Short Story / plastic pornography (Analysis)
After we finished the first 2-liter bottle of Coke, my teeth felt like sea glass. My tongue was a sandpaper slug, and it hurt a little. Too much sugar. Mom said no soda in the house, I wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to eating icing straight from the tub either, or watching R-rated movies. Mom said nine’s too young for R-rated movies. Michelle’s mom didn’t seem to say much, though. She liked to sit out on the deck and smoke cigarettes, which Dad said were really bad, like drugs, and she would drink lots of yellow drinks with ice cubes in them and not really do much of anything. And I think that was good, because Michelle got to do stuff other kids weren’t supposed to do, and I got to do it with her when I went over. Mom said as long as there’s parental supervision you can go on a play-date, but I don’t know if she knew that Michelle’s mom wasn’t really supervising, just sitting on the deck.
So Michelle and I watched Jerry Maguire on her big screen television in the den and got big bottles of Coca-Cola out of the pantry and drank them when they weren’t even cold, just straight from the bottle. And then we both lay on the floor for a while, burping really loud and looking big and bloated, kind of like those walruses you see lying around in pictures in National Geographic. And my stomach hurt a lot, but it was okay because while we were burping on the floor I got to read a few of Michelle’s Seventeen Magazine, which she had a subscription to even though she was only a little older than me and we were in the same 4th grade class with Mrs. Fields. And later we went on the big trampoline in her yard and she did lots of somersaults in the air, but I wouldn’t do them because I was afraid I would fall on my head.
Another reason I liked going over Michelle’s was that she was one of the coolest girls in our grade. She dated Alex Grendi and Billy Walsh for a week each, and I think she dumped both of them even though they told everyone that they did the dumping. It was weird when she started talking to me, because I was pretty quiet most of the time and sometimes got a hard time from the popular people, but we started being kind of friends all the same. I think she thought I was funny, because when I sometimes said things all sarcastic like Dad she laughed really loud. And I’m pretty sure she meant it in a nice way, because when she laughed she smiled in her eyes, not like when other people laughed when they called me Creep and stuff.
Michelle was also a lot more mature than the other kids in my class, which I think is why people thought she was cool. And I don’t mean that she looked older, even though she did, she was taller than all the other girls and wore a bra already, and it was a real one with wire in it, not like the stretchy training bras Mom gave me that Christmas. But when she talked you could tell that she knew stuff, stuff that we hadn’t learned yet. She wasn’t smarter than me, I was way better at English and a little better at Math, but she knew about a lot of adult stuff that we hadn’t been told about yet. She said that was because her Mom thought it was better to speak to her like she was a grown-up, because babying kids delays their development or something, and she also got to watch R-rated movies. Which I didn’t really understand anyway.
The time we watched Jerry Maguire and drank the full 2 liter bottles of Coke and went on the trampoline was our fifth play-date. I only know that because I don’t really have a lot of play-dates, so when they happen I remember what number they were and everything. On our third play-date, Michelle said she was gonna teach me about sex, and she did, even though I still don’t think I really understand all of it. Another reason Michelle’s house was cool was her gigantic box of Barbies. I only had about five in a little basket in my room, and just the basic ones with the outfits they came with, but Michelle had a huge plastic bin filled to the brim with them. And she didn’t just have Barbie, she had Stacie and Ken and everyone else as well. So on our third play-date she told me she was gonna teach me about sex, because it was about time I knew, and she didn’t want to wait around until I learned by myself. I said okay because Michelle’s ideas were usually good ones, and the only thing I knew about sex was that it was how people were made, and without it we wouldn’t exist. I don’t really know who told me that, I think I saw it on a commercial or something.
Michelle had Barbie on her lap facing me and they were both kind of staring at me, Michelle with her normal eyes and Barbie with her plastic eyes, and then Michelle told me to get Ken out of the box. Not the businessman Ken, the beach fun Ken, she said, because Barbie was more attracted to him. So I did and Michelle put them next to each other on the floor and told me to watch and pay very close attention. She took Barbie’s flight attendant outfit off and then she took Ken’s board shorts off, and she kind of mashed their faces together for about a minute. Then she moved their legs into weird positions and rubbed them against each other, but mainly she was rubbing the plastic bump between Ken’s legs against the rubber inside Barbie’s thighs, and I was really confused the entire time, even though she was explaining what she was doing. But half the words I’d never heard before, and I couldn’t see how rubbing skin together or whatever she was doing with the dolls could make a baby.
But I guess I just wasn’t mature enough to understand that kind of stuff yet. Hopefully I will be soon, because I don’t want to be a kid forever and now every time I go over Michelle’s I have to watch as Michelle rubs Barbie and Ken together in between their legs and I would like to not feel so stupid and be as interested as she is. Maybe if I ask Mom really nicely she will let me watch R-rated movies.
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with the line, Too much sugar. Mom {had} said…. the had reads better. It sounds like the friend is someone where the narrator can do the things her mother won’t allow. Embellish that more! Could the narrator lay infront of TV like that? How about read Seventeen MAg? How careful is the mother. And does the narrator hear the mother’s warnings in her head?
The line …was way better at English and a little better at Math, too many words there. You could say, and if would sound more sophisticated, I excelled in English and my math skills exceeded hers.
The line with the time we watched Jerry..etc etc. is too much. We know about what you did so don’t repeat it. The whole paragraph should be rewritten. Perhaps… I didn’t have a lot of play dates. But I counted each time we were together. I remember on our third play date we… you get the idea. Also the opening paragraphs set up a scene. Then there is alot of telling. Then it reverts back to the third play date. Why not set that up even better? There is something happening here that is highly significant but has little set up. Also give a hint perhaps in the beginning that this momentus event had occured. Peak the readers interest! Besides that! Good work.
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I love the childish conversationl style to this and the way the character goes off on tangents all the time. Kids brains are all over the place and skip from subject to subject and focus on such random things sometimes, and I think you captured this perfectly. It also created a clear sense of personality for the narrating character. She came across as naive yet clever, and the anecdotes that litter this chapter create a strong visual of the shy dowdy quiet girl who idolises the popular girls and can’t believe her luck in getting someone’s undivided attention. She obviously lacks confidence in herself and is introverted, but the first person perspective gives a wonderful insight into the secret thoughts of a person like this. The character seems very real. Good job!
Some might criticise the number of short sentences in the opening paragraph, and the many sentences throughout that begin with ‘But’ and ‘And’, but I think this lends itself to the style of the chapter, and makes the character sound more childish. It’s how children think – one thought following another and tumbling out in a random fashion – “And another thing… and another thing… ”. I wouldn’t change it too much, although you might want to combine some of the shorter sentences at the start into longer, more flowing ones, just to ease the reader into the style of it a little. Once we know the character is a child, these grammatical errors are more easily ignored.
I love the narrative about Michelle’s Mum. You paint a clear picture of her sitting on the deck smoking, and communicate well the views of children of such a person – on the one hand it seems great to have a mother who lets you do what you want, but on some level you also know that your own, stricter Mum is the better deal in the end. It is a real skill to be able to communicate this emotion and thought without spelling it out, but the tone of voice you use for the character, and the things she thinks about and observes do the job perfectly.
I LOVE the line about the big box of Barbies! It comes out of the blue, and the fact that it comes smack bang in the middle of the story about when Michelle taught her about sex is wonderfully amusing and illustrates exactly how girls of this age think. Michelle’s talking about sex like it’s this big thing, but what I get from this line is that the important part of this story for your character was that it was a big box of Barbies, and that this is why the character thinks Michelle was cool, and not because she knows about sex! This highlights a really key feature of the lives of many girls this age, where some girls are more developed and wear better bras and make up and have boyfriends and talk about sex like they know everything, whilst other girls would rather just play Barbies!
I was one of the latter at this age, and maybe that’s why I like this so much – the character sounds a little like me aged 12! I remember once going round to a girl’s house to play Barbies when I was about 12 yrs old. I packed my favourite ones and cycled round to the council estate (if you’re from across the pond, a council estate is like a UK version of a trailer park) and started up some story about going to a ball and meeting a prince or something, and was shocked and horrified when this girl (who was very like Michelle in your story) started making my Barbies engage in some sort of depraved gang bang with my Ken and Derek dolls.
No nice date for my Barbie, no kiss on the cheek – just a hardcore banging from behind.
Excellent job with this, I really enjoyed it. This works wonderfully as a short story, but I could also see this being developed into a longer work. The style and tone of it reminds me of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” which I thoroughly enjoyed. 10s all round!
A decent read over all, of course some basic stuff that I fall vitcim to as well. Never beging a sentence with “and” like; ”And she didn’t just have Barbie”
It is was an interestting read and a strange one over all. It was hard to get a good feel for what point in particular you were trying to make. I get the broad generalized point…I’m wondering though if it wouldn’t be better to take a more focused approach. Get which specific points you would like to bring across and refine it down.
To give an example, was your main point that Michelle’s mother was a poor parent…or that we as children meddle in the dangerous/complicated things far beyond our understanding…or perhaps that we lose our innocence too quickly? It was good writing and an interesting read I’m just not sure of what EXACTLY you were striving to achieve.
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