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Short Story / The Normal Dude Who Cooked
PREFACE:
Relationships.
You get into them knowing-it’s not going to last.
How can it last, when you’re 20ish, unemployed and perpetually falling in and out of ‘like’ with just about every somewhat cute, funny, or smart person you meet?
Knowing all this, we make the irrational decision to get into relationships anyways. The person smells good, feels good, and by being your significant other guarantees you a warm body to hook up with at the end of a long week.
For the 20 something, being in a relationship is the libido solution to loneliness, germs (of hooking up with random peeps), and chafing (from excessive hand use).
Also, sometimes it’s just nice to have someone out there to call your own. Someone you can text message when you’ve had a bad day; someone you can end IM conversations with mawkish displays of affection and receive a
:: kisses ::
Instant message right back.
Relationships, however irrational they are for the under 30 crowd, wipe out un-surety and can be the instant remedy for a crappy day.
But what happens when they end?
Teary eyed and somewhat self depreciating you walk around the rest of the day feeling numb.
At this point you do one of 2 things: swear off ever falling in serious, relationship committed ‘like’ with anyone else OR you dive right into a rebound hook up.
This past Thursday, Brainy made the skank decision and after a typical 20-something break up, (which was plagued by all the immaturity of having one person unnecessarily act like a jerk during dinner, then making up with kisses to breaking up again during more kisses, all in one night) College Wit went in for the rebound and ended up on a date with :
A Normal Dude Who Cooked
It was purely coincidental:
Brainy had just broken up. Another dude called. Brainy didn’t sound too good on the phone. The dude pressed to know what it was. Brainy wouldn’t say. The dude invited Brainy back to his apartment. He offered to “cheer” her up. Brainy made the not so “brainy” decision and accepted.
I : WHY I’M AN IDIOT
After work, I navigate my way downtown. I have about 2 hours to kill before going to meet Sean. Sean is a writer I had met a few months back at a party. He liked my writing, thought I was funny, and was exactly the ego inflator I needed after a break up. When he called, I suggested a movie. I wanted to see The DaVinci Code and since that wasn’t going to happen with the dork-face I had just broken up with, Sean seemed like the perfect candidate.
There was only one problem: Sean doesn’t “do” the DaVinci Code.
You see, as a writer, Sean is above “cliches” and “fads” and “trends”. In fact Sean is so above all these things that his head rotates from his front and finds it way up his butt.
But whatever, when you’re 20 and broken up, you tend to overlook a new guy’s idiosyncrasies (especially if the dude is cute).
I board the subway somewhat unsure of what I was going to accomplish by meeting my friend downtown. Her name is Erin. She’s also 20 ish, certifiably depressed, and the person who had set Mr. Ass-Wipe and me up.
In retrospect, I realize that I’m a complete moron. What was I thinking letting a mentally unstable person hook me up with a dude? It only follows that the dude himself would prove to be a dramatic pansy, who preached about saving the environment but did little more than smoke pot to actually demonstrate any real care about it.
Note: When you go to college stay far away from pseudo-intellectuals. They might sound nice at first and look snazzy in fitted black turtle necks, but in the long run, they get so full of their own bullshit that they actually start having you believe it, and you end up walking around sounding just as moronic as them.
I meet up with Erin. Our conversation begins with her complaining about her body being lopsided. Her hair is disheveled in 2 messy pigtails and she slightly twitches as she walks. Half blocking her out, I smile to myself as she speaks into the wind because I realize: I JUST REALLY KNOW HOW TO PICK THEM.
She gives me her input and I give her my input. We both agree: Mr. Asswipe is a melodramatic twit high on his own ego.
Note: when the guy you’re dating brags about what a jerk he was to his past girlfriends, say good bye immediately- because he needs his diaper changed and is not mature enough to be kissing anyone.
Bemoaning the fact that I’ve added an Immature Poopy Pants to my list of guys I’ve dated which includes a Hash Vaporizing Vegan and a Bus Chasing Dingbat, I delude myself into thinking that Sean will prove to be different and I hop on the 1 train heading uptown to his apartment.
II : Friendship Over Rebound
I bolt out of the 1 train after having held my breathe for the entirety of the ride compliments of the hairy dude next to me who couldn’t seem to inhale his burrito any faster than he could fart it out.
Nostrils full and clothes stained with the flatuating subway guy’s burrito tinged awfulness, I try to air myself out by meandering slowly around a random grocery store. I spend a good 15 minutes debating what to bring to my dinner date with Sean. The strawberries look good but I decide they’re too sexually connotative and at this point I’m not sure how much of a hootchie I want to be with my rebound. Finally the grapes win out and as the Asian lady bags them, I experience a twinge of guilt mixed with a silly sensation of giddiness because I realize this is my first time ever doing the ‘rebound thing’ and the whorishness of it all makes me feel real.
Unfortunately it had been raining that day and my wet matted hair definately wasn’t pulling the Venus of the Sea look. Finding the little comb my mom so dutiful slips into my purse everyday (because she recognizes that her daughter is an image misfit) I thank God for having a superficial mother and tackle the knotted birds nest that has formed in my hair.
Sean buzzes me in and I walk up a winding staircase to his apartment that is situated in a charming Brownstone house. I smell the food and with his apartment door open, I see he’s cooking. He greets me with a lingering kiss on the cheek and his smooth cheek is a refreshing feeling against my own (especially when the douchebag I had been dating seemed to shave with a crooked weedwacker that would leave his face stubly and consequentially my lips feeling as if I’ve kissed a cactus- and no, that wasn’t an embittered tangent- I seriously was dating a cactus face ANYWAYS… ).
Sean is cute; he shows your undomesticated narrator how to make pasta and sauce. We eat palm hearts as he tells me about his editorial position at an online magazine. Afterwards we go for a long walk and buy flowers for his apartment as he educates me in the art of selecting beer.
Blah blah- I know at this point you’re looking for the snarky punch line… well there is none. Sean is a normal guy and his anti-DaVinci Code, anti-conformist stance is made forgivable that night by his adorably undercooked pasta that clumps together when I pick it up with a fork.
In fact, the faulty character in this story is your narrator…
As Sean speaks passionately about music and the latest novels he has read, I realize that I am completely misplaced.
I know nothing about today’s music other than the fact that I like to dance to it, and I prefer to re-read Oscar Wilde 1000 times than give any of the modern day writers the time of day (think about it: what more can a modern writer say than what has already been said? to me it all comes down to them recycling the human condition, which modern writers tend to do in the least articulate of ways).
Recognizing my own neurosis and modern cultural shortcomings, I thank Sean for dinner and am about to make my way out; Sean’s a nice and normal guy, and I don’t quite feel like rebounding of off him anymore.
But he stops me:
Don’t go. Let’s watch Annie Hall-you can just sleep over; no pressure…
Sean looks sincere as he says this. I reason that he’s not going to molest me, (even though I had originally intended to reinvent myself as a whore that night and molest him), so I stay on to watch the movie but skip the sleeping over bit in favor of getting home to a hot shower and my own comfortable bed.
In SUM:
After a break up with a Cactus-Like, Dork Face, AssWipe, Immature Douchebag, a girl doesn’t necessarily need a random hook up to rebound off of in order to make her feel better.
Sometimes, a night out, eating undercooked spaghettie, and watching Annie Hall with a friend of the opposite sex (who just so happens to be cute, smart and funny) is exactly the remedy needed for the emotionally misguided 20 something like myself.
El Fin.
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Slow down.
The writing is fasssst and frantic. Slow. Down.
I think, and this is my opinion, that past tense works best for things like this.
’’I bolt out of the 1 train after having held my breathe for the entirety of the ride compliments of the hairy dude next to me who couldn’t seem to inhale his burrito any faster than he could fart it out.’‘
That’s good.
You should have fucked him. Just to say you did. Everyones gotta eat.
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Firstly, I love how you use your character names!
You cover a few good points here about rrelationships for the twenty-somethings. I felt i could relate to a lot of the observations being made, even if i am a guy.
In this story the protagonist undergoes a transformation, which is always nice to see.
Ther is definetly potential here; watch that grammar though, as some i found underpolished.
Good luck. thanks for sharing.
Well this was a bit odd. I didn’t expect you to talk that way in the story. It is though unlike some writers definitly not monotone because you write like how you speak. Atleast thats how it seemed. It made it better that you used your own different way of writing. Most people would be afriad to write how you did but it made it alot better. So you most deffinitly should continue writing.
Blog as short story?
It’s nice, funny when it should be, bitter as well. Were you writing this for any apparent reason, or was it written just to write something? Any way, it’s nice to read something honest on this site for a change. You don’t try to be the next great Americna author. Honesty makes you more relatable to a reader. It’s refreshing.
There is not a pearl in every oyster. This is one of your weaker blogs. Your style is still distinctively you but this feels less like a story than some of your other writing. It’s not bad, just weak. The humor doesn’t come through cleanly in this piece and the ending doesn’t have the punch that is the normal hallmark of your efforts.
Numbers less than 12 should be spelled out.
There are several spelling errors: flatulating, definitely, stubbly, spaghetti.
Douche bag and weed whacker are each two words. Bird’s nest is possessive.
You should be consistent with Mr. Ass-Wipe. (you used Ass-Wipe, Asswipe, and AssWipe)
The sentence ending: “…the hairy dude next to me who couldn’t seem to inhale his burrito any faster than he could fart it out.” didn’t quite make it. I know what you are trying to say but the wording is awkward.
Finally you have a couple of rambling run on sentences: a 69 word ramble starting with “He greets me with a lingering kiss…” followed by the behemoth 78 word “I know nothing about today’s music…”.
This story really roped me in at parts. It’s a very interesting piece, but I think it’s killed with some of the more immature names. Some of the nicknames were great such as Hash Vaporizing Vegan. Others simply killed the piece in my opinion. For example Poopy Pants.
The formating irritated me several times, the one sentence paragrpahs especially.
There seems to be a switch in narration at points. Where the anrrator goes from this extremly intelligent and sarcastic young women to a snippy immature child. I think it kills the piece not adds to it.
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