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One Year On [Non-Fiction 800 Words]
Wank
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys, trying some non-fiction. Basically my life is just getting drunk in basements.
“You been watching movies, Rich,” says Riley, tall and pale and leaking smoke out of chapped lips. “Been watching rom-coms and shit.”
I ask him why that matters, what difference it makes.
“Sometimes I go a whole year without getting laid. Don’t faze me. Only people in movies get laid all the time.”
That’s not the thing. The thing is that it’s been a whole year since things ended with her. But Riley is happy out here, simple pleasures, cig in one hand and Keystone in the other, watching James’ black cat pick its way through a snowdrift, so I say yeah, yeah, true, we’re not all Don Draper. Riley nods wisely, eyes narrowing on another drag, and then asks me who Don Draper is.
It’s cold even with a buzz on, so I leave him to his smoke and go back down the steep wood steps into James’ noisy basement. There’s a plop of plastic in beer, and a howl, and when I get there James has just sunk the penultimate cup and beerpong is down to ones.
Drew’s watching from a folding chair, because he’s a psychology major now and he likes observing shit, and also because he’s not very good at beerpong. He’s already commandeered James’ iPod speakers, which is why we’re listening to backpack rap instead of a mash-up of every song on the year’s Top 40 list.
I tell him it’s been a whole year since I was with a girl, even though I already told him back in Edmonton.
“The average North American male only has seven sexual partners in a lifetime,” he says to me, popping himself a new Palm Bay. “They did a study.” I wonder if he looked it up because he’s only been with Rachel and they’ve been dating or taking a break for the last five years, but it does make me feel slightly better.
The oven preheat light dings off and Drew shows me that he is making cookies with James’ cookie dough while James is too drunk to notice.
Fez is passing out on the couch, so I sub in for him. Me and Evan are on a team now, against James and Murray.
“You’re having girl problems, Rich?” Evan asks in baritone, like he’s never had girl problems in his life, but before he was a tall blonde basketball player he was a shrimpy blonde basketball player, and I remember how we used to make fun of his ribs.
“You’ll find someone,” James says, taking aim on the other side of the table. He’s got his shoulder against the wall to support a wavery arm. “Someone new. It just takes time, man.” He has a wide drunk smirk, the same he had in high-school before he jumped off Jessica’s fence into a kiddie pool. It doesn’t inspire confidence the way it used to.
I tell him it doesn’t seem that way, it’s been a whole year and it doesn’t seem like I will.
“Fuck that, man.” James is now more invested in the subject than his shot. “Of course you will. You’re handsome. Murr.” He slings his arm around Murray, who will always agree with James no matter what. “Isn’t he handsome, Murr?”
Murray blinks, then bobs his head. “Yeah, man. You’re, uh, you’re so good-looking.”
James laughs. If it was five years ago, he would have called Murray a gayboy, but we’ve all grown up at least a bit and let Murray be Murray. You can’t tell him he should form his own opinions; he’ll just agree.
We play beerpong until my Pabst is gone, and the Keystone is gone, and some weird orange-flavored beer is gone. Riley gallops back down the stairs and me and him are a team for a while, doing the handshake I stole from Community and picking off red solo cups like drunk Russian snipers.
James gets Murray to say he’s down to blaze, and Riley’s always down so he goes to call someone, but that’s when the smell of cookies coming out of the oven overwhelms everybody. James is angry about his fridge being raided for the five seconds it takes to get a cookie from the pan to crammed inside his mouth.
Everything blurs, but it’s this good blur, this seventy-thirty blur. Seventy percent is me being drunk, and I know that, but at least thirty percent is these happy assholes all around me, the guys I’ve played with and fought with and drank with for way more than one year. When I finally stumble my way to the bathroom, I take enough time to delete every last draft I never sent her.
There’s a shot waiting for me when I get out. It hardly even burns.
I ask him why that matters, what difference it makes.
“Sometimes I go a whole year without getting laid. Don’t faze me. Only people in movies get laid all the time.”
That’s not the thing. The thing is that it’s been a whole year since things ended with her. But Riley is happy out here, simple pleasures, cig in one hand and Keystone in the other, watching James’ black cat pick its way through a snowdrift, so I say yeah, yeah, true, we’re not all Don Draper. Riley nods wisely, eyes narrowing on another drag, and then asks me who Don Draper is.
It’s cold even with a buzz on, so I leave him to his smoke and go back down the steep wood steps into James’ noisy basement. There’s a plop of plastic in beer, and a howl, and when I get there James has just sunk the penultimate cup and beerpong is down to ones.
Drew’s watching from a folding chair, because he’s a psychology major now and he likes observing shit, and also because he’s not very good at beerpong. He’s already commandeered James’ iPod speakers, which is why we’re listening to backpack rap instead of a mash-up of every song on the year’s Top 40 list.
I tell him it’s been a whole year since I was with a girl, even though I already told him back in Edmonton.
“The average North American male only has seven sexual partners in a lifetime,” he says to me, popping himself a new Palm Bay. “They did a study.” I wonder if he looked it up because he’s only been with Rachel and they’ve been dating or taking a break for the last five years, but it does make me feel slightly better.
The oven preheat light dings off and Drew shows me that he is making cookies with James’ cookie dough while James is too drunk to notice.
Fez is passing out on the couch, so I sub in for him. Me and Evan are on a team now, against James and Murray.
“You’re having girl problems, Rich?” Evan asks in baritone, like he’s never had girl problems in his life, but before he was a tall blonde basketball player he was a shrimpy blonde basketball player, and I remember how we used to make fun of his ribs.
“You’ll find someone,” James says, taking aim on the other side of the table. He’s got his shoulder against the wall to support a wavery arm. “Someone new. It just takes time, man.” He has a wide drunk smirk, the same he had in high-school before he jumped off Jessica’s fence into a kiddie pool. It doesn’t inspire confidence the way it used to.
I tell him it doesn’t seem that way, it’s been a whole year and it doesn’t seem like I will.
“Fuck that, man.” James is now more invested in the subject than his shot. “Of course you will. You’re handsome. Murr.” He slings his arm around Murray, who will always agree with James no matter what. “Isn’t he handsome, Murr?”
Murray blinks, then bobs his head. “Yeah, man. You’re, uh, you’re so good-looking.”
James laughs. If it was five years ago, he would have called Murray a gayboy, but we’ve all grown up at least a bit and let Murray be Murray. You can’t tell him he should form his own opinions; he’ll just agree.
We play beerpong until my Pabst is gone, and the Keystone is gone, and some weird orange-flavored beer is gone. Riley gallops back down the stairs and me and him are a team for a while, doing the handshake I stole from Community and picking off red solo cups like drunk Russian snipers.
James gets Murray to say he’s down to blaze, and Riley’s always down so he goes to call someone, but that’s when the smell of cookies coming out of the oven overwhelms everybody. James is angry about his fridge being raided for the five seconds it takes to get a cookie from the pan to crammed inside his mouth.
Everything blurs, but it’s this good blur, this seventy-thirty blur. Seventy percent is me being drunk, and I know that, but at least thirty percent is these happy assholes all around me, the guys I’ve played with and fought with and drank with for way more than one year. When I finally stumble my way to the bathroom, I take enough time to delete every last draft I never sent her.
There’s a shot waiting for me when I get out. It hardly even burns.
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Posts
This sentence:
...bothers me. You mean drafts of emails? It comes sort of out of the blue. This line, though:
...is gold. I love it.
I don't know how I'm buying this as a vignette, but it has good characters who are detailed enough to be interesting, and some solid prose and imagery. It'd be a quality segment of something more substantial, I think.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I would have gone with texts instead of drafts myself, drafts make it sound like you wrote a bunch of stuff you never sent which seems weird to have on your phone since I'm technologically inept.
Why did you write this? What were you trying to get at? What reaction did you want to create in the reader? Presumably you felt something, and wanted the reader to feel it, too. Maybe my problem is that I'm too far removed from those types of problems to see them as terribly profound. It's been a long time since I was twenty, and a long time since I had to deal with the dissolution of a twenty-year-old relationship. I may just not be the target audience.
Anyway, like I said, it's well-written. At worst, you have something that can be recycled for scrap or incorporated into something larger. At best, maybe it's a great piece that just didn't work for me because of things that have nothing to do with the piece itself.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
jayxwolf.com || twit || fb || writing || ravelry || dA || g++
jayxwolf.com || twit || fb || writing || ravelry || dA || g++
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"