Flash Fiction Thursday: Come On, Get Higher

So far so good on another weekly commitment- I bring you this week’s “Flash Fiction Thursday”.  All typed on my boyfriend’s computer while he is at work.  And he has this snazz-tastic illuminated keyboard.  Squee!

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Come On, Get Higher

L’Hotel Promenade in Paris overlooked the most beautiful, bluest part of the Seine.  From her balcony, Adrienne could feel the north wind picking up her ebony curls, carrying with it the fresh smells of croissants and perfume.  Indeed, it was signature feel of Paris, and she had come here for the same reason that every other single woman in her twenties came to Paris:  for love.  Romance novels always made it seem so simple.  All a woman need do is slip on a pair of treacherous high heels and a form-fitting black dress, and a man in a tuxedo with a cigarette clutched between his fingers was supposed to sweep her away into the yellow lights of the city.

She tapped her glossy pink nails on the metal rail of the balcony and sighed irritably.  It wasn’t that easy.  Nothing in life was that easy.  She thought any reasonable girl would kill for a chance to spend her life “just sitting and looking pretty”.  It only happened to woman like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.  Princesses of the silver screen.  And what was she?  Adrienne was practically a doormouse compared to them. A wannabe fashion designer who hadn’t been able to make herself a name in New York.  So what? she thought to herself and took a gulp from her half-empty glass on chardonnay.  Paris was le centre de la mode.  If you wanted to be a fashion designer, you wanted to be in Paris, not the Big Apple.

Adrienne swung her body around, sloshing chardonnay on the wire balcony and it dripped to the sidewalk below.  Go to Paris, she had told herself, Be a model, fall in love, make a lot of money.  Then nobody will question the dip of your necklines or the length of you skirt.

She set the glass on a cluttered counter, covered in unopened bills.  Some belonged to her roommate, but most of them belong to her.  “Helene!” Adrienne shouted into the dimly lit living room, where she knew her roommate wasn’t.  “I’m going to go climb the Eiffel Tower and fall in love.”

When Helene didn’t respond (Of course, she is at work, Adrienne scolded herself), Adrienne sat stubbornly on the floor and pulled on her favourite pair of bright red Prada stilettos. She wobbled out the door, leaving her wallet, bills, and woes behind her.

Paris; le ville de l’amour….

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

“So don’t misunderstand me / You put the light in my life / You put the sparks to the flame / I’ve got your heart in my sight.” ~ Don’t Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John.

When Bryan went to England, he brought back a dozen things for me.  I liked almost all of them, and I pretended to like the things I didn’t, but more than anything else, I fell in love with a little glass angel.  It’s not a very special angel.  It’s certainly the type of thing you could find at a Hallmark store here in the States.  I didn’t love it because it came from England, I loved it because it was beautiful in a way I fail to describe.

I have a lot of trinkets out and about my bedroom.  I have the conch shell Sean brought back from the Bahamas for me.  I have “Steve,” the nailpolish rock from Sammy, a hoard of Beth-Art, Disney snowglobes, a panda-shaped candy dish Heather made in pottery class.  Sometimes among all the knick-knacks I have, I lose one.  It’s still there, sitting on my shelf, but I kind of forget about it and time passes.

Today, I was on the phone with Bryan, sarcastically criticizing his ear off (I don’t yell on the phone.  I get slightly voluminous and incredibly sarcastic) and snooping around my room looking for something interesting for my photo of the day.  I found myself standing in a corner next to one of my smaller shelves and, in the dark, I snapped a picture of my glass angel.  My brain registered “oh, that’s kinda cool” and I took pictures of it until I got one I liked and proceeded to yell at my poor, unsuspecting, powerless boyfriend.

Now, after sitting here for a few hours (I am not exaggerating) and fighting with new WordPress themes (because I was having trouble differentiating between paragraphs on the MistyLook Theme, however lovely it was), I finally get to the point where I take the SD card out of my camera, look at the picture, and remember when I got that beautiful angel.  It was almost two years ago, but it seems like an eternity.  When I yell at him for being less than what I expect, or because he’s human, I forget how positively miserable I was when he was overseas and I didn’t have instant access to him.  All I think about is what I want, and that isn’t fair.  Of course, in the moment when I am enraged, what is reasonable, rational, and fair matter very little.  In fact, the only thing that matters is getting my own way.

Sometimes we all need to have little reminders of the things that mean the most.  Today, my glass angel told me that like myself, my boyfriend has a glass heart, and I need to be careful with it.  Some things just don’t go perfectly back together.

Matchmaker

“Matchmaker, matchmaker, you know that I’m still very young… please… take your time?  Up to this minute I misunderstood that I could get stuck for good.” ~ Matchmaker, from the musical Fiddler on the Roof.

I have match-made once in my life that I can think of.  They were two of my friends from different worlds, one massively depressed, and the other a bubbling ray of sunshine.  She liked to help people.  He needed help.  I didn’t expect Andy and Vilmary to become a couple, but they did.  She met him by reading over my shoulder as I cruised Facebook during a college English course.  It was a bad plan.  See, they were really happy for a while, but it was all about sex.  Sexuality.  Sexualism.  Any other word I can stick “sex” into.  I used to want to scream at her for having somewhat lewd conversations with him on the phone and via webcam at three-in-the-freaking-morning while I was trying to sleep.

They are the reason I am hesitant to match-make my friends again.  See, they were really happy and there was a heck of a lot of unresolved sexual tension between them for a while, but now, anything I hear about them is raging red hate.  I hear from her how much of a soulless, heartless pain-in-the-ass he is.  I hear from him what a dumb, manipulative bitch she is.  I never hear anything positive.  I feel like I’ve created this monstrous relationship of negative energy that seeps out of the black lagoon and wants to eat my soul.

Okay, yeah, it may not be all my fault.  I mean, if he cared about living past the age of twenty-five, it would be okay.  If she didn’t decide to mess with his head and piss him off for fun every now and again, it would be okay.  And of course, I’m not psychic, and I couldn’t anticipate these things happening, but nonetheless… I still feel responsible.  Without me, these people would never have met.  And then there wouldn’t be so much hate and angst in their lives.

I have this thing about angst.  I really don’t like it.  It makes me grumpy.  Probably explained why CAPSLOCK!Harry and I don’t get on so well.

Relationships are so hard to determine.  Unless I can very clearly see that this person is no good, I don’t have anything negative to say.  Like Heather and John.  They practices?  Not my thing.  I didn’t much enjoy hearing about all their sexual encounters, and I felt that for a sophomore and senior in high school, they had a heck of a lot of sketchy ones.  But who am I to judge?  I let it be.  At any rate, they were happy.  And Heather?  She doesn’t do happy easily.  So seeing her smile instead of angsty and depressed was a good thing.  I could never have predicted that the relationship would end around three years with massive amounts of  cheating and neglect going on.  Bad stuff.  Bad times.  Big mess.  And that wasn’t my fault.  So I know that relationships go awry even without my help.  But that doesn’t keep me from being hesitant.

See, I love Bryan.  Really, I do.  I mean it when I say “love”.  I know I’m going to be with him, we’ve already begun (half-jokingly) planning our wedding and I have names for the children which he likes.  For anyone who is interested, there will be three children, two girls and a boy because I totally have control over that.  Angela Piper, Tristan Dorian, and Sonora Essylte.  I’ve got that covered.  But seriously, my own relationship is always rocky.  Sometimes I want to punch Bryan in the face just to get him to leave me alone (he can’t bug me if he’s unconscious, ja?).  I love him, but at the same time, I freaking wish he’d leave me alone.  But I know he’s crazy about me, and in the end, three years going in, that’s enough to work through the little things.  I have that much faith in myself, and I have seen him work hard to do the same (though, granted, I’ve had more than one person tell me I should have dumped him a long time ago, for various different reasons).  Our relationship is a little unhealthy and a little dysfunctional, but we shouldn’t believe all that cockamaymee bull crap about happily ever after being perfect and Prince Charming on a silver steed.  My relationship is dysfunctional and unhealthy but it’s also healthy and wonderful and we make a really great team when it matters.  I made the choice to be in that relationship.

I just don’t feel right helping other people with their choices.  I feel pushy.  And responsible.

Relationships can be a nightmare.  Or they can be amazing.  It’s really up to us in the end:  are we going to be selfish and make it all about ourselves?  Or is it going to be for the greater good?

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Health Report: I’ve eaten 1668 calories today and burned off 908.  That keeps me under my daily allotted – rock and roll!  I even included the ice cream sundae I haven’t eaten yet into that estimate, so I should be golden today.  Working copy center burns a lot of calories.  Making money and burning calories for the win!

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Random Squee: One of my improv students posted this amazing, rocking video from YouTube on his Facebook profile and it makes me giggle.  I’ve watched it twice.

“L” is For the Way You Look at Me.

May 16, 2010; Chesterfield, NH: From my windshield, on Route Nine. Note to self? No more driving and taking pictures simultaneously.

“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, / I’ve gotta love one man ’til I die, / can’t help lovin’ that man of mine.” ~ Lovin’ That Man of Mine from the musical Showboat.

Love is a word thrown around far too much in the world.  “O.  M.  G.  I totally love your shoes!”  or  says the middle school girl to her crush, “But I love you!”  We as a society seem to have forgotten the true meaning of love.  Like an appendix, the word is there, but it’s useless because it isn’t used in the way it was intended.

I am a guilty party.  When I say “I love you” to my friends, I feel like that is an adequate use of the word.  If I say it to them (and mean it) that means that I love them like siblings.  But when I say it to a significant other, it’s not adequate at all.  It feels ten or fifteen pieces short of a jigsaw puzzle.  So I’m not just talking a little inadequate.  I’m talking the whole ballgame.

When did the abuse of the word start?  I think I want to blame the poets.  It is a poet’s job to use the strongest words in his verse in order to invoke image and emotion into the heart and soul of the reader.  But like in any other part of writing, words and phrases can become cliches because they’re used so often.  And such is the case with the word “love”.  It was overused in work because people (like poets) wanted readers to feel the indescribable feeling that comes with being  in love.  I daresay the word was never adequate to encompass the physical and emotional reactions to love.  But when you read it, see it, use it too much, it begins to lose all meaning.  It is a casual word, instead of one filled with power.  And yet, people still use it in writing (especially poetry!) constantly.  Why?  There’s nothing to replace it.

I’m not trying to pick on poets and say they’re a bad bunch.  Really.  I have friends who are poets, and I write a poem myself every once in a blue moon.  But I feel like I speak the truth:  there’s nobody like a writer to ruin the value of a word, and poets in particular excel at ruining abstractions.  And you must keep in mind that when I say “poets” I am including lyricists.  After all, what is a song, when the music is taken away, but a poem?

Sixty years ago, “love” meant more.  I think it had to do with the moral standards of the time, as well as the fact that materialism was just beginning to take a foothold in America.  In the 1950s, corporate retail was just beginning.  There were more Mom-and-Pop-Shops, and as far as I can remember (which isn’t fair, since I was born in 1989, but humour me) there were no Wal-Marts.  In fact, most retail stores that we shop at today didn’t exist.  But I digress.  Nobody said “I love your new dishwasher.”  If you said “love” to someone, it was either to your family member, or, if you were really brave, your high school sweetheart.  When you hear people in old movies (Humphrey Boggart, Ava Gardner) say “I love you,” believe me, in the context of the movie, it wasn’t fleeting love.  It was the forever kind.  They were sure about it.  If Joe Schmo leaves Jane Doe in the middle of the movie, you can bet on two things:  1.) Neither of them hook up with anyone else (that sort of movie started in the eighties); and 2.) They’ll be back together by the end of the movie, unless one of them dies, and neither will die without managing to leave a message of undying love.

People used to say “I love you” when it was true, not when they thought it was (or should be) socially acceptable.  Divorce rates used to be lower, there were fewer abortions, and while I’m not saying everyone forever should abstain from sex until after marriage (because they’re no point in saying that, it would never happen) nobody did it to win a bet, or to get a high.  They did it for love.  If someone got pregnant, they got married.  Now, we don’t know what love is, so those things like sex, having children, getting married?  They’re all based on reason and social acceptance.

To quote Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, “Ain’t there anyone here for love?”

My answer?  There may be.  But really, how many people know what love is?  Beyond the cultural definition, beyond poetic verse.  Beyond childhood rhymes?  And, more importantly, how many people care?

I wish I could give answers, but I know that I can’t.  I hate leaving things open-ended, but these are the only facts I have.  I can’t reach into someone’s mind or soul to find deeper meaning and understanding within it.  I can only hope that there are a significant amount of people out there who, like me, would like to stop singing of love and throwing the word around like a Frisbee and returning to a moral state where love is true and people know how to handle the word properly.  Fewer broken hearts, broken homes.

Maybe the human race has just become so cold-blooded that most people not only don’t know how to love, but don’t want to?  That would be a sad day indeed.

Relationship Rant, Part II

I recently posted a piece written by a friend of mine a few years ago regarding the male approach to a relationship.  Lately, I have been watching an… interaction, for the want of a better word, between a couple acquaintances of mine, and I feel the need to address the other side of a relationship, the gender that Shane didn’t cover:  the all elusive female, and their personal relations to the male.

First of all, I would like to state that these things are my opinions and observations.  Someone else’s view may be entirely different than mine.  Everyone is an individual and this is not an all-seeing guide to the universe.

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The gender roles are changing and more and more, girls are asking guys out, instead of the all-traditional, sit-around-and-hope-he-gets-a-clue method.  This is a terrifying new world for us women, it’s certainly empowering (no more of that “get in the kitchen and make me a sammich, woman!” bull).  But like it or not, we still don’t understand.  Or, at least, we don’t understand them nearly as well as we like to think we do.  And we’re content to be coy and tease.  Girls, believe it or not… that breaks hearts.  A little bit of advice to my gender.

1. Be honest with him.  If you can’t tell him the truth, you shouldn’t be dating him.  And yes, that includes telling him that he’s not your type (cliched, don’t use that).  Don’t ever, ever tell a guy that you want to go out with him sometimes when you don’t.  Rejection is preferable to tease and rejection.  After all, how would you feel if you found out someone agreed to date you because they either felt bad for you or were too nice to say no?  …  Feel that self-esteem slipping yet?
2. Don’t cheat.  Really.  Just because you think he may have done it first doesn’t give you the right to do it too.  Be the big person, dump his ass, and get on with your life.
3. Don’t go after someone else’s boyfriend.  Ever.  Don’t even think about it.  Really, nobody likes the Devil in a Red Dress.  The DinRD (Devil in a Red Dress) gets a reputation, and most girlfriends will dump their boyfriend if they see someone associating with her too often.  Don’t be that housewrecker.  Keep your dignity and morality.  Why?  Two reasons.  One, he’s not the last man on earth, for Christ’s sake, you’ll find someone else.  Two?  If you really cared about him and could see he was happy as he was, then you wouldn’t be trying to destroy his happiness for a selfish pursuit.
4. Flirting on purpose with other people in front of your significant other?  Not cool.  Invoking jealousy is always a bad idea.  May also lead you do fall into the DiaRD reputation.
5. No means no.  This applies to rejections and break-ups.  I don’t care whose idea it was.  If he says “I’m just not that into you” chances are he’s not going to change his mind any time soon and you hanging like a lemur on his arm is going to drive him away, instead of pulling him forward.  If you were in a relationship and broke it off, that’s it.  You’re done, finished, got it?  You had your chance for snuggling and kisses and back massages.  You told him he “wasn’t your type”.  If you can’t take his vices, you don’t get the benefits either.  Failure to adhere to this rule leads to the position of becoming a DiaRD.
6. For the love of God, stop complaining about being fat.  Every single girl (myself included) needs to work on this one.  Honey, let me tell you something.  If he thinks you’re fat, he’ll tell you.  If he breaks up with you because you’re fat, he’s not worth your time.  If you are fat and he doesn’t say anything about it, he likes fat women, embrace it.  If he says you’re not fat, he means it.  If he compliments how good you look and you say you’re fat, you’ll never get a compliment again.  So.  For goodness sake.  If you think you’re fat, get off the computer, run a couple miles, and stop complaining to him about it.
7. Men are not all masochistic beasts.  If all the ones you’ve ever met are, that’s rather unfortunate for you.  However, most the ones I know are teddy bears, and they have hearts and souls, too (the men, not teddy bears) and they feel just as deeply as you do.  Walking all over them, cheating on them, and doing other emotionally destructive things actually do hurt them.
8. People say chivalry is dead.  It’s not.  It’s gone underground.  If he likes to open the door for you, let him do it every once and a while.  He’s not opening the door because he thinks you’re incapable of doing it yourself.  He’s doing it because he respects you and he’s humbling himself to you in that way.  It’s a compliment.  Take it
9. Show him that you trust him.  And no.  I’m not talking about sex or anything like that.  I mean don’t be afraid to tell him secrets (or the truth!  See #1) and don’t be afraid to let him hang out with other people when you’re not around, especially (gasp!) other girls.  How would you like it if he cut you off from all your male friends?  It’s not fair.
10. Know what you’re getting into .  Don’t just hook up without doing your research.  Randomly meet this guy on vacation and decide to hook up with him even though you can’t pronounce his last name?  Probably not a good idea.  Long distance relationships will take more effort than close distance.  Some people need more love and attention than others.  Some people will need space.  Know the type of person you’re going to be getting into a relationship with before you do it.  It will save broken hearts.

Those are ten suggestions and observations.  I know there are more.  Feel free to comment and add your own two-cents!