My story is a love story.
Unlike Grace, I hate love stories.
But in a few minutes, here goes.
This story is supposed to be a love story.
It is slightly autobiographical.
But shitcan the computer stuff.
Devon
Full Version: Here starts Devon's early January story
Hey, trolls, it is going to a minute. Don't you want to post how much you hate me?
Reminder, my story is NOT in the contest.
And reminder, I have the $100 for PWR ready to mail after the voting which will be after 20th Jan.
And reminder, we have brought people out here who would have never come forth before.
And reminder, Ankhy, whom I worship, will not allow us to play favorites in the voting.
Ankhy is a mod one can trust, etc.
Story coming in a minute.
Dev
And reminder, I have the $100 for PWR ready to mail after the voting which will be after 20th Jan.
And reminder, we have brought people out here who would have never come forth before.
And reminder, Ankhy, whom I worship, will not allow us to play favorites in the voting.
Ankhy is a mod one can trust, etc.
Story coming in a minute.
Dev
Taken from the Mam book of inviting trolls because they are the attention whores.
I wanted something a bit autobio.
Here it comes.
Warning. I will bump this even though it is not the most volcanic story I have ever written.
Dev
Here it comes.
Warning. I will bump this even though it is not the most volcanic story I have ever written.
Dev
The Last Date, A Sudden Love Story by Devon Pitlor, MA econ
I. "$39 a month and this crap is all I get"
Danielle had answered every last stupid question about herself honestly in the profile, including the famous "ideal first date." A park, she wrote, just in a park in the springtime. Later it turned out to be in a dark, smoky brasserie, but the reasons are unclear for the switch and really don't matter. Danielle was sick of online dating. Her photo showed her exactly as she was, still a young 38 and still fairly smooth and lineless in the face. Guys checked in with tons of big, fancy stories...where they would take her...what kind of cars and incomes they had...where they hung out with their buds, as if Danielle cared. She wanted something akin to romance again. She wanted the bottomless feeling of falling deeper and deeeper for someone special. At work and in the supermarket, guys of all sorts approached her. They bored her silly. They all claimed to love children. Danielle had two, but she never felt the impulse to introduce them to any new man. She even briefly considered a dual posting in the Woman-seeking-Woman section, but discarded the idea because she knew she could never actually be attracted to another woman. She liked men, but her middle-class upbringing caused her to automatically do a triage according to benchmarks like reliability, honesty and, yes, income. If that hard-wired matrix had not been in place, she would have fucked the pizza boy long ago because, frankly, he was the cutest guy she had seen since her divorce with Gary .
II. Why Danielle hated Gary
Danielle loathed her ex-husband. Gary had cheated on her once and had come home drunk, confessed it and expected her to forgive him on the spot because of his unabashed honesty. Things didn't work that way. Cheat once, cheat all the time. She could never trust Gary again. He had been a luke-warm father too. He never took much interest in Radison and Berk until they were potty trained and up and running around, talking in decent sentences and able to return a thrown ball. Gary was, in effect, a prick. Danielle had trashed every memento of their twelve year marriage. How many women had Gary slept with before he told her about this last one? Danielle shuddered to think. She too, in blind fidelity, had had many opportunities as well. She should have taken some of them, but her breeding once again had kicked into gear, and she turned blind eyes to midday trysts with delivery men and garage mechanics. She rued that decision now. Some were nice-looking, and if that bastard Gary was cheating, she should have been too. Missed chances. Bitterness. Often Danielle entertained fantasies of finding and killing Gary.
III. Danielle decides not to submit a photo.
The $39 a month online dating site kept asking her for her photo and reminding her that it quadrupled her chances of getting hits. She had taken that route on the previous sites, and at length had decided that she was "too pretty." She wanted a guy who would read her personal statements instead of just look at her photo. So she refused to post a picture, and just like the dating site said, she got very few hits. Nobody was reading about her brains, talents and other sundry virtues. They wanted a pretty face. Danielle decided they wouldn't get hers. Her face was her own business.. as was her name.
IV. A previous date worth mentioning
A few months before enrolling in the new and more aggressive dating site, Danielle had met a man from another site who had been slightly different than the rest. They met, naturally, in a park. Edwin had arrived in a pick-up truck and quickly revealed himself to be the owner of a successful dog grooming business on the south side. He was handsome and had a full head of hair, two requirements Danielle insisted on. Edwin strolled with Danielle to a park bench, and as soon as they sat down, he opened the conversation with "I saw a UFO once." Then he proceeded, rather conventionally, to describe a fairly typical glowing disk. Danielle asked a few polite questions but was instead thinking about the topaz opaqueness of his eyes, which by the end of his UFO monologue, she decided were beautiful.
A few minutes of silence prevailed between them, and Danielle continued to examine Edwin’s eyes. She was about to comment on them when Edwin exclaimed: "Ever since the UFO, I have been a better lover. I am good in bed."
This was far too abrupt for Danielle on a first date, and the comment chilled whatever sensual feelings were coursing through her body before the comment gushed forth. She decided that Edwin was just another nutcase and started mentally searching for ways to shorten the date. On cue, her cellphone rang, and it was the lady from the alibi service calling her right on time. Danielle knew how long a date with a loser should last. She had set the time well. The alibi lady guided her through some remarks like "Oh my god" and "I’ll get there as soon as I can." The service was worth the pittance she paid for it.
She made follow-up excuses to Edwin and was leading him out of the park toward their cars, when he paused by a tree. Oblivious to her pressing "necessity," he looked down and pointed out some white mushrooms to her.
"Deadly," he mumbled. "They can kill you in mere minutes. The Indians used to dry them into powder and use them…"
"To poison their enemies," finished Danielle.
"Correct. I am an amateur mycologist, a mushroom specialist. Would you like to know their scientific name?"
"No," replied Danielle abruptly. "I’m in a hurry now. I’m sorry."
"They kill you and don’t leave a trace, not even in an autopsy," he whispered almost in a dazed trance. "Not a trace."
"Well, I’m not going to eat any,"said Danielle, and those became her parting words. She drove off, glad to be away from another dementoid.
But the next day found her morning jog interrupted to pick a bouquet of white mushrooms, which found their way to the sunniest windowsill in the bonus room of her house.
She never saw Edwin again.
V. Author’s intervention
To complete this story, I need to briefly describe Danielle’s ex-husband, the cheater Gary. But when I tell you the first and most prominent feature of Gary’s face, you the intelligent reader, will jump across twenty squares and conclude at once that the ending of this story is contrived, even though it is not.
Okay, here goes. Since his divorce, Gary, a normally staid investment banker, had gotten into a fight with a man carrying a knife and had a foot long scar across his face stretching from his chin to his forehead behind his right eye.
Do you see, intelligent reader, where the story is going? But don’t give up, there may be more surprises than you’re counting on.
VI. Gary
Gary was truly a bastard during the time he had been married to Danielle. He had indeed cheated many times, and after the divorce, he had schemed to kidnap his children and flee to Mexico, a plan that only a last minute intervention from a concerned family member had offset. But Gary had a certain charm that attracted women and a kind of unknowable complexity that made people want to explore him in depth. One of the contradictory aspects of his personality was the ambivalence he felt toward his scar. The legal settlement from the injury had assured him the complete services of a competent plastic surgeon who could have nearly eradicated all traces of the jagged knife wound, but Gary refused this, feeling that his scar gave his otherwise prosaic life a certain dangerous edge which he liked and which new female acquaintances seemed to like as well. For some, he had been a war hero; for others, a mercenary soldier in Africa; for others, a fire-rescue guy. It depended on the company he was with. The scar could start a million conversations and launch a million tall tales. That was its beauty. The fact that it came from a drunken street bum with a knife was never brought out.
But, then again, it never got attached to another five pages of lies that Gary had duly confected for a certain $39 a month web dating site. He didn’t think it looked good in a photo and wanted to spring it on new acquaintances by humble surprise.
VII. The inevitable
Of course, you the intelligent reader were right. So let’s just summarize. It wasn’t the usual park. It was Danny’s Dockside Bar and Grill. He was waiting for "Valerie," and she was looking for "Russ." In the darkness of an inside booth, Valerie had a nice silhouette and shape until she sat down and with the clearing of the darkness became Danielle. And in the initial gloomth, Russ looked pretty trim and fit too, until he stuck his scarred face under the dim light and couldn’t help but become his usual Gary self again---this despite the scar.
The dialogue, missing here, had the usual elements of shock, disgust and disappointment. You don’t want to hear all that.
What you want to hear is that Gary was quite friendly and was about to explain his scar when Danielle suddenly remembered she "forgot" something she had been carrying recently in the glove compartment of her car. Briskly, she jumped up, promising to return. And for some reason she did. The reason was clenched in her right hand, and Gary could not see---and did not care---what it was.
Gary proposed a drink and a laugh. They had been foiled by fate on the internet. It was some kind of bizarre but humorous irony. Disgust welled up through Danielle’s chest, but she agreed. It was kind of funny, all told. They ordered a pitcher of beer. Danielle drank fast which made Gary drink fast. Then they ordered another pitcher. Both of them needed to pee, but Danielle held hers the longest on purpose. Gary excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Danielle had poured them two full glasses from the second pitcher.
VIII. Conclusion
Who knows what went through Danielle’s mind? The long years of cheating, mental abuse, the attempted kidnapping of the children. The scar. What about the scar?
"Drunk attacked me outside the office," said Gary with an openness he had not exercised in years. "No big deal."
"They can fix things like that," said Danielle.
"I know. But for some reason I like it."
Then they just looked at one another. It was a long look, long enough for all the bad things in their shattered marriage to parade through their minds leaving room for another parade of tender and loving minutes and then another parade of passionate moments and then a final parade of lustful intervals. One memory parade succeeded the next until, at length, their minds were relieved of several years of post-divorce stress and anger. Danielle had the feeling that a cascade of little knife blades had fallen out of her ear and disappeared into the smoky barroom air.
Danielle could think of very little to say.
"I always liked the sound of your voice,"she whispered abstractly, her anger attenuated by the beer and rush of better memories.
"I always liked your fingers," replied Gary, entwining his into hers across the table.
A small joking rush of "I always liked-s" volleyed back and forth over the bar table until they were at last laughing and blushing at one another.
"We’re acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Suddenly from deep within her body, Danielle emitted a horrid scream. "Don’t drink that!!!," she cried from a cavity heretofore unknown in her innermost person.
Gary set down the beer glass in surprise. Danielle knocked it off the table to the floor and screamed for a waiter. Then, without comment, she got up and changed sides in the booth and sat very close to Gary . They brushed a kiss lightly across each other’s lips and snuggled closer. Something was spontaneously reignited.
"Valerie is a cool name," said Gary. "Maybe we could start over as Russ and Valerie."
"Maybe we could," agreed Danielle.
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
________________________________
Devon Pitlor, January, 2009
I. "$39 a month and this crap is all I get"
Danielle had answered every last stupid question about herself honestly in the profile, including the famous "ideal first date." A park, she wrote, just in a park in the springtime. Later it turned out to be in a dark, smoky brasserie, but the reasons are unclear for the switch and really don't matter. Danielle was sick of online dating. Her photo showed her exactly as she was, still a young 38 and still fairly smooth and lineless in the face. Guys checked in with tons of big, fancy stories...where they would take her...what kind of cars and incomes they had...where they hung out with their buds, as if Danielle cared. She wanted something akin to romance again. She wanted the bottomless feeling of falling deeper and deeeper for someone special. At work and in the supermarket, guys of all sorts approached her. They bored her silly. They all claimed to love children. Danielle had two, but she never felt the impulse to introduce them to any new man. She even briefly considered a dual posting in the Woman-seeking-Woman section, but discarded the idea because she knew she could never actually be attracted to another woman. She liked men, but her middle-class upbringing caused her to automatically do a triage according to benchmarks like reliability, honesty and, yes, income. If that hard-wired matrix had not been in place, she would have fucked the pizza boy long ago because, frankly, he was the cutest guy she had seen since her divorce with Gary .
II. Why Danielle hated Gary
Danielle loathed her ex-husband. Gary had cheated on her once and had come home drunk, confessed it and expected her to forgive him on the spot because of his unabashed honesty. Things didn't work that way. Cheat once, cheat all the time. She could never trust Gary again. He had been a luke-warm father too. He never took much interest in Radison and Berk until they were potty trained and up and running around, talking in decent sentences and able to return a thrown ball. Gary was, in effect, a prick. Danielle had trashed every memento of their twelve year marriage. How many women had Gary slept with before he told her about this last one? Danielle shuddered to think. She too, in blind fidelity, had had many opportunities as well. She should have taken some of them, but her breeding once again had kicked into gear, and she turned blind eyes to midday trysts with delivery men and garage mechanics. She rued that decision now. Some were nice-looking, and if that bastard Gary was cheating, she should have been too. Missed chances. Bitterness. Often Danielle entertained fantasies of finding and killing Gary.
III. Danielle decides not to submit a photo.
The $39 a month online dating site kept asking her for her photo and reminding her that it quadrupled her chances of getting hits. She had taken that route on the previous sites, and at length had decided that she was "too pretty." She wanted a guy who would read her personal statements instead of just look at her photo. So she refused to post a picture, and just like the dating site said, she got very few hits. Nobody was reading about her brains, talents and other sundry virtues. They wanted a pretty face. Danielle decided they wouldn't get hers. Her face was her own business.. as was her name.
IV. A previous date worth mentioning
A few months before enrolling in the new and more aggressive dating site, Danielle had met a man from another site who had been slightly different than the rest. They met, naturally, in a park. Edwin had arrived in a pick-up truck and quickly revealed himself to be the owner of a successful dog grooming business on the south side. He was handsome and had a full head of hair, two requirements Danielle insisted on. Edwin strolled with Danielle to a park bench, and as soon as they sat down, he opened the conversation with "I saw a UFO once." Then he proceeded, rather conventionally, to describe a fairly typical glowing disk. Danielle asked a few polite questions but was instead thinking about the topaz opaqueness of his eyes, which by the end of his UFO monologue, she decided were beautiful.
A few minutes of silence prevailed between them, and Danielle continued to examine Edwin’s eyes. She was about to comment on them when Edwin exclaimed: "Ever since the UFO, I have been a better lover. I am good in bed."
This was far too abrupt for Danielle on a first date, and the comment chilled whatever sensual feelings were coursing through her body before the comment gushed forth. She decided that Edwin was just another nutcase and started mentally searching for ways to shorten the date. On cue, her cellphone rang, and it was the lady from the alibi service calling her right on time. Danielle knew how long a date with a loser should last. She had set the time well. The alibi lady guided her through some remarks like "Oh my god" and "I’ll get there as soon as I can." The service was worth the pittance she paid for it.
She made follow-up excuses to Edwin and was leading him out of the park toward their cars, when he paused by a tree. Oblivious to her pressing "necessity," he looked down and pointed out some white mushrooms to her.
"Deadly," he mumbled. "They can kill you in mere minutes. The Indians used to dry them into powder and use them…"
"To poison their enemies," finished Danielle.
"Correct. I am an amateur mycologist, a mushroom specialist. Would you like to know their scientific name?"
"No," replied Danielle abruptly. "I’m in a hurry now. I’m sorry."
"They kill you and don’t leave a trace, not even in an autopsy," he whispered almost in a dazed trance. "Not a trace."
"Well, I’m not going to eat any,"said Danielle, and those became her parting words. She drove off, glad to be away from another dementoid.
But the next day found her morning jog interrupted to pick a bouquet of white mushrooms, which found their way to the sunniest windowsill in the bonus room of her house.
She never saw Edwin again.
V. Author’s intervention
To complete this story, I need to briefly describe Danielle’s ex-husband, the cheater Gary. But when I tell you the first and most prominent feature of Gary’s face, you the intelligent reader, will jump across twenty squares and conclude at once that the ending of this story is contrived, even though it is not.
Okay, here goes. Since his divorce, Gary, a normally staid investment banker, had gotten into a fight with a man carrying a knife and had a foot long scar across his face stretching from his chin to his forehead behind his right eye.
Do you see, intelligent reader, where the story is going? But don’t give up, there may be more surprises than you’re counting on.
VI. Gary
Gary was truly a bastard during the time he had been married to Danielle. He had indeed cheated many times, and after the divorce, he had schemed to kidnap his children and flee to Mexico, a plan that only a last minute intervention from a concerned family member had offset. But Gary had a certain charm that attracted women and a kind of unknowable complexity that made people want to explore him in depth. One of the contradictory aspects of his personality was the ambivalence he felt toward his scar. The legal settlement from the injury had assured him the complete services of a competent plastic surgeon who could have nearly eradicated all traces of the jagged knife wound, but Gary refused this, feeling that his scar gave his otherwise prosaic life a certain dangerous edge which he liked and which new female acquaintances seemed to like as well. For some, he had been a war hero; for others, a mercenary soldier in Africa; for others, a fire-rescue guy. It depended on the company he was with. The scar could start a million conversations and launch a million tall tales. That was its beauty. The fact that it came from a drunken street bum with a knife was never brought out.
But, then again, it never got attached to another five pages of lies that Gary had duly confected for a certain $39 a month web dating site. He didn’t think it looked good in a photo and wanted to spring it on new acquaintances by humble surprise.
VII. The inevitable
Of course, you the intelligent reader were right. So let’s just summarize. It wasn’t the usual park. It was Danny’s Dockside Bar and Grill. He was waiting for "Valerie," and she was looking for "Russ." In the darkness of an inside booth, Valerie had a nice silhouette and shape until she sat down and with the clearing of the darkness became Danielle. And in the initial gloomth, Russ looked pretty trim and fit too, until he stuck his scarred face under the dim light and couldn’t help but become his usual Gary self again---this despite the scar.
The dialogue, missing here, had the usual elements of shock, disgust and disappointment. You don’t want to hear all that.
What you want to hear is that Gary was quite friendly and was about to explain his scar when Danielle suddenly remembered she "forgot" something she had been carrying recently in the glove compartment of her car. Briskly, she jumped up, promising to return. And for some reason she did. The reason was clenched in her right hand, and Gary could not see---and did not care---what it was.
Gary proposed a drink and a laugh. They had been foiled by fate on the internet. It was some kind of bizarre but humorous irony. Disgust welled up through Danielle’s chest, but she agreed. It was kind of funny, all told. They ordered a pitcher of beer. Danielle drank fast which made Gary drink fast. Then they ordered another pitcher. Both of them needed to pee, but Danielle held hers the longest on purpose. Gary excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Danielle had poured them two full glasses from the second pitcher.
VIII. Conclusion
Who knows what went through Danielle’s mind? The long years of cheating, mental abuse, the attempted kidnapping of the children. The scar. What about the scar?
"Drunk attacked me outside the office," said Gary with an openness he had not exercised in years. "No big deal."
"They can fix things like that," said Danielle.
"I know. But for some reason I like it."
Then they just looked at one another. It was a long look, long enough for all the bad things in their shattered marriage to parade through their minds leaving room for another parade of tender and loving minutes and then another parade of passionate moments and then a final parade of lustful intervals. One memory parade succeeded the next until, at length, their minds were relieved of several years of post-divorce stress and anger. Danielle had the feeling that a cascade of little knife blades had fallen out of her ear and disappeared into the smoky barroom air.
Danielle could think of very little to say.
"I always liked the sound of your voice,"she whispered abstractly, her anger attenuated by the beer and rush of better memories.
"I always liked your fingers," replied Gary, entwining his into hers across the table.
A small joking rush of "I always liked-s" volleyed back and forth over the bar table until they were at last laughing and blushing at one another.
"We’re acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Suddenly from deep within her body, Danielle emitted a horrid scream. "Don’t drink that!!!," she cried from a cavity heretofore unknown in her innermost person.
Gary set down the beer glass in surprise. Danielle knocked it off the table to the floor and screamed for a waiter. Then, without comment, she got up and changed sides in the booth and sat very close to Gary . They brushed a kiss lightly across each other’s lips and snuggled closer. Something was spontaneously reignited.
"Valerie is a cool name," said Gary. "Maybe we could start over as Russ and Valerie."
"Maybe we could," agreed Danielle.
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
________________________________
Devon Pitlor, January, 2009
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 11 2009, 02:44 PM) 
The Last Date, A Sudden Love Story by Devon Pitlor, MA econ
I. "$39 a month and this crap is all I get"
Danielle had answered every last stupid question about herself honestly in the profile, including the famous "ideal first date." A park, she wrote, just in a park in the springtime. Later it turned out to be in a dark, smoky brasserie, but the reasons are unclear for the switch and really don't matter. Danielle was sick of online dating. Her photo showed her exactly as she was, still a young 38 and still fairly smooth and lineless in the face. Guys checked in with tons of big, fancy stories...where they would take her...what kind of cars and incomes they had...where they hung out with their buds, as if Danielle cared. She wanted something akin to romance again. She wanted the bottomless feeling of falling deeper and deeeper for someone special. At work and in the supermarket, guys of all sorts approached her. They bored her silly. They all claimed to love children. Danielle had two, but she never felt the impulse to introduce them to any new man. She even briefly considered a dual posting in the Woman-seeking-Woman section, but discarded the idea because she knew she could never actually be attracted to another woman. She liked men, but her middle-class upbringing caused her to automatically do a triage according to benchmarks like reliability, honesty and, yes, income. If that hard-wired matrix had not been in place, she would have fucked the pizza boy long ago because, frankly, he was the cutest guy she had seen since her divorce with Gary .
II. Why Danielle hated Gary
Danielle loathed her ex-husband. Gary had cheated on her once and had come home drunk, confessed it and expected her to forgive him on the spot because of his unabashed honesty. Things didn't work that way. Cheat once, cheat all the time. She could never trust Gary again. He had been a luke-warm father too. He never took much interest in Radison and Berk until they were potty trained and up and running around, talking in decent sentences and able to return a thrown ball. Gary was, in effect, a prick. Danielle had trashed every memento of their twelve year marriage. How many women had Gary slept with before he told her about this last one? Danielle shuddered to think. She too, in blind fidelity, had had many opportunities as well. She should have taken some of them, but her breeding once again had kicked into gear, and she turned blind eyes to midday trysts with delivery men and garage mechanics. She rued that decision now. Some were nice-looking, and if that bastard Gary was cheating, she should have been too. Missed chances. Bitterness. Often Danielle entertained fantasies of finding and killing Gary.
III. Danielle decides not to submit a photo.
The $39 a month online dating site kept asking her for her photo and reminding her that it quadrupled her chances of getting hits. She had taken that route on the previous sites, and at length had decided that she was "too pretty." She wanted a guy who would read her personal statements instead of just look at her photo. So she refused to post a picture, and just like the dating site said, she got very few hits. Nobody was reading about her brains, talents and other sundry virtues. They wanted a pretty face. Danielle decided they wouldn't get hers. Her face was her own business.. as was her name.
IV. A previous date worth mentioning
A few months before enrolling in the new and more aggressive dating site, Danielle had met a man from another site who had been slightly different than the rest. They met, naturally, in a park. Edwin had arrived in a pick-up truck and quickly revealed himself to be the owner of a successful dog grooming business on the south side. He was handsome and had a full head of hair, two requirements Danielle insisted on. Edwin strolled with Danielle to a park bench, and as soon as they sat down, he opened the conversation with "I saw a UFO once." Then he proceeded, rather conventionally, to describe a fairly typical glowing disk. Danielle asked a few polite questions but was instead thinking about the topaz opaqueness of his eyes, which by the end of his UFO monologue, she decided were beautiful.
A few minutes of silence prevailed between them, and Danielle continued to examine Edwin’s eyes. She was about to comment on them when Edwin exclaimed: "Ever since the UFO, I have been a better lover. I am good in bed."
This was far too abrupt for Danielle on a first date, and the comment chilled whatever sensual feelings were coursing through her body before the comment gushed forth. She decided that Edwin was just another nutcase and started mentally searching for ways to shorten the date. On cue, her cellphone rang, and it was the lady from the alibi service calling her right on time. Danielle knew how long a date with a loser should last. She had set the time well. The alibi lady guided her through some remarks like "Oh my god" and "I’ll get there as soon as I can." The service was worth the pittance she paid for it.
She made follow-up excuses to Edwin and was leading him out of the park toward their cars, when he paused by a tree. Oblivious to her pressing "necessity," he looked down and pointed out some white mushrooms to her.
"Deadly," he mumbled. "They can kill you in mere minutes. The Indians used to dry them into powder and use them…"
"To poison their enemies," finished Danielle.
"Correct. I am an amateur mycologist, a mushroom specialist. Would you like to know their scientific name?"
"No," replied Danielle abruptly. "I’m in a hurry now. I’m sorry."
"They kill you and don’t leave a trace, not even in an autopsy," he whispered almost in a dazed trance. "Not a trace."
"Well, I’m not going to eat any,"said Danielle, and those became her parting words. She drove off, glad to be away from another dementoid.
But the next day found her morning jog interrupted to pick a bouquet of white mushrooms, which found their way to the sunniest windowsill in the bonus room of her house.
She never saw Edwin again.
V. Author’s intervention
To complete this story, I need to briefly describe Danielle’s ex-husband, the cheater Gary. But when I tell you the first and most prominent feature of Gary’s face, you the intelligent reader, will jump across twenty squares and conclude at once that the ending of this story is contrived, even though it is not.
Okay, here goes. Since his divorce, Gary, a normally staid investment banker, had gotten into a fight with a man carrying a knife and had a foot long scar across his face stretching from his chin to his forehead behind his right eye.
Do you see, intelligent reader, where the story is going? But don’t give up, there may be more surprises than you’re counting on.
VI. Gary
Gary was truly a bastard during the time he had been married to Danielle. He had indeed cheated many times, and after the divorce, he had schemed to kidnap his children and flee to Mexico, a plan that only a last minute intervention from a concerned family member had offset. But Gary had a certain charm that attracted women and a kind of unknowable complexity that made people want to explore him in depth. One of the contradictory aspects of his personality was the ambivalence he felt toward his scar. The legal settlement from the injury had assured him the complete services of a competent plastic surgeon who could have nearly eradicated all traces of the jagged knife wound, but Gary refused this, feeling that his scar gave his otherwise prosaic life a certain dangerous edge which he liked and which new female acquaintances seemed to like as well. For some, he had been a war hero; for others, a mercenary soldier in Africa; for others, a fire-rescue guy. It depended on the company he was with. The scar could start a million conversations and launch a million tall tales. That was its beauty. The fact that it came from a drunken street bum with a knife was never brought out.
But, then again, it never got attached to another five pages of lies that Gary had duly confected for a certain $39 a month web dating site. He didn’t think it looked good in a photo and wanted to spring it on new acquaintances by humble surprise.
VII. The inevitable
Of course, you the intelligent reader were right. So let’s just summarize. It wasn’t the usual park. It was Danny’s Dockside Bar and Grill. He was waiting for "Valerie," and she was looking for "Russ." In the darkness of an inside booth, Valerie had a nice silhouette and shape until she sat down and with the clearing of the darkness became Danielle. And in the initial gloomth, Russ looked pretty trim and fit too, until he stuck his scarred face under the dim light and couldn’t help but become his usual Gary self again---this despite the scar.
The dialogue, missing here, had the usual elements of shock, disgust and disappointment. You don’t want to hear all that.
What you want to hear is that Gary was quite friendly and was about to explain his scar when Danielle suddenly remembered she "forgot" something she had been carrying recently in the glove compartment of her car. Briskly, she jumped up, promising to return. And for some reason she did. The reason was clenched in her right hand, and Gary could not see---and did not care---what it was.
Gary proposed a drink and a laugh. They had been foiled by fate on the internet. It was some kind of bizarre but humorous irony. Disgust welled up through Danielle’s chest, but she agreed. It was kind of funny, all told. They ordered a pitcher of beer. Danielle drank fast which made Gary drink fast. Then they ordered another pitcher. Both of them needed to pee, but Danielle held hers the longest on purpose. Gary excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Danielle had poured them two full glasses from the second pitcher.
VIII. Conclusion
Who knows what went through Danielle’s mind? The long years of cheating, mental abuse, the attempted kidnapping of the children. The scar. What about the scar?
"Drunk attacked me outside the office," said Gary with an openness he had not exercised in years. "No big deal."
"They can fix things like that," said Danielle.
"I know. But for some reason I like it."
Then they just looked at one another. It was a long look, long enough for all the bad things in their shattered marriage to parade through their minds leaving room for another parade of tender and loving minutes and then another parade of passionate moments and then a final parade of lustful intervals. One memory parade succeeded the next until, at length, their minds were relieved of several years of post-divorce stress and anger. Danielle had the feeling that a cascade of little knife blades had fallen out of her ear and disappeared into the smoky barroom air.
Danielle could think of very little to say.
"I always liked the sound of your voice,"she whispered abstractly, her anger attenuated by the beer and rush of better memories.
"I always liked your fingers," replied Gary, entwining his into hers across the table.
A small joking rush of "I always liked-s" volleyed back and forth over the bar table until they were at last laughing and blushing at one another.
"We’re acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Suddenly from deep within her body, Danielle emitted a horrid scream. "Don’t drink that!!!," she cried from a cavity heretofore unknown in her innermost person.
Gary set down the beer glass in surprise. Danielle knocked it off the table to the floor and screamed for a waiter. Then, without comment, she got up and changed sides in the booth and sat very close to Gary . They brushed a kiss lightly across each other’s lips and snuggled closer. Something was spontaneously reignited.
"Valerie is a cool name," said Gary. "Maybe we could start over as Russ and Valerie."
"Maybe we could," agreed Danielle.
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
________________________________
Devon Pitlor, January, 2009
I. "$39 a month and this crap is all I get"
Danielle had answered every last stupid question about herself honestly in the profile, including the famous "ideal first date." A park, she wrote, just in a park in the springtime. Later it turned out to be in a dark, smoky brasserie, but the reasons are unclear for the switch and really don't matter. Danielle was sick of online dating. Her photo showed her exactly as she was, still a young 38 and still fairly smooth and lineless in the face. Guys checked in with tons of big, fancy stories...where they would take her...what kind of cars and incomes they had...where they hung out with their buds, as if Danielle cared. She wanted something akin to romance again. She wanted the bottomless feeling of falling deeper and deeeper for someone special. At work and in the supermarket, guys of all sorts approached her. They bored her silly. They all claimed to love children. Danielle had two, but she never felt the impulse to introduce them to any new man. She even briefly considered a dual posting in the Woman-seeking-Woman section, but discarded the idea because she knew she could never actually be attracted to another woman. She liked men, but her middle-class upbringing caused her to automatically do a triage according to benchmarks like reliability, honesty and, yes, income. If that hard-wired matrix had not been in place, she would have fucked the pizza boy long ago because, frankly, he was the cutest guy she had seen since her divorce with Gary .
II. Why Danielle hated Gary
Danielle loathed her ex-husband. Gary had cheated on her once and had come home drunk, confessed it and expected her to forgive him on the spot because of his unabashed honesty. Things didn't work that way. Cheat once, cheat all the time. She could never trust Gary again. He had been a luke-warm father too. He never took much interest in Radison and Berk until they were potty trained and up and running around, talking in decent sentences and able to return a thrown ball. Gary was, in effect, a prick. Danielle had trashed every memento of their twelve year marriage. How many women had Gary slept with before he told her about this last one? Danielle shuddered to think. She too, in blind fidelity, had had many opportunities as well. She should have taken some of them, but her breeding once again had kicked into gear, and she turned blind eyes to midday trysts with delivery men and garage mechanics. She rued that decision now. Some were nice-looking, and if that bastard Gary was cheating, she should have been too. Missed chances. Bitterness. Often Danielle entertained fantasies of finding and killing Gary.
III. Danielle decides not to submit a photo.
The $39 a month online dating site kept asking her for her photo and reminding her that it quadrupled her chances of getting hits. She had taken that route on the previous sites, and at length had decided that she was "too pretty." She wanted a guy who would read her personal statements instead of just look at her photo. So she refused to post a picture, and just like the dating site said, she got very few hits. Nobody was reading about her brains, talents and other sundry virtues. They wanted a pretty face. Danielle decided they wouldn't get hers. Her face was her own business.. as was her name.
IV. A previous date worth mentioning
A few months before enrolling in the new and more aggressive dating site, Danielle had met a man from another site who had been slightly different than the rest. They met, naturally, in a park. Edwin had arrived in a pick-up truck and quickly revealed himself to be the owner of a successful dog grooming business on the south side. He was handsome and had a full head of hair, two requirements Danielle insisted on. Edwin strolled with Danielle to a park bench, and as soon as they sat down, he opened the conversation with "I saw a UFO once." Then he proceeded, rather conventionally, to describe a fairly typical glowing disk. Danielle asked a few polite questions but was instead thinking about the topaz opaqueness of his eyes, which by the end of his UFO monologue, she decided were beautiful.
A few minutes of silence prevailed between them, and Danielle continued to examine Edwin’s eyes. She was about to comment on them when Edwin exclaimed: "Ever since the UFO, I have been a better lover. I am good in bed."
This was far too abrupt for Danielle on a first date, and the comment chilled whatever sensual feelings were coursing through her body before the comment gushed forth. She decided that Edwin was just another nutcase and started mentally searching for ways to shorten the date. On cue, her cellphone rang, and it was the lady from the alibi service calling her right on time. Danielle knew how long a date with a loser should last. She had set the time well. The alibi lady guided her through some remarks like "Oh my god" and "I’ll get there as soon as I can." The service was worth the pittance she paid for it.
She made follow-up excuses to Edwin and was leading him out of the park toward their cars, when he paused by a tree. Oblivious to her pressing "necessity," he looked down and pointed out some white mushrooms to her.
"Deadly," he mumbled. "They can kill you in mere minutes. The Indians used to dry them into powder and use them…"
"To poison their enemies," finished Danielle.
"Correct. I am an amateur mycologist, a mushroom specialist. Would you like to know their scientific name?"
"No," replied Danielle abruptly. "I’m in a hurry now. I’m sorry."
"They kill you and don’t leave a trace, not even in an autopsy," he whispered almost in a dazed trance. "Not a trace."
"Well, I’m not going to eat any,"said Danielle, and those became her parting words. She drove off, glad to be away from another dementoid.
But the next day found her morning jog interrupted to pick a bouquet of white mushrooms, which found their way to the sunniest windowsill in the bonus room of her house.
She never saw Edwin again.
V. Author’s intervention
To complete this story, I need to briefly describe Danielle’s ex-husband, the cheater Gary. But when I tell you the first and most prominent feature of Gary’s face, you the intelligent reader, will jump across twenty squares and conclude at once that the ending of this story is contrived, even though it is not.
Okay, here goes. Since his divorce, Gary, a normally staid investment banker, had gotten into a fight with a man carrying a knife and had a foot long scar across his face stretching from his chin to his forehead behind his right eye.
Do you see, intelligent reader, where the story is going? But don’t give up, there may be more surprises than you’re counting on.
VI. Gary
Gary was truly a bastard during the time he had been married to Danielle. He had indeed cheated many times, and after the divorce, he had schemed to kidnap his children and flee to Mexico, a plan that only a last minute intervention from a concerned family member had offset. But Gary had a certain charm that attracted women and a kind of unknowable complexity that made people want to explore him in depth. One of the contradictory aspects of his personality was the ambivalence he felt toward his scar. The legal settlement from the injury had assured him the complete services of a competent plastic surgeon who could have nearly eradicated all traces of the jagged knife wound, but Gary refused this, feeling that his scar gave his otherwise prosaic life a certain dangerous edge which he liked and which new female acquaintances seemed to like as well. For some, he had been a war hero; for others, a mercenary soldier in Africa; for others, a fire-rescue guy. It depended on the company he was with. The scar could start a million conversations and launch a million tall tales. That was its beauty. The fact that it came from a drunken street bum with a knife was never brought out.
But, then again, it never got attached to another five pages of lies that Gary had duly confected for a certain $39 a month web dating site. He didn’t think it looked good in a photo and wanted to spring it on new acquaintances by humble surprise.
VII. The inevitable
Of course, you the intelligent reader were right. So let’s just summarize. It wasn’t the usual park. It was Danny’s Dockside Bar and Grill. He was waiting for "Valerie," and she was looking for "Russ." In the darkness of an inside booth, Valerie had a nice silhouette and shape until she sat down and with the clearing of the darkness became Danielle. And in the initial gloomth, Russ looked pretty trim and fit too, until he stuck his scarred face under the dim light and couldn’t help but become his usual Gary self again---this despite the scar.
The dialogue, missing here, had the usual elements of shock, disgust and disappointment. You don’t want to hear all that.
What you want to hear is that Gary was quite friendly and was about to explain his scar when Danielle suddenly remembered she "forgot" something she had been carrying recently in the glove compartment of her car. Briskly, she jumped up, promising to return. And for some reason she did. The reason was clenched in her right hand, and Gary could not see---and did not care---what it was.
Gary proposed a drink and a laugh. They had been foiled by fate on the internet. It was some kind of bizarre but humorous irony. Disgust welled up through Danielle’s chest, but she agreed. It was kind of funny, all told. They ordered a pitcher of beer. Danielle drank fast which made Gary drink fast. Then they ordered another pitcher. Both of them needed to pee, but Danielle held hers the longest on purpose. Gary excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Danielle had poured them two full glasses from the second pitcher.
VIII. Conclusion
Who knows what went through Danielle’s mind? The long years of cheating, mental abuse, the attempted kidnapping of the children. The scar. What about the scar?
"Drunk attacked me outside the office," said Gary with an openness he had not exercised in years. "No big deal."
"They can fix things like that," said Danielle.
"I know. But for some reason I like it."
Then they just looked at one another. It was a long look, long enough for all the bad things in their shattered marriage to parade through their minds leaving room for another parade of tender and loving minutes and then another parade of passionate moments and then a final parade of lustful intervals. One memory parade succeeded the next until, at length, their minds were relieved of several years of post-divorce stress and anger. Danielle had the feeling that a cascade of little knife blades had fallen out of her ear and disappeared into the smoky barroom air.
Danielle could think of very little to say.
"I always liked the sound of your voice,"she whispered abstractly, her anger attenuated by the beer and rush of better memories.
"I always liked your fingers," replied Gary, entwining his into hers across the table.
A small joking rush of "I always liked-s" volleyed back and forth over the bar table until they were at last laughing and blushing at one another.
"We’re acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Suddenly from deep within her body, Danielle emitted a horrid scream. "Don’t drink that!!!," she cried from a cavity heretofore unknown in her innermost person.
Gary set down the beer glass in surprise. Danielle knocked it off the table to the floor and screamed for a waiter. Then, without comment, she got up and changed sides in the booth and sat very close to Gary . They brushed a kiss lightly across each other’s lips and snuggled closer. Something was spontaneously reignited.
"Valerie is a cool name," said Gary. "Maybe we could start over as Russ and Valerie."
"Maybe we could," agreed Danielle.
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
________________________________
Devon Pitlor, January, 2009
one of the stragest stories you have ever posted devon.
kudos but im not sure i understand it.
lep
Hmmm . . . this is an interesting story. Yes, it's contrived, but that is typical of romance. I didn't like how quickly she forgot their past, but that is also typical of romance.
I think you did a good job of exploring the genre. It would be interesting to see this same story from a different perspective. He's really a vampire, or she has recently become a serial killer who raises mushrooms on the side.
But for the romance genre, you nailed the plot requirements.
By the way, I dont' like romance at all - I haven't read books like that since junior high, save the romantics of the 19th century whose focus was never on love.
I have a romantic nature and long for someone to sweep me off my feet, et al, but I don't like that to be the point of what I read.
*one of the most romantic things I've ever read, for example, is in The Accidental Tourist when Macon in in Paris and calls his wife, Sarah, and is able to imagine just how she looks lying in the sun. The familiarity but also that observation, the way her knew her so well, was so touching to me.
Sorry, this post has become a mishmash of nothing. I like the story, but it doesn't feel comfortable. Does that make sense?
I think you did a good job of exploring the genre. It would be interesting to see this same story from a different perspective. He's really a vampire, or she has recently become a serial killer who raises mushrooms on the side.
But for the romance genre, you nailed the plot requirements.
By the way, I dont' like romance at all - I haven't read books like that since junior high, save the romantics of the 19th century whose focus was never on love.
I have a romantic nature and long for someone to sweep me off my feet, et al, but I don't like that to be the point of what I read.
*one of the most romantic things I've ever read, for example, is in The Accidental Tourist when Macon in in Paris and calls his wife, Sarah, and is able to imagine just how she looks lying in the sun. The familiarity but also that observation, the way her knew her so well, was so touching to me.
Sorry, this post has become a mishmash of nothing. I like the story, but it doesn't feel comfortable. Does that make sense?
Devon--its not your best but I liked it. I am not a fan of your <<authors interventions>> which you used more than once before but i like the mushroom part.
Semi fan
Semi fan
KILLING SOMEONE WITH MUSHROOMS IS SO 20TH CENTURY. OTHERWISE GOOD STORY.
So they just get back together.
In spite of his flaws?
Too fast, someone else said that, too fast.
You see things like a man Devon
Gary wanted to be forgiven for cheating
So a little divorce and a contrived meeting from a dating site and he gets his way finally.
But I liked the dialogue.
Did some one mention you have knack for that>?
The scar story is a subplot, I've know guys like that.
In spite of his flaws?
Too fast, someone else said that, too fast.
You see things like a man Devon
Gary wanted to be forgiven for cheating
So a little divorce and a contrived meeting from a dating site and he gets his way finally.
But I liked the dialogue.
Did some one mention you have knack for that>?
The scar story is a subplot, I've know guys like that.
QUOTE
"We’re acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Dialog which sticks in my mind. Real.
Nice job, Devon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpgrO-tieGM
Devon's stories are best read with this music as a backdrop.
All very 19th century. Etcetera.
Devon's stories are best read with this music as a backdrop.
All very 19th century. Etcetera.
Could I please have a Piña Colada to sip while I read tonight's story?
Je reviens...
Another boring night at work. Okay, the story isn't the best, and you can have all the Internationale or pina colada that you want.
Another sideline: I don't watch much TV, but did anyone see that commercial where a blind internet date turns out to be between this cute black girl and her former high school principal?
That was a large part of the inspiration for my story.
Dev
Another boring night at work. Okay, the story isn't the best, and you can have all the Internationale or pina colada that you want.
Another sideline: I don't watch much TV, but did anyone see that commercial where a blind internet date turns out to be between this cute black girl and her former high school principal?
That was a large part of the inspiration for my story.
Dev
QUOTE (Guest @ Jan 11 2009, 03:37 PM)
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 11 2009, 02:44 PM)
The Last Date, A Sudden Love Story by Devon Pitlor, MA econ
I. "$39 a month and this crap is all I get"
Danielle had answered every last stupid question about herself honestly in the profile, including the famous "ideal first date." A park, she wrote, just in a park in the springtime. Later it turned out to be in a dark, smoky brasserie, but the reasons are unclear for the switch and really don't matter. Danielle was sick of online dating. Her photo showed her exactly as she was, still a young 38 and still fairly smooth and lineless in the face. Guys checked in with tons of big, fancy stories...where they would take her...what kind of cars and incomes they had...where they hung out with their buds, as if Danielle cared. She wanted something akin to romance again. She wanted the bottomless feeling of falling deeper and deeeper for someone special. At work and in the supermarket, guys of all sorts approached her. They bored her silly. They all claimed to love children. Danielle had two, but she never felt the impulse to introduce them to any new man. She even briefly considered a dual posting in the Woman-seeking-Woman section, but discarded the idea because she knew she could never actually be attracted to another woman. She liked men, but her middle-class upbringing caused her to automatically do a triage according to benchmarks like reliability, honesty and, yes, income. If that hard-wired matrix had not been in place, she would have fucked the pizza boy long ago because, frankly, he was the cutest guy she had seen since her divorce with Gary .
II. Why Danielle hated Gary
Danielle loathed her ex-husband. Gary had cheated on her once and had come home drunk, confessed it and expected her to forgive him on the spot because of his unabashed honesty. Things didn't work that way. Cheat once, cheat all the time. She could never trust Gary again. He had been a luke-warm father too. He never took much interest in Radison and Berk until they were potty trained and up and running around, talking in decent sentences and able to return a thrown ball. Gary was, in effect, a prick. Danielle had trashed every memento of their twelve year marriage. How many women had Gary slept with before he told her about this last one? Danielle shuddered to think. She too, in blind fidelity, had had many opportunities as well. She should have taken some of them, but her breeding once again had kicked into gear, and she turned blind eyes to midday trysts with delivery men and garage mechanics. She rued that decision now. Some were nice-looking, and if that bastard Gary was cheating, she should have been too. Missed chances. Bitterness. Often Danielle entertained fantasies of finding and killing Gary.
III. Danielle decides not to submit a photo.
The $39 a month online dating site kept asking her for her photo and reminding her that it quadrupled her chances of getting hits. She had taken that route on the previous sites, and at length had decided that she was "too pretty." She wanted a guy who would read her personal statements instead of just look at her photo. So she refused to post a picture, and just like the dating site said, she got very few hits. Nobody was reading about her brains, talents and other sundry virtues. They wanted a pretty face. Danielle decided they wouldn't get hers. Her face was her own business.. as was her name.
IV. A previous date worth mentioning
A few months before enrolling in the new and more aggressive dating site, Danielle had met a man from another site who had been slightly different than the rest. They met, naturally, in a park. Edwin had arrived in a pick-up truck and quickly revealed himself to be the owner of a successful dog grooming business on the south side. He was handsome and had a full head of hair, two requirements Danielle insisted on. Edwin strolled with Danielle to a park bench, and as soon as they sat down, he opened the conversation with "I saw a UFO once." Then he proceeded, rather conventionally, to describe a fairly typical glowing disk. Danielle asked a few polite questions but was instead thinking about the topaz opaqueness of his eyes, which by the end of his UFO monologue, she decided were beautiful.
A few minutes of silence prevailed between them, and Danielle continued to examine Edwin's eyes. She was about to comment on them when Edwin exclaimed: "Ever since the UFO, I have been a better lover. I am good in bed."
This was far too abrupt for Danielle on a first date, and the comment chilled whatever sensual feelings were coursing through her body before the comment gushed forth. She decided that Edwin was just another nutcase and started mentally searching for ways to shorten the date. On cue, her cellphone rang, and it was the lady from the alibi service calling her right on time. Danielle knew how long a date with a loser should last. She had set the time well. The alibi lady guided her through some remarks like "Oh my god" and "I'll get there as soon as I can." The service was worth the pittance she paid for it.
She made follow-up excuses to Edwin and was leading him out of the park toward their cars, when he paused by a tree. Oblivious to her pressing "necessity," he looked down and pointed out some white mushrooms to her.
"Deadly," he mumbled. "They can kill you in mere minutes. The Indians used to dry them into powder and use them…"
"To poison their enemies," finished Danielle.
"Correct. I am an amateur mycologist, a mushroom specialist. Would you like to know their scientific name?"
"No," replied Danielle abruptly. "I'm in a hurry now. I'm sorry."
"They kill you and don't leave a trace, not even in an autopsy," he whispered almost in a dazed trance. "Not a trace."
"Well, I'm not going to eat any,"said Danielle, and those became her parting words. She drove off, glad to be away from another dementoid.
But the next day found her morning jog interrupted to pick a bouquet of white mushrooms, which found their way to the sunniest windowsill in the bonus room of her house.
She never saw Edwin again.
V. Author's intervention
To complete this story, I need to briefly describe Danielle's ex-husband, the cheater Gary. But when I tell you the first and most prominent feature of Gary's face, you the intelligent reader, will jump across twenty squares and conclude at once that the ending of this story is contrived, even though it is not.
Okay, here goes. Since his divorce, Gary, a normally staid investment banker, had gotten into a fight with a man carrying a knife and had a foot long scar across his face stretching from his chin to his forehead behind his right eye.
Do you see, intelligent reader, where the story is going? But don't give up, there may be more surprises than you're counting on.
VI. Gary
Gary was truly a bastard during the time he had been married to Danielle. He had indeed cheated many times, and after the divorce, he had schemed to kidnap his children and flee to Mexico, a plan that only a last minute intervention from a concerned family member had offset. But Gary had a certain charm that attracted women and a kind of unknowable complexity that made people want to explore him in depth. One of the contradictory aspects of his personality was the ambivalence he felt toward his scar. The legal settlement from the injury had assured him the complete services of a competent plastic surgeon who could have nearly eradicated all traces of the jagged knife wound, but Gary refused this, feeling that his scar gave his otherwise prosaic life a certain dangerous edge which he liked and which new female acquaintances seemed to like as well. For some, he had been a war hero; for others, a mercenary soldier in Africa; for others, a fire-rescue guy. It depended on the company he was with. The scar could start a million conversations and launch a million tall tales. That was its beauty. The fact that it came from a drunken street bum with a knife was never brought out.
But, then again, it never got attached to another five pages of lies that Gary had duly confected for a certain $39 a month web dating site. He didn't think it looked good in a photo and wanted to spring it on new acquaintances by humble surprise.
VII. The inevitable
Of course, you the intelligent reader were right. So let's just summarize. It wasn't the usual park. It was Danny's Dockside Bar and Grill. He was waiting for "Valerie," and she was looking for "Russ." In the darkness of an inside booth, Valerie had a nice silhouette and shape until she sat down and with the clearing of the darkness became Danielle. And in the initial gloomth, Russ looked pretty trim and fit too, until he stuck his scarred face under the dim light and couldn't help but become his usual Gary self again---this despite the scar.
The dialogue, missing here, had the usual elements of shock, disgust and disappointment. You don't want to hear all that.
What you want to hear is that Gary was quite friendly and was about to explain his scar when Danielle suddenly remembered she "forgot" something she had been carrying recently in the glove compartment of her car. Briskly, she jumped up, promising to return. And for some reason she did. The reason was clenched in her right hand, and Gary could not see---and did not care---what it was.
Gary proposed a drink and a laugh. They had been foiled by fate on the internet. It was some kind of bizarre but humorous irony. Disgust welled up through Danielle's chest, but she agreed. It was kind of funny, all told. They ordered a pitcher of beer. Danielle drank fast which made Gary drink fast. Then they ordered another pitcher. Both of them needed to pee, but Danielle held hers the longest on purpose. Gary excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Danielle had poured them two full glasses from the second pitcher.
VIII. Conclusion
Who knows what went through Danielle's mind? The long years of cheating, mental abuse, the attempted kidnapping of the children. The scar. What about the scar?
"Drunk attacked me outside the office," said Gary with an openness he had not exercised in years. "No big deal."
"They can fix things like that," said Danielle.
"I know. But for some reason I like it."
Then they just looked at one another. It was a long look, long enough for all the bad things in their shattered marriage to parade through their minds leaving room for another parade of tender and loving minutes and then another parade of passionate moments and then a final parade of lustful intervals. One memory parade succeeded the next until, at length, their minds were relieved of several years of post-divorce stress and anger. Danielle had the feeling that a cascade of little knife blades had fallen out of her ear and disappeared into the smoky barroom air.
Danielle could think of very little to say.
"I always liked the sound of your voice,"she whispered abstractly, her anger attenuated by the beer and rush of better memories.
"I always liked your fingers," replied Gary, entwining his into hers across the table.
A small joking rush of "I always liked-s" volleyed back and forth over the bar table until they were at last laughing and blushing at one another.
"We're acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Suddenly from deep within her body, Danielle emitted a horrid scream. "Don't drink that!!!," she cried from a cavity heretofore unknown in her innermost person.
Gary set down the beer glass in surprise. Danielle knocked it off the table to the floor and screamed for a waiter. Then, without comment, she got up and changed sides in the booth and sat very close to Gary . They brushed a kiss lightly across each other's lips and snuggled closer. Something was spontaneously reignited.
"Valerie is a cool name," said Gary. "Maybe we could start over as Russ and Valerie."
"Maybe we could," agreed Danielle.
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
________________________________
Devon Pitlor, January, 2009
I. "$39 a month and this crap is all I get"
Danielle had answered every last stupid question about herself honestly in the profile, including the famous "ideal first date." A park, she wrote, just in a park in the springtime. Later it turned out to be in a dark, smoky brasserie, but the reasons are unclear for the switch and really don't matter. Danielle was sick of online dating. Her photo showed her exactly as she was, still a young 38 and still fairly smooth and lineless in the face. Guys checked in with tons of big, fancy stories...where they would take her...what kind of cars and incomes they had...where they hung out with their buds, as if Danielle cared. She wanted something akin to romance again. She wanted the bottomless feeling of falling deeper and deeeper for someone special. At work and in the supermarket, guys of all sorts approached her. They bored her silly. They all claimed to love children. Danielle had two, but she never felt the impulse to introduce them to any new man. She even briefly considered a dual posting in the Woman-seeking-Woman section, but discarded the idea because she knew she could never actually be attracted to another woman. She liked men, but her middle-class upbringing caused her to automatically do a triage according to benchmarks like reliability, honesty and, yes, income. If that hard-wired matrix had not been in place, she would have fucked the pizza boy long ago because, frankly, he was the cutest guy she had seen since her divorce with Gary .
II. Why Danielle hated Gary
Danielle loathed her ex-husband. Gary had cheated on her once and had come home drunk, confessed it and expected her to forgive him on the spot because of his unabashed honesty. Things didn't work that way. Cheat once, cheat all the time. She could never trust Gary again. He had been a luke-warm father too. He never took much interest in Radison and Berk until they were potty trained and up and running around, talking in decent sentences and able to return a thrown ball. Gary was, in effect, a prick. Danielle had trashed every memento of their twelve year marriage. How many women had Gary slept with before he told her about this last one? Danielle shuddered to think. She too, in blind fidelity, had had many opportunities as well. She should have taken some of them, but her breeding once again had kicked into gear, and she turned blind eyes to midday trysts with delivery men and garage mechanics. She rued that decision now. Some were nice-looking, and if that bastard Gary was cheating, she should have been too. Missed chances. Bitterness. Often Danielle entertained fantasies of finding and killing Gary.
III. Danielle decides not to submit a photo.
The $39 a month online dating site kept asking her for her photo and reminding her that it quadrupled her chances of getting hits. She had taken that route on the previous sites, and at length had decided that she was "too pretty." She wanted a guy who would read her personal statements instead of just look at her photo. So she refused to post a picture, and just like the dating site said, she got very few hits. Nobody was reading about her brains, talents and other sundry virtues. They wanted a pretty face. Danielle decided they wouldn't get hers. Her face was her own business.. as was her name.
IV. A previous date worth mentioning
A few months before enrolling in the new and more aggressive dating site, Danielle had met a man from another site who had been slightly different than the rest. They met, naturally, in a park. Edwin had arrived in a pick-up truck and quickly revealed himself to be the owner of a successful dog grooming business on the south side. He was handsome and had a full head of hair, two requirements Danielle insisted on. Edwin strolled with Danielle to a park bench, and as soon as they sat down, he opened the conversation with "I saw a UFO once." Then he proceeded, rather conventionally, to describe a fairly typical glowing disk. Danielle asked a few polite questions but was instead thinking about the topaz opaqueness of his eyes, which by the end of his UFO monologue, she decided were beautiful.
A few minutes of silence prevailed between them, and Danielle continued to examine Edwin's eyes. She was about to comment on them when Edwin exclaimed: "Ever since the UFO, I have been a better lover. I am good in bed."
This was far too abrupt for Danielle on a first date, and the comment chilled whatever sensual feelings were coursing through her body before the comment gushed forth. She decided that Edwin was just another nutcase and started mentally searching for ways to shorten the date. On cue, her cellphone rang, and it was the lady from the alibi service calling her right on time. Danielle knew how long a date with a loser should last. She had set the time well. The alibi lady guided her through some remarks like "Oh my god" and "I'll get there as soon as I can." The service was worth the pittance she paid for it.
She made follow-up excuses to Edwin and was leading him out of the park toward their cars, when he paused by a tree. Oblivious to her pressing "necessity," he looked down and pointed out some white mushrooms to her.
"Deadly," he mumbled. "They can kill you in mere minutes. The Indians used to dry them into powder and use them…"
"To poison their enemies," finished Danielle.
"Correct. I am an amateur mycologist, a mushroom specialist. Would you like to know their scientific name?"
"No," replied Danielle abruptly. "I'm in a hurry now. I'm sorry."
"They kill you and don't leave a trace, not even in an autopsy," he whispered almost in a dazed trance. "Not a trace."
"Well, I'm not going to eat any,"said Danielle, and those became her parting words. She drove off, glad to be away from another dementoid.
But the next day found her morning jog interrupted to pick a bouquet of white mushrooms, which found their way to the sunniest windowsill in the bonus room of her house.
She never saw Edwin again.
V. Author's intervention
To complete this story, I need to briefly describe Danielle's ex-husband, the cheater Gary. But when I tell you the first and most prominent feature of Gary's face, you the intelligent reader, will jump across twenty squares and conclude at once that the ending of this story is contrived, even though it is not.
Okay, here goes. Since his divorce, Gary, a normally staid investment banker, had gotten into a fight with a man carrying a knife and had a foot long scar across his face stretching from his chin to his forehead behind his right eye.
Do you see, intelligent reader, where the story is going? But don't give up, there may be more surprises than you're counting on.
VI. Gary
Gary was truly a bastard during the time he had been married to Danielle. He had indeed cheated many times, and after the divorce, he had schemed to kidnap his children and flee to Mexico, a plan that only a last minute intervention from a concerned family member had offset. But Gary had a certain charm that attracted women and a kind of unknowable complexity that made people want to explore him in depth. One of the contradictory aspects of his personality was the ambivalence he felt toward his scar. The legal settlement from the injury had assured him the complete services of a competent plastic surgeon who could have nearly eradicated all traces of the jagged knife wound, but Gary refused this, feeling that his scar gave his otherwise prosaic life a certain dangerous edge which he liked and which new female acquaintances seemed to like as well. For some, he had been a war hero; for others, a mercenary soldier in Africa; for others, a fire-rescue guy. It depended on the company he was with. The scar could start a million conversations and launch a million tall tales. That was its beauty. The fact that it came from a drunken street bum with a knife was never brought out.
But, then again, it never got attached to another five pages of lies that Gary had duly confected for a certain $39 a month web dating site. He didn't think it looked good in a photo and wanted to spring it on new acquaintances by humble surprise.
VII. The inevitable
Of course, you the intelligent reader were right. So let's just summarize. It wasn't the usual park. It was Danny's Dockside Bar and Grill. He was waiting for "Valerie," and she was looking for "Russ." In the darkness of an inside booth, Valerie had a nice silhouette and shape until she sat down and with the clearing of the darkness became Danielle. And in the initial gloomth, Russ looked pretty trim and fit too, until he stuck his scarred face under the dim light and couldn't help but become his usual Gary self again---this despite the scar.
The dialogue, missing here, had the usual elements of shock, disgust and disappointment. You don't want to hear all that.
What you want to hear is that Gary was quite friendly and was about to explain his scar when Danielle suddenly remembered she "forgot" something she had been carrying recently in the glove compartment of her car. Briskly, she jumped up, promising to return. And for some reason she did. The reason was clenched in her right hand, and Gary could not see---and did not care---what it was.
Gary proposed a drink and a laugh. They had been foiled by fate on the internet. It was some kind of bizarre but humorous irony. Disgust welled up through Danielle's chest, but she agreed. It was kind of funny, all told. They ordered a pitcher of beer. Danielle drank fast which made Gary drink fast. Then they ordered another pitcher. Both of them needed to pee, but Danielle held hers the longest on purpose. Gary excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Danielle had poured them two full glasses from the second pitcher.
VIII. Conclusion
Who knows what went through Danielle's mind? The long years of cheating, mental abuse, the attempted kidnapping of the children. The scar. What about the scar?
"Drunk attacked me outside the office," said Gary with an openness he had not exercised in years. "No big deal."
"They can fix things like that," said Danielle.
"I know. But for some reason I like it."
Then they just looked at one another. It was a long look, long enough for all the bad things in their shattered marriage to parade through their minds leaving room for another parade of tender and loving minutes and then another parade of passionate moments and then a final parade of lustful intervals. One memory parade succeeded the next until, at length, their minds were relieved of several years of post-divorce stress and anger. Danielle had the feeling that a cascade of little knife blades had fallen out of her ear and disappeared into the smoky barroom air.
Danielle could think of very little to say.
"I always liked the sound of your voice,"she whispered abstractly, her anger attenuated by the beer and rush of better memories.
"I always liked your fingers," replied Gary, entwining his into hers across the table.
A small joking rush of "I always liked-s" volleyed back and forth over the bar table until they were at last laughing and blushing at one another.
"We're acting silly," giggled Danielle
"We always did," snickered Gary, who was preparing to take a sip of beer.
Suddenly from deep within her body, Danielle emitted a horrid scream. "Don't drink that!!!," she cried from a cavity heretofore unknown in her innermost person.
Gary set down the beer glass in surprise. Danielle knocked it off the table to the floor and screamed for a waiter. Then, without comment, she got up and changed sides in the booth and sat very close to Gary . They brushed a kiss lightly across each other's lips and snuggled closer. Something was spontaneously reignited.
"Valerie is a cool name," said Gary. "Maybe we could start over as Russ and Valerie."
"Maybe we could," agreed Danielle.
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
________________________________
Devon Pitlor, January, 2009
one of the stragest stories you have ever posted devon.
kudos but im not sure i understand it.
lep
Must be the peeing aspect. I have a very small bladder, and I always have to pee. I have had myself checked for other troubles, and none. But I interrupt all meetings with urination.
Posting personal information here.
Devon
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 11 2009, 03:57 PM)
Hmmm . . . this is an interesting story. Yes, it's contrived, but that is typical of romance. I didn't like how quickly she forgot their past, but that is also typical of romance.
I think you did a good job of exploring the genre. It would be interesting to see this same story from a different perspective. He's really a vampire, or she has recently become a serial killer who raises mushrooms on the side.
But for the romance genre, you nailed the plot requirements.
By the way, I dont' like romance at all - I haven't read books like that since junior high, save the romantics of the 19th century whose focus was never on love.
I have a romantic nature and long for someone to sweep me off my feet, et al, but I don't like that to be the point of what I read.
*one of the most romantic things I've ever read, for example, is in The Accidental Tourist when Macon in in Paris and calls his wife, Sarah, and is able to imagine just how she looks lying in the sun. The familiarity but also that observation, the way her knew her so well, was so touching to me.
Sorry, this post has become a mishmash of nothing. I like the story, but it doesn't feel comfortable. Does that make sense?
I think you did a good job of exploring the genre. It would be interesting to see this same story from a different perspective. He's really a vampire, or she has recently become a serial killer who raises mushrooms on the side.
But for the romance genre, you nailed the plot requirements.
By the way, I dont' like romance at all - I haven't read books like that since junior high, save the romantics of the 19th century whose focus was never on love.
I have a romantic nature and long for someone to sweep me off my feet, et al, but I don't like that to be the point of what I read.
*one of the most romantic things I've ever read, for example, is in The Accidental Tourist when Macon in in Paris and calls his wife, Sarah, and is able to imagine just how she looks lying in the sun. The familiarity but also that observation, the way her knew her so well, was so touching to me.
Sorry, this post has become a mishmash of nothing. I like the story, but it doesn't feel comfortable. Does that make sense?
I like your mishmashes. Yes, it is abrupt. I am still an "Internet storyteller." It has to be fast. Also, this is from a guy's perspective. Romance means you all of a sudden forget that I killed your little sister, LOL. Sounds a little like Stevie. Thanks for the input.
More Dana Drive please.... That is the only real way to shut me up, LOL. I mean that. You have me hooked. More Dana Drive asap.
Love,
Devon
@ romance means you forget I killed your little sisterI know what you mean about internet writing - it does tend to move much faster. That's fun, imho.
But you have inspired me to stretch things out a little more.
The Gary of my story gets a free pass on all his former sins. That really IS too abrupt. Next time, I am going to delve deeper into motivation. Thanks to you.
We learn as we go.
Devon
The Gary of my story gets a free pass on all his former sins. That really IS too abrupt. Next time, I am going to delve deeper into motivation. Thanks to you.
We learn as we go.
Devon
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 11 2009, 09:07 PM)
But you have inspired me to stretch things out a little more.
The Gary of my story gets a free pass on all his former sins. That really IS too abrupt. Next time, I am going to delve deeper into motivation. Thanks to you.
We learn as we go.
Devon
The Gary of my story gets a free pass on all his former sins. That really IS too abrupt. Next time, I am going to delve deeper into motivation. Thanks to you.
We learn as we go.
Devon
You really do have a way with words, Devon, and I enjoy reading your stories.
I like it best when you take your time - think of it as foreplay. LOL
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 11 2009, 10:16 PM)
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 11 2009, 09:07 PM)
But you have inspired me to stretch things out a little more.
The Gary of my story gets a free pass on all his former sins. That really IS too abrupt. Next time, I am going to delve deeper into motivation. Thanks to you.
We learn as we go.
Devon
The Gary of my story gets a free pass on all his former sins. That really IS too abrupt. Next time, I am going to delve deeper into motivation. Thanks to you.
We learn as we go.
Devon
You really do have a way with words, Devon, and I enjoy reading your stories.
I like it best when you take your time - think of it as foreplay. LOL
Well, I always got blasted on foreplay too, LOL. If we transform into a more literate forum, then our stories will get more complexity. I'm still writing on "old" rules.
Like arm wrestling, etc.
Love,
Devon
PS--Maybe 2009 is the year we all "come out." SAS did that. I'm amazed. And pleasantly so.
So....we post a story. We see how far it goes. In all, this is no big deal.
Incidentally, today a scatological obssesive posted his images of feces. No one noticed. So he went away. That is the way things should be handled.
When you don't scream, no one hears you.
That is cool.
Devon
Incidentally, today a scatological obssesive posted his images of feces. No one noticed. So he went away. That is the way things should be handled.
When you don't scream, no one hears you.
That is cool.
Devon
You know what I like about my story? It could happen. The Internet has a million surprises.
Devon
Devon
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 11 2009, 09:39 PM)
You know what I like about my story? It could happen. The Internet has a million surprises.
Devon
Devon
Yes, it could.
My parents have a friend who got a divorce and a few years later was set up on a blind date. It was her ex-husband, and they did end up getting remarried. True story.
I am really a mycologist myself and I say to you that this is not a small matter. " Devon", who ever he is, is right. There are fungi which can kill without leaving a trace and the CSI ppl know it. "Devon" is right. This part is scarey. I do not care about stories whereever, but you can really kill someone with the the right mushrooms.
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 11 2009, 10:45 PM)
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 11 2009, 09:39 PM)
You know what I like about my story? It could happen. The Internet has a million surprises.
Devon
Devon
Yes, it could.
My parents have a friend who got a divorce and a few years later was set up on a blind date. It was her ex-husband, and they did end up getting remarried. True story.
I believe it. I came close myself. This is not all that unreal. But I wanted, by intervention, to acknowledge that.
I am still in awe about SAS and his story.
I make tons of grammatical mistakes, but I just can't write illiterately for the hell of it.
Grace, we have opened La Casque de Pandore here,. How in the hell do you say that in English?
SAS has amazed me.
Devon
Pandora's box. But I like the French. I've never heard that before.
I took French in high school and college and cannot remember any of it.
I took French in high school and college and cannot remember any of it.
DEVIN KEEP YOUR WRITING UP ... IT IS ALL WE HAVE NOW....SHIT I DONT KNOW, KEEP WRITING AND GOOOD STORY.
\
OFF BALA NCE FAN
\
OFF BALA NCE FAN
This may be my most authentic story ever. Read it and think about it.
Dev
Dev
QUOTE (Guest @ Jan 11 2009, 06:27 PM)
Could I please have a Piña Colada to sip while I read tonight's story?
I'll readily admit that song came to mind when I read the story. Also, the Latino bar scene in Breathless where Richard Gere goes into the restroom and beats the shit out of a gay guy for a broken heart necklace lit from the inside.
Wake up today and see Devvie's at it again. Good but short story, Devon.
THIS DOESN'T HAVE TO BE FICTION--DEVON--IT MUST HAVE ALREADY HAPPENED SOMEWHERE BY NOW. I MEAN THE DATING PART.
They all said it before: TOO SHORT. You want to know more about Gary and Dani. 
Ugh. I hate to do this seeing as how you're sick and all Devon, but here goes.
I found this latest story waaaay too predictable for my liking. But that's always been a pet peeve of mine - predictability. I HATE knowing the ending so far before it actually arrives, I've always been a sucker for surprises. But there really weren't any in this story.
The thing that I suppose really turned me off was the fact that I'd swear I've heard at least a dozen different versions of this tale before. In a nutshell, Boy behaves badly...Girl leaves boy...boy and girl meet again under strangely coincidental circumstances...girl and boy fall back in love...and they all live happily ever after.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Danielle just up and forgave him for all the shit he'd piled on her, MINUTES after she was about to kill him was just a little too far fetched. Either that, or she was a dumb fuck....and I hate dumb fucks. lol...
It just wasn't my cup of tea this time...sorry!
Heidi
I found this latest story waaaay too predictable for my liking. But that's always been a pet peeve of mine - predictability. I HATE knowing the ending so far before it actually arrives, I've always been a sucker for surprises. But there really weren't any in this story.
The thing that I suppose really turned me off was the fact that I'd swear I've heard at least a dozen different versions of this tale before. In a nutshell, Boy behaves badly...Girl leaves boy...boy and girl meet again under strangely coincidental circumstances...girl and boy fall back in love...and they all live happily ever after.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Danielle just up and forgave him for all the shit he'd piled on her, MINUTES after she was about to kill him was just a little too far fetched. Either that, or she was a dumb fuck....and I hate dumb fucks. lol...
It just wasn't my cup of tea this time...sorry!
Heidi
I like the architecture of your story, Devon. Particularly how you handled the "first date" as being "the last date".
I believe that the role of Edwin could be expanded to a more complete accounting of the wined as he dined on the evil ear of the liar that eve. Just a suggestion, but Michener comes to mind here, as he was known for the meticulous research behind his sweeping sagas.
Otherwise the merits of the story are skewed in favor of a levier valve. What happens when the valve bursts? Will Gary find himself red faced yet again as veer becomes vile full of ire?
I believe that the role of Edwin could be expanded to a more complete accounting of the wined as he dined on the evil ear of the liar that eve. Just a suggestion, but Michener comes to mind here, as he was known for the meticulous research behind his sweeping sagas.
Otherwise the merits of the story are skewed in favor of a levier valve. What happens when the valve bursts? Will Gary find himself red faced yet again as veer becomes vile full of ire?
QUOTE (Smartblonde @ Jan 12 2009, 09:31 AM)
Ugh. I hate to do this seeing as how you're sick and all Devon, but here goes.
I found this latest story waaaay too predictable for my liking. But that's always been a pet peeve of mine - predictability. I HATE knowing the ending so far before it actually arrives, I've always been a sucker for surprises. But there really weren't any in this story.
The thing that I suppose really turned me off was the fact that I'd swear I've heard at least a dozen different versions of this tale before. In a nutshell, Boy behaves badly...Girl leaves boy...boy and girl meet again under strangely coincidental circumstances...girl and boy fall back in love...and they all live happily ever after.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Danielle just up and forgave him for all the shit he'd piled on her, MINUTES after she was about to kill him was just a little too far fetched. Either that, or she was a dumb fuck....and I hate dumb fucks. lol...
It just wasn't my cup of tea this time...sorry!
Heidi
I found this latest story waaaay too predictable for my liking. But that's always been a pet peeve of mine - predictability. I HATE knowing the ending so far before it actually arrives, I've always been a sucker for surprises. But there really weren't any in this story.
The thing that I suppose really turned me off was the fact that I'd swear I've heard at least a dozen different versions of this tale before. In a nutshell, Boy behaves badly...Girl leaves boy...boy and girl meet again under strangely coincidental circumstances...girl and boy fall back in love...and they all live happily ever after.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Danielle just up and forgave him for all the shit he'd piled on her, MINUTES after she was about to kill him was just a little too far fetched. Either that, or she was a dumb fuck....and I hate dumb fucks. lol...
It just wasn't my cup of tea this time...sorry!
Heidi
Devon usually has surprise endings, but he sometimes does this "author intervention" thing when he thinks things are getting too predictable. That annoys the hell out of me in what is usually a good story. Devon's writing is always good but he lets his characters stray into the unbelievable sometimes and then does this "intervene" schtick.
Good writing but so-so story line.
QUOTE (Guest @ Jan 12 2009, 10:33 AM)
I like the architecture of your story, Devon. Particularly how you handled the "first date" as being "the last date".
I believe that the role of Edwin could be expanded to a more complete accounting of the wined as he dined on the evil ear of the liar that eve. Just a suggestion, but Michener comes to mind here, as he was known for the meticulous research behind his sweeping sagas.
Otherwise the merits of the story are skewed in favor of a levier valve. What happens when the valve bursts? Will Gary find himself red faced yet again as veer becomes vile full of ire?
I believe that the role of Edwin could be expanded to a more complete accounting of the wined as he dined on the evil ear of the liar that eve. Just a suggestion, but Michener comes to mind here, as he was known for the meticulous research behind his sweeping sagas.
Otherwise the merits of the story are skewed in favor of a levier valve. What happens when the valve bursts? Will Gary find himself red faced yet again as veer becomes vile full of ire?
Agree. How long before he cheats again and she decides to poison him again?
I like the shortness, sorry :)
That is one of Devin's strong points. He lays it all out fast. :)
That is one of Devin's strong points. He lays it all out fast. :)
QUOTE (Smartblonde @ Jan 12 2009, 09:31 AM)
Ugh. I hate to do this seeing as how you're sick and all Devon, but here goes.
I found this latest story waaaay too predictable for my liking. But that's always been a pet peeve of mine - predictability. I HATE knowing the ending so far before it actually arrives, I've always been a sucker for surprises. But there really weren't any in this story.
The thing that I suppose really turned me off was the fact that I'd swear I've heard at least a dozen different versions of this tale before. In a nutshell, Boy behaves badly...Girl leaves boy...boy and girl meet again under strangely coincidental circumstances...girl and boy fall back in love...and they all live happily ever after.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Danielle just up and forgave him for all the shit he'd piled on her, MINUTES after she was about to kill him was just a little too far fetched. Either that, or she was a dumb fuck....and I hate dumb fucks. lol...
It just wasn't my cup of tea this time...sorry!
Heidi
I found this latest story waaaay too predictable for my liking. But that's always been a pet peeve of mine - predictability. I HATE knowing the ending so far before it actually arrives, I've always been a sucker for surprises. But there really weren't any in this story.
The thing that I suppose really turned me off was the fact that I'd swear I've heard at least a dozen different versions of this tale before. In a nutshell, Boy behaves badly...Girl leaves boy...boy and girl meet again under strangely coincidental circumstances...girl and boy fall back in love...and they all live happily ever after.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Danielle just up and forgave him for all the shit he'd piled on her, MINUTES after she was about to kill him was just a little too far fetched. Either that, or she was a dumb fuck....and I hate dumb fucks. lol...
It just wasn't my cup of tea this time...sorry!
Heidi
I appreciated your comments. Don't ever be afraid of offending me. That is how we learn and why I post here.
Got suddenly busy, so I'll get back to you and the others.
Say it once, say it a million times: I LIKE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.
So do all aspiring writers.
Love,
Devon
To all: Sorry for the lack of individual response this am. I read and appreciated all comments.
Now we can archive this, if Ankhy sees fit, and get back to posting in the contest thread, although NO anonymous stories posted will be mine. You have to take that on faith, or you can examine the style.
I am behind reading the latest entries, but I'll get to it later.
Love,
Devon....suddenly busy with "world-changing" events. LOL.
Now we can archive this, if Ankhy sees fit, and get back to posting in the contest thread, although NO anonymous stories posted will be mine. You have to take that on faith, or you can examine the style.
I am behind reading the latest entries, but I'll get to it later.
Love,
Devon....suddenly busy with "world-changing" events. LOL.
Wow Devon!
You know, sometimes I think I'm reading a completely different story than the others here!
Or maybe it's just my way of interpreting that's different?
Anyway, I saw this as a tale of psychological horror in the style of perhaps a Hitchcock., or even a questioning as Hugo did in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Who is the human and who is the beast ? Who's sin was greater? etc...
Creepy, very creepy as Danielle became a mass murderer as she poisoned the town's water supply...in her hate everyone else had become her enemy...
Pure X !! Hahaha! Such a genius mind you have, Devon!
to you!
You know, sometimes I think I'm reading a completely different story than the others here!
Or maybe it's just my way of interpreting that's different?
Anyway, I saw this as a tale of psychological horror in the style of perhaps a Hitchcock., or even a questioning as Hugo did in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Who is the human and who is the beast ? Who's sin was greater? etc...
Creepy, very creepy as Danielle became a mass murderer as she poisoned the town's water supply...in her hate everyone else had become her enemy...
QUOTE
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
Pure X !! Hahaha! Such a genius mind you have, Devon!
to you!
QUOTE (The Goddess @ Jan 12 2009, 03:56 PM)
Wow Devon!
You know, sometimes I think I'm reading a completely different story than the others here!
Or maybe it's just my way of interpreting that's different?
Anyway, I saw this as a tale of psychological horror in the style of perhaps a Hitchcock., or even a questioning as Hugo did in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Who is the human and who is the beast ? Who's sin was greater? etc...
Creepy, very creepy as Danielle became a mass murderer as she poisoned the town's water supply...in her hate everyone else had become her enemy...
Pure X !! Hahaha! Such a genius mind you have, Devon!
to you!
You know, sometimes I think I'm reading a completely different story than the others here!
Or maybe it's just my way of interpreting that's different?
Anyway, I saw this as a tale of psychological horror in the style of perhaps a Hitchcock., or even a questioning as Hugo did in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Who is the human and who is the beast ? Who's sin was greater? etc...
Creepy, very creepy as Danielle became a mass murderer as she poisoned the town's water supply...in her hate everyone else had become her enemy...
QUOTE
But before anything further took place on this "first" date, Danielle needed to go to the bathroom. She gaped at herself in the mirror, dazed and shocked as she listened to the toilet sucking the remainder of her Purex bag of dried mushroom powder down the drain.
Pure X !! Hahaha! Such a genius mind you have, Devon!
to you!Thanks, my love!!!
I knew I was writing a predictable story, but I intervened and said it would be predictable. My co-workers do not like the quick translation of Danielle back into romance again, but these are the vagaries of some love affairs.
But I did mean it to be dark, as you say. How can one want to kill another one moment and fall back in love with them the next moment? But it does happen.
I dwelled a long time on the scar issue, which no one has brought out in the comments so far. I knew someone like that once. A facial scar---or any scar----can create a lot of fictive commotion.
When I was a young kid, I wanted a facial scar. My mother took me on purpose to a clinic in Bordeaux and walked us both over from the train station. We stood outside the door. She said [ in translation] "Now go in. I have arranged for the doctor to cut you across the face. You will have your scar."
Of course, no doctor in France or anywhere else would ever do that, but at age 11, I believed it. Right in front of my mother, I turned on my heels and ran away. I guess she had the right idea to cure me.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for the different interpretation.
Love,
Dev
Your choice of the name Gary is interesting. My conclusion is you chose it to give your most noteworthy troll, some more cannon fodder. It was a good story, and I like the sinister motive you used to write it. Have fun friend.............
QUOTE (Dr. Woo @ Jan 12 2009, 09:23 PM)
Your choice of the name Gary is interesting. My conclusion is you chose it to give your most noteworthy troll, some more cannon fodder. It was a good story, and I like the sinister motive you used to write it. Have fun friend.............
Thanks, Robert. Gary was just chosen at random. Glad you liked the story. I liked yours too. This contest is going to be interesting.
If we don't pick up trolls in a place like this, we are doing something wrong. LOL.
Devon
QUOTE (Devon @ Jan 12 2009, 06:41 PM)
QUOTE (Dr. Woo @ Jan 12 2009, 09:23 PM)
Your choice of the name Gary is interesting. My conclusion is you chose it to give your most noteworthy troll, some more cannon fodder. It was a good story, and I like the sinister motive you used to write it. Have fun friend.............
Thanks, Robert. Gary was just chosen at random. Glad you liked the story. I liked yours too. This contest is going to be interesting.
If we don't pick up trolls in a place like this, we are doing something wrong. LOL.
Devon
Agreed
Second chapter. Gary and Danielle remarries each other and he cheats with the pizza boy she wanted screw and she gets Edwin to find her more moushrooms and goes to poison him again but stops when she realizes that his scar is just a paste on and the Edwin is pulling her strings because of the UFO thingy he saw. She knocks his coffee cup full of poison off the table and the whole thing starts up again.
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