FITS and STARTS
Lord help me. I think most writers have stacks of first paragraphs, first pages, first chapters – finished books! I recently ransacked old files and found a veritable treasure trove of first sentences and other ill-formed neuronal emanations. Not sure what they mean, but, you know, maybe some day…
Terrence Perjorius wasn’t certain putting baby banana slugs on the pizza was going to be a good idea, but once he’d suggested it there was no going back.
Suzanne Emilt wasn’t certain making a little of video of Terrence putting baby banana slugs on the pizza was going to be a good idea, but once she’d suggested it there was no going back.
Tomas Santagloria didn’t give a second thought to delivering the slug-infested pie to the big house up Beverly Glen Canyon. Rich pricks.
***
Betsy studied the image in the oversized side mirror they’d attached to the car so they could see past the rental trailer. She said, “Phoenix in the rearview! What a great sight.”
Mikal said, “You don’t like?”
“Fucking armpit of a city.”
***
The Muzak played a mechanical and insipid — which is to say typical of Muzak and the piece itself — version of “The Girl from Ipanema.”
***
Brenda Contagion’s jealousy was making her short of breath. What did that slut have going that granted her laughter like a foghorn? But wait. What made her a slut? An acre of barely-contained bust? Thin clothes? It was a hundred degrees out and you could only find shade tight to a brick building.
***
The plains states, also known as the plain states, claim an abundance of water as their greatest natural resource. Hard to jibe with an easterner’s picture of a great western desert sprawling from Cleveland to Denver.
***
She, when smiling, could charm the tailpiece off a rattlesnake.
***
“Where you from?” An innocent inquiry, not deserving punishment, only an answer.
***
Hell’s bells, it’s the fucking phone. Bells, beepers, buzzers! The banes of my existence.
***
I woke up naked, though it was actually more like a change in realities. I hadn’t been asleep, but in another existence.
***
Ellerby had bad time. I think it was his right foot – bass drum – of all places. He was a fucking mathematical genius; he was working on a proof of some two-hundred-year-old Last Theorem of some dead Italian and he was pissed off for weeks when some east-coast professor beat him to it, but he couldn’t get one-TWO-three-FOUR to come out exactly the same eight times in a row.
He had problems with pacing, too. We’d start a piece at one pace and end up half-again as fast. One time – we were in a studio cutting a demo with a real producer – the producer stopped the session and walked over to Ellerby and said, “You gotta be someplace?”
***
The terrain where I live is so flat rain water has trouble finding a low spot. If you go for a picnic, the ants can see your food from half a mile away.
***
Thus it came to pass, when asked in rallies how one came back from the dead, he was able to reply of contradiction in this life or retribution in the next, “It’s a mystery,” and the crowds went wild.
***
To get a satisfying pop from the demise of a person’s expectations they must first be properly inflated. Best done slowly. Accumulated from birth. For if the person is aware of the inflation or even suspicious, the deflation is at best a soft hiss.
***
“Are my nipples sticking out?”