Exercises #2

Here are two more fiction exercises I’ve done so far in my creative writing class, which will be over at the end of the month. We do a lot of really short stuff (500 words or less) and much of what I write I can’t think up an ending for. I just sort of stop writing when I reach the limit. I could expand on these little story excerpts before posting them here, but in my mind it feels like that defeats the purpose of revealing them. The purpose is that they are rough and a little embarrassing.

---

The Break-Up

On Groundhog’s Day, it was my boyfriend, not Punxatawney Phil, who decided that I would have six more weeks of winter. Over eggs I heard “I feel like I can’t breathe,” and I thought he was having an allergic reaction roughly around the same time that bushy rodent must’ve been breaching the surface in Pennsylvania, but it was followed by, “I can’t do this anymore.” I was surprised, in spite of the lack of originality in his parting words. Funny how it’s usually evident, in one tiny detail or another, that someone is about to be fired from their job. How long were these thoughts gestating? As far as I knew, he wasn’t seeing a therapist; I couldn’t picture him opening up in this way to one of his friends. Was I the first, and last person he expressed all this to? Was I his closest confidant and most unwitting victim?

All I could say in that moment was ask him why he decided to dump me on Groundhog’s Day, and he told me that he wasn’t even thinking about that, just about how he felt suffocated, how he wanted the freedom to explore himself with other partners and how our monogamous arrangement wasn’t conducive to that. I blinked at this last part, a moment of clarity. I knew what was coming next, because there was a pregnant pause – a pause in its third trimester – and a nervous twitch in his eye before he broached his idea: opening up our relationship. These days, they’re calling it “ethical non-monogamy,” although you could say it’s about as ethical as assisted suicide. I’ve come to view it as just a Brooklyn way of saying that you want to cheat on your girlfriend. I mean, that’s how it’s always been, right? Men want to have whatever woman they please, women just want stability – or at least, that’s what people say. But I couldn’t really believe what I was hearing. I would have preferred a clean break. Or a noose.

“Think of it like this,” he said, his brows wrinkled. “We’ll be exploring other people and thereby exploring new things about ourselves, which will allow our relationship to become even deeper. Most animals aren’t monogamous, so why should humans be?”

I had heard that one before. “Most animals don’t have conscious thought and the knowledge of their eventual deaths. Most animals don’t have free will.” We parted ways.

So, Groundhog’s Day was forever memorialized to me as the day my boyfriend dumped me to date other women, but not before asking me if I’d be okay with it. Now, when February 2nd rolls around it reminds of where he left me, and I sometimes think that I haven’t moved one inch from that spot. I don’t know how my ex is doing, and I haven’t ever bothered to ask him. But I once Googled to see if groundhogs mate for life, and almost laughed when I read that they are, in fact, polyamorous.

---

Going Out

A man’s sweaty body wiped up against me, breaching from the crowd like a water-slick beluga whale. All around the dancefloor bodily fluids flowed freely as men and women and everyone in between jumped like dolphins, chattering and screeching to one another in a language that I couldn’t understand. I looked over at Sarah, whose painted figure glowed a prism of pinks and greens and purples and blues; she was a living, breathing gemstone. Meanwhile, I was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. I didn’t have a boyfriend, so no racy lingerie. I hated swimming, so no bathing suits to be found in my drawers. I didn’t even go clubbing, and I was 25 living in New York City. The beat of the music didn’t sound like anything that I ever listened to on my daily commute, that I ever heard passively on the street. I wouldn’t have even described it as music if someone put a gun to my head, I’d just say it was noise. And maybe they’d still shoot me for calling it that.

I squeezed Sarah’s shoulder, finger lodged in my left ear to make my words to her somewhat audible to myself: “Where’s the bathroom?” I felt like I had to speak at a volume I didn’t know was accessible in my decibel range.

She looked at me and grinned, still gyrating to the erratic beats. She clearly thought I had said something else, replied “Are you having fun?”

I wanted to say that I was having as much fun as I could be under the circumstances. Kelly was out of commission; an unfortunate case of strep throat had impounded her to the lot that was her expensive but filthy Park Slope apartment. Friday nights were damn near ritualistic for Sarah, and she wasn’t going to let someone else’s illness keep her from the only thing she looked forward to every week. Who else was free on a Friday night? So, there I was in jeans and a t-shirt, at 3 in the morning, and all around me wet, vibrant shapes impeded my personal space, and I couldn’t even object because, well, it was what I had signed up for when Sarah pleaded to me over the phone about 24 hours prior, when I could just hear the weepy snot bubbles forming in her nostrils. But now, I really had to pee. And I didn’t know where the hell to go.

“Sarah, where is the bathroom?” I tried again, more insistent this time, straining against the human limits of my body.

“Back room?” she shrieked back at me.

I got as close to her ear canal as I could, “Bathroom. Bathroom. I have to pee.”

Finally, she understood. She nodded and took my hand, and off we went. We ducked and wove through the sea of bodies wobbling in a state of drug-induced euphoria, coyotes darting through the tall grass.