Fiction: Good Suburban People Part 1

(this is my attempt to modernize O'Connor...at one time, I thought there could be a whole book of these kind of stories, but, on reflection, perhaps that's making my influence too literal.)

“Hi, it’s Joel…did you decide on a Bible yet?”

“What Bible?”

“We met after church…you were with your mother…”

“….”

“Last week.  You said you’d think about it.”

“Look, dude, you seem like a nice guy, so…”

“Thank you.(blush)"

"Everybody says that and and then they don't do anything...I was just pulling your chain, Ok?"


"You don't even pull your own chain, though, do you?" She typed(evil grin), sent the message and logged off.

Her mother said “Joy, dinner is ready, when you are.”

“Mama, I wish you would respect my wishes and call me Helga.”

“But it’s so harsh and Scandinavian.”

"I’m Scandinavian, Mother. “

“On your father’s side. He told me he doesn’t like the new name either.”

“Well, lucky that you agree during the three minutes a year he thinks about me then.” Helga replied, while inspecting her chipped  blue nail polish.She wasn't sure if it looked tough, or just trashed. Maybe she would leave it just to drive her beauty-school dropout mother nuts for a day or two.

“Did you get in a fight on twitter again?   God knows why you spend so much time talking to those losers living with their parents…”

“What do you think I am?” Helga asked, kind of enjoying it when the pointed comment made her mother’s face crumple a little.  Plain facts were always her mother’s Kryptonite, especially about the leg and all that.Even ten years in, Helga’s mother acted like she should just put her leg on and hop through life with a brilliant smile on her face. To that end, her mother never liked to acknowledge Helga’s injury more than she could help, though she did take on most of the household chores without much complaint.

 Which is why Helga softened her tone and said “No fights today.  I just don’t feel like a Joy.”

“You are to me.”

“That is really cheesy, mother.”

 

On My Desk, This Week...

I had to admit, though, that I couldn’t open my paper (okay, Tommy’s paper) without reading a description of some dude’s secret sexually aggressive life.  There were a lot, even if you thought that some of them weren’t all true.  Most of them involved guys a lot more assuming than my buddy Perry, too. “Maybe he couldn’t help it,” Mrs.  Baxter offered. “Their hormones can be a lot closer to the surface than ours.” For a moment, I was enraged.  Then I was embarrassed, thinking about how gratified my high-school self would be on the undamaged side of “ours.”

“With all due respect, I think that’s a myth, Mrs. Baxter.”

She looked at me as if to say “Have it your way,” but she didn’t say anything else.  Somehow, though, I doubted that she’d give me space on the Sanity Bench again, and, stranger as she was, that gave me a pang.  On the other hand, at least I wouldn’t be tossing and turning in a strange bed that night over the gap between my stated beliefs and the things I was willing to talk about in public. That was a step in the right direction.

Just a taste from my as-yet-untitled False Confession story(partially based on a real incident, in which a neighbor was a witness. ) Thought about calling it "Saturday, In The Park" because I set it on July 4, but the band Chicago isn't very noir, is it? Not that my stories usually are, either, even though I've tried.

Media and Miscellany...

Hard times ahead for your Bohemian Crip, as the spring season that promises renewal for so many means that we here in the desert are headed inexorably to our indoor season.  Perhaps I have some kind of inverse of SAD, called DAS(for Damn all The Sunlight)Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Of such things are climate activists made.( Although I like junk food too much to properly be one, but I am trying hard.)

_Finished up Season 1 of The Deuce on Netflix this week. I think it’s great, but you might want to take a pass if nudity bothers you. James Franco did a nice job playing twins.

Also, watched a biopic of sort of a patron saint of unappreciated Bohemian Crips everywhere, Ms. Emily Dickinson.Cynthia Nixon did a great job of playing her as a human woman,rather than some elusive, booklet-making poetry fairy, but, as a consequence, I felt it too keenly when the walls began to close around her…that is a feeling I don’t really need to have in stereo.Let me know...can there be such a thing as too lifelike a performance? Although I think I told my mother that it was all the scenes at the pianoforte that got to me, which is probably a fiction the woman herself employed at least once.

In Which I Relate to McGruff...

and not only for being a "Crime Dog", although recently I devouredMichelle McNamara's book, and I could see myself in her single-minded quest. But the identification was at once smaller and larger than that, since it came from an insurance commercial.

If you haven't seen it, the crime-fighting hound strides around, all business, eager to share his latest crime-busting tip, only to be talked to in a cute voice like he is...a dog! He is left frustrated and the voice-over says that (Company) will have good rates for "as long as people talk baby talk to dogs".
It's funny, but I could also relate, too.  Although nobody has ever asked me if I had a "tippy-whippy" before, it doesn't take much to notice that something about my appearance plus the chair makes people use a similar voice on me, too.

There could be a whole metaphor in it, X-Men style, about him not getting the respect he deserves  because he is so different from the human detectives.But then, again, more likely, they are just trying to get children of the '80s to think about auto insurance, now that some of us are past those skin-of-your teeth insurers. The Baby Voice is not a joke, though. If you are impaired, you have lived it. Too loud, too much energy, morning show enthusiastic, also irritatingly willing to slow down so you don't miss any syllable as a stranger admires your "pretty, pretty blouse" when you are well launched in your forties.Able-bodied people, nobody likes this.Just greet us like you would a friendly neighbor at the mailbox or something.

Not only is it hard on my credibility, but in school, at least, it kept me from showing my real personality sometimes. Which held me back, I think, Although maybe not as much as it would if life was like a reunion rom-com, and all roads led back to that high school locker, but  between the social doubt trying to correct for it left me less fun than the average car crash, I still have a lot to live down.