(no subject)
I finished the short story for workshop, then promptly came back to my room, closed all my story collection books, and re-shelved them. Too many words for one weekend. I came out with a story that's quality in some places, lacking in others. The first page:
The Wolves Have Disappeared
Bryan Kim-Butler
1.
When you were both five, your friend Timmy said to the sky: “Jeremy has a tail! A big fuzzy tail! TAIL GO BOOM!”. Now you know it was his sensory developmental stage (or something) working itself out, but at the time what he said seemed important. Timmy, to whom you now refer as “my best childhood friend Tim,” is now dead, from lymphoma. He is in the ground, his tumors covered with makeup, except under the tuxedo where it doesn’t matter, lumpy and dead. You wonder how someone can just vanish like that, how nature can make something disappear; in Timmy’s case, going to college on a soccer scholarship, being successful and popular until falling mysteriously ill and bravely facing Death until It comes. You’ve been wondering a lot about nature and vanishing people lately. Sometimes you think Timmy is probably laughing down there, because he knows the answers and you don’t.
Knowing this, what will you do? What will you do when your lover of three and three-quarter years leaves you?
It’s not as if he’s leaving you with nothing.
First, a fully furnished townhouse in Dupont Circle: Cuisinart, Magnavox, and even Compaq stare back at you as you inventory. You write down everything that remains in the apartment because you are bored. It is the nation’s capital; how can you be bored? Well, you are, so you flip the switch on the automatic coffee maker. You envision your right hand tipping the carafe over into the sink, black, steaming liquid leaping out to its denouement. Suddenly, you’ll decide that dumping it out was a mistake, and try to catch the rest of the boiling hot coffee in your left hand, which will make you drop the pitcher, an old-fashioned fragile type, half the glass rushing down the sink after its partner. Maybe you’re psychic. Maybe you’re also crazy.
Not only does he give you a place to live, but a therapist to go with it: a perfect boyfriend. A middle-aged man leads you into a room that contains a bookshelf, a sofa, a desk, and a chair: your fate these days. You sit on the sofa, which maybe remembers your buttocks from last week’s appointment, and the weeks before. You wonder if objects have memory. It is deep green, velvety, expensive, and peaceful. Mr. Savant, the therapist, opens a window. “Do you mind?” he asks after it’s open. “No.” A leaf blows in and he picks it up, placing it carefully in the plastic garbage can by the couch. He comes dangerously close to brushing your leg. The office, on the fourth story of a brick building around the corner from your townhouse, is immaculate. You feel like you are floating with Mr. Savant there, the walls nonexistent, like everyone on the streets can see you both, can see how deficient you are.
It's about a brilliant young man who gets a book of gender criticism published at 17 when he gets involved with a prominent professor. Yeah.
Tired. It's snowy. White.
The Wolves Have Disappeared
Bryan Kim-Butler
1.
When you were both five, your friend Timmy said to the sky: “Jeremy has a tail! A big fuzzy tail! TAIL GO BOOM!”. Now you know it was his sensory developmental stage (or something) working itself out, but at the time what he said seemed important. Timmy, to whom you now refer as “my best childhood friend Tim,” is now dead, from lymphoma. He is in the ground, his tumors covered with makeup, except under the tuxedo where it doesn’t matter, lumpy and dead. You wonder how someone can just vanish like that, how nature can make something disappear; in Timmy’s case, going to college on a soccer scholarship, being successful and popular until falling mysteriously ill and bravely facing Death until It comes. You’ve been wondering a lot about nature and vanishing people lately. Sometimes you think Timmy is probably laughing down there, because he knows the answers and you don’t.
Knowing this, what will you do? What will you do when your lover of three and three-quarter years leaves you?
It’s not as if he’s leaving you with nothing.
First, a fully furnished townhouse in Dupont Circle: Cuisinart, Magnavox, and even Compaq stare back at you as you inventory. You write down everything that remains in the apartment because you are bored. It is the nation’s capital; how can you be bored? Well, you are, so you flip the switch on the automatic coffee maker. You envision your right hand tipping the carafe over into the sink, black, steaming liquid leaping out to its denouement. Suddenly, you’ll decide that dumping it out was a mistake, and try to catch the rest of the boiling hot coffee in your left hand, which will make you drop the pitcher, an old-fashioned fragile type, half the glass rushing down the sink after its partner. Maybe you’re psychic. Maybe you’re also crazy.
Not only does he give you a place to live, but a therapist to go with it: a perfect boyfriend. A middle-aged man leads you into a room that contains a bookshelf, a sofa, a desk, and a chair: your fate these days. You sit on the sofa, which maybe remembers your buttocks from last week’s appointment, and the weeks before. You wonder if objects have memory. It is deep green, velvety, expensive, and peaceful. Mr. Savant, the therapist, opens a window. “Do you mind?” he asks after it’s open. “No.” A leaf blows in and he picks it up, placing it carefully in the plastic garbage can by the couch. He comes dangerously close to brushing your leg. The office, on the fourth story of a brick building around the corner from your townhouse, is immaculate. You feel like you are floating with Mr. Savant there, the walls nonexistent, like everyone on the streets can see you both, can see how deficient you are.
It's about a brilliant young man who gets a book of gender criticism published at 17 when he gets involved with a prominent professor. Yeah.
Tired. It's snowy. White.