Flash Fiction #1 Girl in A Coffeehouse/Yeats Boy
FLASH FICTION:
Watching a girl with long blonde hair, little makeup, child bearing thighs, hiding her face in a corner of my coffeehouse drinking tea, scribbling fast and furiously into her unlined paper journal which kind of makes me want to French kiss her in a Katy Perry sort of way. The girl's purse holds pictures taken from a distance across the school Quad of a really cool dude who recited Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" aloud in poetry class last semester and then told her she's "got rhymes like Dorothy Parker." She remembers every word he ever said to her. She catalogs his smiles. After admiring him for so long, from afar, the stars align and she lets him sleep over after a Tuesday night show at the Empty Bottle after he walks her home in the cold(even putting his Pea coat clad, wool arms around her for the first time in an effort to keep her warm after the two of them each mention the weather five times in the first fifty feet out the door of the bar.) The morning after is rather quiet and awkward and her roommate bitches that Yeats Boy is spending way too much time in the bathroom and she needs to get in the shower to get to class. "Is this guy jerking off in there, or what?" her roommate complains, "If it stinks to high heaven once I get in there, you can forget about borrowing my fisherman sweater today." After the boy leaves, the girl inhales her bed sheets and then takes her time to fantasize and pleasure herself even though they only made out. He's such a gentleman! she tells herself, giddy. Then she remembers: But I haven't gotten laid in a year - maybe...I should have jumped him? Self-satisfied, she smiles and dances around the apartment by herself. She listens to Radiohead and excavates the last bits of weed from her bitchy roommate's one hitter. She doesn't have to go to work til four. Yeats Boy surprises the girl at lunch time with a - get this - A PHONE CALL - Can this really be happening? She wonders and digs her bitten nails into her forearm skin every time she nervously sighs into the phone remembering the scratches on her face from his five o'clock shadow whiskers and how she can't remember the exact color of his eyes now - it was so dark last night. He asks her for a coffee date after his music theory class- he wants to write for Rolling Stone and/or be a DJ/and/or teach English in a foreign country and/or be the next Scorsese. He'll have to decide on a major soon. See you at one, he tells her. It's two-forty-five and he hasn't shown up yet. She mans up and calls him on the phone only two or twelve times but same thing - voice mail! No! She writes desperately into her journal in a corner of the coffeehouse where they were supposed to have their first real date and...change her life forever. Instead of seeing her obviously menstruating roommate at home tonight after her shift at the restaurant - she would see him and he would make himself comfortable on her bed and make fun of the Tortured Woman/Jane Eyre collection on her bookshelf while she put on mood music and lit candles. He would wetly whisper "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" poem while kissing the nape of her neck and lifting her roommate's too tight fisherman sweater over her head while listening to the original "Crimson and Clover," and blowing out her "Lucky" Bingo Candle from the Dollar Store. The sound of her nervously unbuckling his belt for the first time in the near quiet darkness of her tiny Wicker Park bedroom, would seem so loud to her...almost deafening...but he hasn't shown up yet...and her tea is cold...and her nails are now bitten down to their stubs...and she just keeps replaying "Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee..." and writing to someone, anyone, in her journal, that might listen, that might care...
Watching a girl with long blonde hair, little makeup, child bearing thighs, hiding her face in a corner of my coffeehouse drinking tea, scribbling fast and furiously into her unlined paper journal which kind of makes me want to French kiss her in a Katy Perry sort of way. The girl's purse holds pictures taken from a distance across the school Quad of a really cool dude who recited Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" aloud in poetry class last semester and then told her she's "got rhymes like Dorothy Parker." She remembers every word he ever said to her. She catalogs his smiles. After admiring him for so long, from afar, the stars align and she lets him sleep over after a Tuesday night show at the Empty Bottle after he walks her home in the cold(even putting his Pea coat clad, wool arms around her for the first time in an effort to keep her warm after the two of them each mention the weather five times in the first fifty feet out the door of the bar.) The morning after is rather quiet and awkward and her roommate bitches that Yeats Boy is spending way too much time in the bathroom and she needs to get in the shower to get to class. "Is this guy jerking off in there, or what?" her roommate complains, "If it stinks to high heaven once I get in there, you can forget about borrowing my fisherman sweater today." After the boy leaves, the girl inhales her bed sheets and then takes her time to fantasize and pleasure herself even though they only made out. He's such a gentleman! she tells herself, giddy. Then she remembers: But I haven't gotten laid in a year - maybe...I should have jumped him? Self-satisfied, she smiles and dances around the apartment by herself. She listens to Radiohead and excavates the last bits of weed from her bitchy roommate's one hitter. She doesn't have to go to work til four. Yeats Boy surprises the girl at lunch time with a - get this - A PHONE CALL - Can this really be happening? She wonders and digs her bitten nails into her forearm skin every time she nervously sighs into the phone remembering the scratches on her face from his five o'clock shadow whiskers and how she can't remember the exact color of his eyes now - it was so dark last night. He asks her for a coffee date after his music theory class- he wants to write for Rolling Stone and/or be a DJ/and/or teach English in a foreign country and/or be the next Scorsese. He'll have to decide on a major soon. See you at one, he tells her. It's two-forty-five and he hasn't shown up yet. She mans up and calls him on the phone only two or twelve times but same thing - voice mail! No! She writes desperately into her journal in a corner of the coffeehouse where they were supposed to have their first real date and...change her life forever. Instead of seeing her obviously menstruating roommate at home tonight after her shift at the restaurant - she would see him and he would make himself comfortable on her bed and make fun of the Tortured Woman/Jane Eyre collection on her bookshelf while she put on mood music and lit candles. He would wetly whisper "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" poem while kissing the nape of her neck and lifting her roommate's too tight fisherman sweater over her head while listening to the original "Crimson and Clover," and blowing out her "Lucky" Bingo Candle from the Dollar Store. The sound of her nervously unbuckling his belt for the first time in the near quiet darkness of her tiny Wicker Park bedroom, would seem so loud to her...almost deafening...but he hasn't shown up yet...and her tea is cold...and her nails are now bitten down to their stubs...and she just keeps replaying "Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee..." and writing to someone, anyone, in her journal, that might listen, that might care...