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The Truth About Sex
October 16, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Cheat, Drinking, Flirt, Laugh, Marriage, Sex, Truth | by davidbdale | 4 comments
The honest man tells his wife the truth about sex. It’s a vertiginous moment. The truth about sex is that he always wants it and will forever continue to want it with whomever is nearest and most willing and most attractive, but that of those three indicators attractiveness, while important, is not essential and will, if mitigated for instance by distance or disinterest, yield to nearness and willingness every time, so that if she, the wife, will only continue always to be near and to arouse or to feign arousal, she will never have a rival even among the most attractive for his sex, such as it is, from which longish explication the wife detects primarily that she is not considered the most attractive by the one most near.
Without a word she lifts his keys from his jacket pocket, backs his sweet young Buick without looking into traffic and proceeds adroitly in reverse to the corner bar where her 7th 7and7 tells her a secret about boys and girls. To the gentlemen in the tavern her attractiveness is sufficient by several tenths, her nearness a matter of no dispute, her willingness the only occasion for a round of lively wagering. Those to whom her posture indicates a hasty readiness place bets they can’t afford to win or lose with those persuaded of her modesty. In a random forward gear, she drives one such home to meet her husband, who regards him with an active curiosity, then offers him a drink. Then, having made her point, she thinks, she retires to the bedroom alone, leaving the boys to drink away the night talking about the girls they’ve known. Toward morning, she hears her husband tell the one about the honest man. She laughs out loud. She hears them laugh.
Copyright ©1997
Things Get Moved
October 14, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Destiny, Furniture, Loss, Possession, Separation | by davidbdale | 4 comments
Which is the tool is the question never asked. For the coffee mug, the eyeglass case, the dozen indispensable items in the wire basket with the foldable handles, we are a conveyance to the top of the stairs. When the forty thousand things we’ve accumulated depend on us to get anywhere, how can we be trivial? We knew what we were doing, but we couldn’t stop. The keys need us to get to the car; the car needs us to cross the bridge. Forty-six tons of lumber, shingles and glass found a ride to the jobsite and convinced the contractors to pile them into the shape of our new house. Every morning, the city’s best ideas catch a ride in the paperguy’s car and have themselves tossed onto our lawn, but we know all we need to know already. Did the chicken invent the egg as a way of making more chicken, or the egg the chicken to make more eggs? Applied to us the question would mean, were we just a way to make the protein our kids will pass along? It makes our holidays seem a little desperate. The European conifers invented Christmas to move their pinecones to the dump. A piano eventually finds its way to a house where someone’s children learn to play and take it with them. And my keyboard has no fingers, only keys that can be strike—make that: backspace backspace backspace struck. So, what shall I type about you, my love? I helped her get where she was going? I dragged her down to my level? I know what you did for me. I once thought the meaning of life was the distance we travel together, but from here I know I was furniture that got itself hauled to the curb.
Copyright © 2006
Very Short Novels 