknesses, however unremarkable they maybe, perhaps he was concerned if he’d be a good father, and to “open up,” but the feeling was then overcome by something less abstract. It was more immediate, an insatiable hunger, a hunger so encompassing that the first thing he said to her after he had orgasmed for the last (third) time (the first two times of which he had done so discreetly, and without affectation to the left side of the bed, so that all that remained for the finale was but a mere droplet that precipitated a second quip, “well you’ll never be able to impregnate me like that”) was, “I could really go for a turkey sandwich.” To which she replied, “Who are you, George Costanza?” Genetics would dictate that, as repugnant as the image of a man of below average stature falls in the realm of a future self, it was very much a possibility that the man that would mature from the burdens of a domineering mother, an uncle who committed suicide, and both a recessive and dominant gene for balding, would manifest itself as a most accurate, and mortal representation of George Costanza (Was this the early-warning signs of fatalism?) Also he wanted to note that part of him wanted to impregnate her to at least know if his sperm was viable.
The George Costanza comment did nothing to make his appetite subside, and he opted to address the hunger, and left Maya lying in the crumpled sheets. In the disarray of the de-clothing pre-ceremony, he’d have footed his underwear to the edge of the bed. He reached his arm across the bed, and found only her undergarments. “Here,” with her underwear dangling at his fingertips, “if you want them.” “I thought you might want it as a memento,” she replied, smiling at him. She knew this would rile him, as her words were sometimes more Eros than the sight of her body, or the assurance behind her touches. Surely enough, he was physically “awake” again. “It would serve as a good medium with which to relay this story,” he added diluting her frankness. “Relay the story to whom,” she pressed? “To my doctor, when he asks me how I might have contracted genital warts.” “Oh, that’s really nice of you,” as Maya laughed, pinching his side for his crass words.
He continued thumbing for his underwear, and finally got the sense to look below the bed, and there it was, the curtain to the stage. “Found ‘em!” He swiped them up off the floor and slipped them over his knees, kissed Maya on the forehead, and warned he’d be back for some more. He then made his way out the bedroom door, opening it slightly to minimize the Creek. The arbiters of household justice, the benefactors to his eventual bedroom successes (grandchildren!), were only steps away in the master bedroom, and would not be pleased with an unexpected mid-night rouse. He eased the door quietly back into its closed position, and tip-toed down the stairs. Had the midnight romp awakened his parents, he wondered, and if so which part, the head-banging? He’d make sure that she‘d been relatively “quiet,” and at one point covered her mouth with his hand, which she responded to in kind by biting it. When he reached the kitchen, he wasted little time in putting together a deli-like sandwich, and slapped some meat and cheese between two pieces of bread, adding a dash of mayo. He laid it onto a plate, and brought it back upstairs.
When he reached the bedroom, she was asleep. Her silhouette was draped across his bed, leg-over-leg, with her arm coming across her breasts. She was beautiful, formed to his peculiar proclivities for the more exquisite types, not so much Asian, but a twinge in the eyes, and particularly in her most slender figure. (Years later, he’d find her beauty to be a thing of the past, merely a belief from a former self, a self no longer connected to the woman as myth.) He sat there eating, happy to be with her, happy to be full. She was the original, the first, and the standard for which all other sexual experiences would be based, and he was comfortable. Her eyes opened, “See something you like,” she asked, breaking his trance? He left the plate on the bed stand, and finished up the last bite, before curling up beside her, and wrapping his arm around her body. “Are you going to keep those on,” she asked, as she felt the buttons on the front of his checkered boxers press up against her butt?” “I feel more comfortable this way.” “But I want you to be naked with me.” He listened to her, and slipped them off. “Were you asleep,” he asked?” “No, I was just resting my eyes, and she moved her hand down. How’s he doing?” It feels sensitive he told her. “I’m the one that’s supposed to be sensitive, Costanza.” “I guess I took a lot out of you,” she resolved. He thought to himself that the experience was pleasurable but exhausting, for having a partner who had already partook in the act, he was convinced she’d be comparing. He imagined how she’d relay it to her friends, “he was like a novice fencer stabbing at his opponent mindlessly, not knowing where to strike, but demonstrating relentless persistence and the earnestness of a worthy combatant, finally succeeding, albeit briefly, once she let her guard down, and guided the epee for him.” He laughed. “What’s so funny,” she asked? “I have my own concept of how you’d share this moment with other people.”
I liked so much about this story. The attention to detail (the smell, thumbing for undies, description of the orgasms, for example) immediately created an intimacy for me as the reader. Then, the way the narrator intermingles commentary on both abstract and concrete issues made this character even more assessable. The fact that the male character really came alive for me, but not so much the female character, I think also says something in particular here.
Nim, this is a wonderful story. I love the honest way the male character assesses his situation. He explores each phase of the experience with a truth-seeking eye, and I feel like I've learned a lot from reading this! I also like how the prose is descriptive and somewhat abstract, but is then grounded by the female character's sarcasm and down-to-earth remarks. Very well done!...You should read "We Didn't" by Stuart Dybek.
Here's what I wrote in class, transcribed but not really edited...
ReplyDeleteShe wasn't the type to lose things. In fact, she didn't even understand how people misplaced car keys, umbrellas, leather gloves. Her home was tidy--keys on the hook by the door, laundry sorted, folded, neatly returned to bureaus and closets, legos and Matchbox cars back in their bins. At work, she was the one people turned to to keep projects on track--she knew where every magazine page was supposed to be and who was, and wasn't, meeting their deadlines.
But her journal wasn't in the side pocket f the bag she carried to work every day. She had set the bag down beside the front door, below the hook for the keys. Her Blackberry was still there, it its pocket. So were the pages she brought home, planning to check that their colors were accurate after her son went to bed. Her sunglasses were there, tucked neatly in their case, always close at hand for protection from the blazing Phoenix sun.
But not the journal. Not the pages she filled night after night, trying to make sense of her emotions. Not the entries where she questioned whether she ever really loved her husband, where she sorted out the not-quite-guilty feelings she felt about the one night stands, where she found herself slowly finding her friendship with another man becoming more than that, when she and he became lovers. The journal was not where it belonged. In it, night after night for the past few weeks, she had written about how she was going to come clean, to tell her husband about the affair, the next day. And day after day she came up with an excuse not to--he already had a bad day at work, she was tired after a sleepless night, their son would hear them arguing.
Her lover, patient, had already left his wife, had faced the accusations, the tears, the financial threats. He had rented an apartment close to where they both worked, a place they'd slip away to at lunchtime or for a stolen hour at the end of the day. But she had not found the courage to tell her husband.
He was in the bathroom, taking far too long to shave and shower, a white line of steam shooting out from under the bathroom door. She knew he had it, knew he was reading every work about him, about her, about their marriage, about her lover. How she had longed to break free of the tidy house, the sorted laundry, the order of it all. How she had built her own prison for herself, and the only way out was to leave it--and him--behind. But now he knew.
She was free, she realized. She didn't have to tell him. Her journal had done it for her. She didn't have to worry about what to say, what to hold back, what to leave unsaid. Maybe she wouldn't have mentioned how she wasn't sure she ever loved him, and she surely would have skipped over the one night stands, but the thoughts and images were there now, in his head like a tumor. He would be angry, she knew, but when he read her thoughts about her lover, about the depth of their passion, she knew he would come to understand that she needed to do this, needed her freedom, needed her escape.
She grabbed her purse and her work bag, she kissed her son on the top of his head and she left, leaving her old life behind like a pile of dirty laundry.
Steph, this is an unnerving vignette--in the best possible way. I sympathize with this woman's predicament, and the thought that her husband has her journal is very anxiety-inducing. I would love to see this story developed further. I want to know whether he actually has the journal. Maybe she isn't completely sure, and he doesn't mention it for awhile, and she wouldn't know what to do...There are a lot of directions to take this, and I think it's an exciting beginning.
ReplyDeleteHi Steph,
ReplyDeleteI was attracted to the idea that the "loss" of the journal frees the woman from having to orchestrate what and how to tell her husband. ("She didn't have to worry about what to say, what to hold back, what to leave unsaid . . . ") That must feel very liberating, in a way, for someone who obviously micromanages just about everything in her life. I was attracted to that idea as, in odd way, thrusting her on the path to growth. Maybe she even planned the "loss" of her journal?
Nim (Part 1)
ReplyDeleteIf it were not for the child-sized bed, the dimensions of which were more appropriate for the copulations of two elves, he probably would have succeeded in the act, or should he say acts (the first two of which, however, would be most aptly referred to as mere opening scenes), and displayed the gracefulness of a boxer, but alas his head had found his way into hers, and twice into the wall, prompting her to quip, “well if sex doesn’t work out for us, you’ll always have rugby.” But he wanted the sex “to work out,” and would not think twice when she spoke of sexual experiences with a former partner as a basis for what might feel good. He never complained of the pains radiating across his thighs that resulted from the position he needed to hold, and the will power with which it took to “hold out.”
When they were finally settled, his right thigh no longer cramped (never in his life had he had such a cramp, not even from autumn days spent on the soccer field, when one might easily justify a similar injury, rather than from the awkward maneuverings of two weary-bodied greenhorns attempting to find some sort of semblance of rhythm) he rose above her body and propped open his bedroom window. It was only then, and in this capacity, when the night had come to a standstill, that he could he address the smell, which he hesitated, in the most gentlemanly of ways, to ascribe to her. It was an odor that could tell a story, perhaps one might call pre-consummation, and it was surveying the room like a spirit in purgatory, awaiting an acknowledgement. He hoped to bring it some closure.
What struck him though, beyond the smell, which mind you was still present, and yet unacknowledged, or even the most obvious of revelations, the sheer sensuality and pleasure of the act, or perhaps a theologian might point to the incarnations of love, and that kind, was the revival in his spirit, even the transformation in his level of clairvoyance. When pre-coital, he could be described as a man with modest need for expressiveness, (only once had he admitted to loving her, and withheld all previous inclination to confess his three-year-long-bout of infatuation, before they’d become a “thing”), he was now post-coital, a man with vast perspective and ambition. Would this remarkable feeling dissipate, and he’d return to his default disposition, one with moderate expectation in life, and little yearn to express himself? Is this what it meant to be a eunuch he wondered, to rid oneself of the most beastly of temptations, and for the moment where libido meets it’s tamer, finds itself subdued and confined into a cage for which he possesses a spare key?
He yearned to expose his weaknesses, however unremarkable they maybe, perhaps he was concerned if he’d be a good father, and to “open up,” but the feeling was then overcome by something less abstract. It was more immediate, an insatiable hunger, a hunger so encompassing that the first thing he said to her after he had orgasmed for the last (third) time (the first two times of which he had done so discreetly, and without affectation to the left side of the bed, so that all that remained for the finale was but a mere droplet that precipitated a second quip, “well you’ll never be able to impregnate me like that”) was, “I could really go for a turkey sandwich.” To which she replied, “Who are you, George Costanza?” Genetics would dictate that, as repugnant as the image of a man of below average stature falls in the realm of a future self, it was very much a possibility that the man that would mature from the burdens of a domineering mother, an uncle who committed suicide, and both a recessive and dominant gene for balding, would manifest itself as a most accurate, and mortal representation of George Costanza (Was this the early-warning signs of fatalism?) Also he wanted to note that part of him wanted to impregnate her to at least know if his sperm was viable.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteThe George Costanza comment did nothing to make his appetite subside, and he opted to address the hunger, and left Maya lying in the crumpled sheets. In the disarray of the de-clothing pre-ceremony, he’d have footed his underwear to the edge of the bed. He reached his arm across the bed, and found only her undergarments. “Here,” with her underwear dangling at his fingertips, “if you want them.” “I thought you might want it as a memento,” she replied, smiling at him. She knew this would rile him, as her words were sometimes more Eros than the sight of her body, or the assurance behind her touches. Surely enough, he was physically “awake” again. “It would serve as a good medium with which to relay this story,” he added diluting her frankness. “Relay the story to whom,” she pressed? “To my doctor, when he asks me how I might have contracted genital warts.” “Oh, that’s really nice of you,” as Maya laughed, pinching his side for his crass words.
He continued thumbing for his underwear, and finally got the sense to look below the bed, and there it was, the curtain to the stage. “Found ‘em!” He swiped them up off the floor and slipped them over his knees, kissed Maya on the forehead, and warned he’d be back for some more. He then made his way out the bedroom door, opening it slightly to minimize the Creek. The arbiters of household justice, the benefactors to his eventual bedroom successes (grandchildren!), were only steps away in the master bedroom, and would not be pleased with an unexpected mid-night rouse. He eased the door quietly back into its closed position, and tip-toed down the stairs. Had the midnight romp awakened his parents, he wondered, and if so which part, the head-banging? He’d make sure that she‘d been relatively “quiet,” and at one point covered her mouth with his hand, which she responded to in kind by biting it. When he reached the kitchen, he wasted little time in putting together a deli-like sandwich, and slapped some meat and cheese between two pieces of bread, adding a dash of mayo. He laid it onto a plate, and brought it back upstairs.
When he reached the bedroom, she was asleep. Her silhouette was draped across his bed, leg-over-leg, with her arm coming across her breasts. She was beautiful, formed to his peculiar proclivities for the more exquisite types, not so much Asian, but a twinge in the eyes, and particularly in her most slender figure. (Years later, he’d find her beauty to be a thing of the past, merely a belief from a former self, a self no longer connected to the woman as myth.) He sat there eating, happy to be with her, happy to be full. She was the original, the first, and the standard for which all other sexual experiences would be based, and he was comfortable. Her eyes opened, “See something you like,” she asked, breaking his trance? He left the plate on the bed stand, and finished up the last bite, before curling up beside her, and wrapping his arm around her body. “Are you going to keep those on,” she asked, as she felt the buttons on the front of his checkered boxers press up against her butt?” “I feel more comfortable this way.” “But I want you to be naked with me.” He listened to her, and slipped them off. “Were you asleep,” he asked?” “No, I was just resting my eyes, and she moved her hand down. How’s he doing?” It feels sensitive he told her. “I’m the one that’s supposed to be sensitive, Costanza.” “I guess I took a lot out of you,” she resolved. He thought to himself that the experience was pleasurable but exhausting, for having a partner who had already partook in the act, he was convinced she’d be comparing. He imagined how she’d relay it to her friends, “he was like a novice fencer stabbing at his opponent mindlessly, not knowing where to strike, but demonstrating relentless persistence and the earnestness of a worthy combatant, finally succeeding, albeit briefly, once she let her guard down, and guided the epee for him.” He laughed. “What’s so funny,” she asked? “I have my own concept of how you’d share this moment with other people.”
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI liked so much about this story. The attention to detail (the smell, thumbing for undies, description of the orgasms, for example) immediately created an intimacy for me as the reader. Then, the way the narrator intermingles commentary on both abstract and concrete issues made this character even more assessable. The fact that the male character really came alive for me, but not so much the female character, I think also says something in particular here.
ReplyDeleteNim, this is a wonderful story. I love the honest way the male character assesses his situation. He explores each phase of the experience with a truth-seeking eye, and I feel like I've learned a lot from reading this! I also like how the prose is descriptive and somewhat abstract, but is then grounded by the female character's sarcasm and down-to-earth remarks. Very well done!...You should read "We Didn't" by Stuart Dybek.
ReplyDelete