When she gets tired of alternating days eating nothing with days eating nothing but potato skins, she emerges from her bed-cave and decides to take a shower. The towel’s still on the floor where she left it. It’s been cold, so the puddle of water next to it hasn’t dried. Clinically, she cleans up both and sits on top of the washer while she washes, dries, and folded everything he has touched. Her energy’s gone by then, so she leaves them in a stack on one of the living room chairs. Now, she doesn’t have a bed to go back to, so she picks a different towel and takes the shower.
Oh, she was a dramatic one. She’d collapsed on the floor when he told her he was leaving. It was a mistake—she knew this as soon as she hit the ground. The floor was cold, her hair was inadequately shampooed, and her towel, her last shred of dignity, had fallen so that her ass (and only her ass) was exposed to the cold air. She cried loudly, and he walked out. She was a pile of bubbles and water. And an ass.
She walks aimlessly, leaving her phone at home. She is disappearing, and you can’t do that with a phone. It’s dark. She enters a bar. There are ribbons in the way, and she pushes them out of sight, treading on the debris on the floor that blended together into a quite annoying shade of pink.
The bar is empty, save for the bartender and two women who comfort a fourth who is crying. She’s about to leave, but she really, really wants a drink. Or three. This is a three-drink situation.
Five drinks later, she’s helping Crying Woman into a chair. Bartender pours her another drink on the house and joins all of them with a bag of chocolates. The circle of women, mostly strangers, all wronged, all alone, all united by the quite pertinent possibility of only ever living with cats ever again.
I love this piece! This was a really good look into the emotional hardships that women endure on Valentines day due to the responsibility that they feel on the holiday to not be single. By the end of the piece I enjoyed how all of the women in the bar connected with one another and united in their misery, eating chocolates. I also enjoyed the cat-lady cliche as well. This was an awesome example of a cliches being used in a comical way. I fully enjoyed this piece.
ReplyDeleteTo get it out of the way, I'm going to point out that you used "quite" twice, and in a short piece that can be a little overwhelming. Especially because I'm not sure either of them was necessary.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part of this was the second paragraph, because it was so heartbreaking and so funny, and I could see it happening but it was ridiculous and also real. It was a moment that kind of captured picture-perfect moments going wrong. And I loved how the last paragraph was happy but also resigned... it was a very realistic mixture of resignation and happiness, and I don't actually think it was an awful way for them to spend their Valentine's Day.
Very cool piece. It seemed to go from her on the floor of the bathroom to her already out of the house a little quickly. I had to reread that part a couple times to make sure I knew what was going on. But apart from that I really enjoyed it. The first two paragraphs especially.
ReplyDeleteA timely story of the demise of romantic love. You've got a complete story here, beginning-middle-end, and even the break in chronology seems to be working all right. Two things to focus on in revision: make sure the verb tenses are consistent, present tense for all but the break-up scene which is in past. And replace the general and abstract with specific details: rather than "everything he touched" tell us what that includes, and rather than "debris on the floor" again tell us what it is. Don't rush. She didn't walk aimlessly while leaving her phone a home as the syntax would suggest. She left home without her phone and then walked aimlessly. I'd like to see you linger in the ending, render a little more of the bar scene, what transpires between the first drink and the fifth. I suspect by that point she knows the name of the crying woman, and perhaps would use it, signaling this newfound connection and intimacy.
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