You can see where this is headed.

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© Brock Rizy 2010

Trying new things.

All bears © Brock Rizy 2010

A little classic Brock. Fiction.

…

She opened the door to our little apartment (too small for two), stepped over the threshhold and halted amidst a jangle of housekeys. She looked at me, slouching on the couch. My feet were on the ottoman and the cat was on my shins and the vodka was in my right hand, hanging by my hip. Her lips parted to let loose a sigh of concern and I tried to straighten up, but too late. She’d already seen me like this, so I held my left hand up, holding a glass (complete with tinkling ice) and two fingers raised to offer a non-verbal hello. In an uncharacteristic drunken Texas drawl (the drawl abnormal, not the drunken), I added, “Darling.”

“Baby,” she said.

“I love it when you call me that.”

She wasn’t as amused as I was by that one, because I didn’t usually pull it out until she was approaching me with disdain. Which was almost every day, these days. I was sliding off the Earth’s crust, like I was slouching deeper into this couch, and she was too small and weak to keep pulling me back onto it. So, she started stepping on my white-knuckled fingers clinging.

“Are you drinking that nasty shit straight?” The vodka.

“No.” I lifted my left foot off the ottoman, which roused the cat, and tapped the lemon-lime soft drink at rest on the coffee table. It wobbled and we both started toward it to stop a spill, but it did not fall. I pet the cat with the arch of my foot before moving my leg back where it came from.

“You’re drinking without me?” She said, with a sadness she couldn’t keep down. Through the hammered and sickled salute, I heard it and looked up in time to catch the subtext. Jesus, she’s going to leave me. I stood up in a hurry, set the vodka down, made the cat say “nya” and crossed to her. I gathered her into my arms and pulled her head tight against my chest.

“Don’t be like that, darling.”

“It’s always ‘darling’ with you.” and though she tried to make herself push away, she couldn’t.
I apologized, “I’m sorry, baby, I’ll wait for you next time. I just wasn’t sure when to expect you.” Which was bullshit. She didn’t mind my drinking until I was blocked, because she knew it got out of hand, or rather, never left my hand. I kissed her cheek and said ‘darling’ one more time. “How was your day?”

She stayed in my arms, but she remained silent.

I asked her, “What’s the matter? Why don’t you answer?” *

Then I could feel her little hands on my back and her adorable arms squeezing my ribs. It was hard for her to let go, but I knew she was going to.

*with apologies to Yo La Tengo.

Rika: Color scheme I, with the tights from option H. Randall: Color scheme N. Picture them as stop-motion puppets.

© Brock Rizy 2010

Brock says: After a couple of weeks without, we picked back up on the weekly writing exercise.

Karaoke is over. Nobody is singing because they’re too drunk to work the machine. It is sincerely amazing that they had “Somebody Farted” by Bobby Jimmy and the Critters. People bitch because I don’t sing, but they never have songs that I know. Me and my two best dame friends woulda tore the club a new earhole if they had “Keep It Goin’ Louder” by Major Lazer featuring Nina Skye, because I do an uncanny impression of autotune. Our private room is strewn with emptied Soju bottles and shattered affections. We have one of those in-bred circles of friends that you couldn’t bring a member of the opposite sex to without causing at least a little disappointment, if not full-fledged heartbrokenness. Don’t fuckin’ fret. Those shards would be swept into the bin on the way to the next friend in the circle by next month, if not next week. Jimmy brought Giselle (Jizzelle), so Tina is outdoors smoking a cigarette to stave off panic and keep them out of her eye line for, like, five minutes. She’s thinking desperate thoughts like, “If I don’t mean everything to you, then I might as well mean nothing.” Poor Tina.

I am drunk and wearing my cock on my sleeve, so I address Janelle, the tall blonde with the most beautiful backside I’ve ever ogled. What I like most about her is that when presented with a complimentary rhetorical question, she answers it honestly. “Janelle, you’re smart, you’re funny, you get hotter with age, and not in a desperate housewives kind of way. Why don’t you have a husband?”

“Because I’m smart.” Continue reading Karaoke Is Over