On Life as a Sarcastic Fringehead

Now that I have my journals out of storage, I have discovered two things: I am a much better writer, thank God, than I was in 1993, and I do believe I only matured into an adult about five years ago. When I was in my twenties, unbeknownst to me (I have always loved that word unbeknownst), I was a child. I am positive that everybody around me knew it, though. They were certainly beknownst about it.

Just in case somewhere in a previous post I promised to post all my unfinished stories, let me amend. I will only post the ones that I can type without becoming physically ill. I don't know what I thought passed as description or imagery, but whatever it was now passes for raw sewage.

Here's a passable one, though. Not sure where I was going with it.

The blue of his favorite Kool-Aid sparkled in his glass, and he was reminded. Above the hum of the air-conditioner and tuneless whistle of the dying tea kettle, he told his wife Rachel of the cutie living along his route at 687 Rockway. Only a glimpse of her was he rewarded each day as he threw the news into their morning while she and her mother were swallowed by a champagne Mercedes. What a bright and blue pretty dress she had on today. She smiled and waved at him, and he nearly fell from his bike. He smiled and waved back, but the little girl was not similarly affected.

Rachel piled mashed potatoes on her husband’s plate and asked in bone-stiffening apprehension if he’d spoken with the child. She knew that the cutie at 687 Rockway was a child because she knew her husband. Broke through his detailed descriptions of the scar on the cutie’s left knee and the array of hair ribbons he’d witnessed that week with a more forceful inquiry:

You have not spoken with her, have you, Marshall?

Marshall answered that he had not and Rachel’s temporary relief allowed her continue serving her husband this meal.

As his bladder emptied later that night and as the most curious sounds of his stream meeting water pleased him tremendously, Marshall thought about the other one. The other cutie who was old enough—he’d asked her. Eighteen, so it was okay when he felt the smoothness of her soft white skin. It was okay when her nipples rose to meet his fingertips and when his fingertips dove to meet her elsewhere. Sandy was her name and she promised.