Archive for May, 2009»
Fictionlet
“I dunno, mom, maybe you can tell me,” Brigid said. “Why do I have so much trouble with men?”
“As far as I can tell,” said Isadora, “you don’t have much trouble at all. You scoop them up and then kick them right back out again with amazing facility.”
“Ha-bloody-ha,” said Brigid. “I’m serious. It seems like every guy I get involved with is pretty much set up to be an ex- from the start. It seems like life would be easier if we could just skip the whole dating thing and go straight to being exes in the first place.”
“My poor child,” said Isadora. “I suppose your father and I weren’t very good role models in that department, were we? I daresay he was my one true love; but we were never happier as a couple than after the divorce. All we ever taught you was how to ‘still be friends’ gracefully.”
“Well, I dunno, maybe that’s part of it,” said Brigid. “But I don’t think that’s the only thing. Some of it has to be me, too. I can’t let go and accept people for the way they are, I guess. As soon as I like somebody, I start thinking about every little flaw they’ve got and how much it bugs me.”
“You can be something of a stick-in-the-mud, it’s true,” said Isadora. “That’s hard for men to live with, you know. They spend their whole lives trying to look good and ward off criticism from other men; what they want from women is to be told how wonderful they are, regardless of whether they are or not.”
“Yeesh,” said Brigid.
“Anyway,” said Isadora, in a lighter tone. “What do you want a man for, when you’ve got Greg?”
Brigid laughed. “Nice way to put it, mom. I’m sure he’d love to hear you said that.”
Isadora shook her head and rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean, he provides you with a place to live at a reasonable rate, gives you someone to talk to, keeps the place tidy … he even makes you breakfast from time to time, and never once bothers you with sex. By some standards, he’s the perfect man.”
“Well, it would be nice to be bothered with sex once in a while,” said Brigid.
“I understand,” said Isadora. “Another reason I stayed friendly with your father.”
“I didn’t want to know that, mom,” Brigid said.
-The Gneech
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Fictionlet
“We’re no strangers to loooooo-ooove,” came Greg’s voice from down the hall.
“Good lord,” groaned Brigid into her coffee mug.
“You know the ruuuules, and so do I!”
Brigid buried her face in one hand, as if trying to rub the universe out of existence.
“A full commitment’s what I’m thinkin’ ooooofff … you won’t get this from any other guy…”
She glanced up with one bloodshot eye as Greg came swooping into the living room, carrying Ozymandias in both hands and spinning the cat in sweeping motions like a ballroom dancer.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down!” sang Greg. “Never gonna run around or desert you!” Ozymandias, for his part, simply dangled and regarded his surroundings with a kind of long-suffering apathy.
“Greg…” said Brigid.
“Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye! Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you!” Spin.
“Greg!” said Brigid.
Greg, looking annoyed, put Ozymandias down on the arm of the couch. “What!” he said. Ozymandias quickly vanished under a handy piece of furniture.
“This is sad,” Brigid said. “You just Rickrolled the cat.”
Greg’s eyebrows furrowed. “Rickrolled? What does that mean?”
Brigid squeezed her eyes shut again. It needed but this.
-The Gneech
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Fictionlet
Greg looked up from his laptop as Brigid shoved a book towards him. “Here, sign this,” she said.
“What?” said Greg. Upon seeing that it was a copy of Funny Looks, with a price sticker from Big Book Barn, he said, “Okay, who’s it for?”
“It’s for me, stupid. Just sign it.”
Greg’s eyebrows shot up. “You bought a copy of Funny Looks? Why didn’t you just read one of the author copies over there on the bookshelf?”
“Because I wanted my own copy, that’s why. Now sign it already, it might be worth something on eBay someday.” Greg grinned, shrugged, and signed the book without further comment. “I’ve never read a book written by somebody I knew before,” Brigid said. “So I gotta ask.”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Jack Porthos, the annoying idiot who keeps following the protagonist around everywhere and gets all sorts of fawning attention even though he’s a self-centered moron — he’s based on Treville, isn’t he?”
Greg handed the signed book back to her. “You should know me better than that by now,” he said. “You know I’m not the kind to dis and tell.”
-The Gneech
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Fictionlet
“I, Greg Bumerli, do solemnly swear: Dammit.”
“Very nice. What do you want, a medal?”
-The Gneech
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