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Lightning on Tour
October 17, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Art, Date, Flirt, Romance | by davidbdale | 2 comments
This is an easy one. What’s better: the date you plan and dress for, for which you make and confirm and reconfirm dinner reservations; the meal at the restaurant you’ve never been to and aren’t sure you’ll like, or he’ll like, but which you’ve been assured by women who don’t know him but who know men like him is the right choice for the guy you’ve staked out; the show you think your date would choose, based on what little you’ve been able to glean from the few small facts at your command plus considerable conjecture? Or the accidental thrill of a chance encounter with a friendly face through a revolving door at the airport one moment before your plane takes off toward a place you know only too well. For the guy it’s the encounter; for the girl it’s the plan.
What’s better? The masterpiece on tour, impeccably curated and catalogued for art-historical significance, deconstructed, virtually invisible, available only by appointment? Or a bold curve drawn in the dirt with the point of a shovel by a landscaper with a certain facility. The 6-piece playground kit, its corners sanded, planted in the park in its box of chips, its thick irresistible primary colors engineered by play scientists? Or a tree that’s fallen into the pond, whose trunk makes a bridge, whose roots still smell of lightning strike and anthills. For the kids it’s the treefall; for their dads it’s the treefall, too; the moms are still thinking about that date.
Maybe we could take in a museum, they think, and not look at paintings, just the frames. Or the window frames. Or out the windows. How is that different from staying home together and staring out the window? For one thing, he won’t encounter anyone else at home.
Copyright ©1997
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
Very Short Novels 
This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Short for Family from 20 years ago. The revisions…