Crimson-pumping Tubes and Sphinters Day

[Snuffkin]

Valentine’s Day had come, and I didn’t expect to receive chocolates or a card from anyone. My girlfriend had moved a state away a couple months ago, and now the only girl I actually hung out with was a friend of mine who is only a few pounds more muscle away from being a bulldyke. And, in all honesty, I didn’t really give a fuck. Lord knows I didn’t do much with the opportunity to get laid even when it was still existent, and I didn’t much feel like trying to gain some sort of superficial connection with the self-concerned morons in my classes to gain the opportunity back; a mongrel’s a mongrel, even if it has tits.

So really, Valentine’s Day seemed to me likely to be a day like any other, except for the fact that on this day I got more license than usual to make jokes about consumer-corrupted culture and the all too necessary public humiliation of virgins and autistic neckbeards.

So, after school ended, I did what I usually do: packed my bag, stole a pen from the desk of one of the band-club members, and wandered over the two blocks to the city library. It was there that I mentioned the aforementioned bulldyke, who for the sake of clarity in this memoir shall be referred to as simply Desiree. She’s about 5”3, with brunette hair cut to shoulder-length and a scar on her nose from where she fell face-first on cement in a bike-accident the other week. I found her at one of the tables near the non-fiction section, looking through a book on gynecological medicine. Like I said, bulldyke.

I grabbed a mediocre looking detective novel from the opposite side of the floor for the sake of not looking like I was here simply to abuse the free wifi, and then joined her there.

She seemed happy to see me.

“What’s up, Dave? I thought you’d be here earlier. Wasn’t today considered a half-day because of the holiday?”

“It was, but they kept us there for an extra 45 minutes because apparently someone tried to light the bathroom on fire with some gasoline-soaked toilet paper rolls. That tile cleaner they use in there must be pretty damn flammable, it burnt down half that hall.”

“Seriously? Haha, oh man, I guess I should expect as much to happen, considering the school, but it’s still damn funny to hear about these sorts of things when they do.”

“Yeah, for you maybe. I wouldn’t be too freaked out about it if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve had three gas-leaks there in the last six month. If the guy had good timing he could have blown the whole building to hell.

“Maybe that was the intention.”

I doubt it. I mean, there are far more efficient ways to blow up a building of that size. It’s not as if pipe bombs are actually that difficult to make.”

“You seem awful knowledgeable about these things. Want me to go to the police and tell them you probably did it?”

“Of course not, but I doubt they’d believe you anyway.”

“Fair enough.”

At that point, we settled in and began to actually read our books rather than simply use them to rest our hands. Before long, however, Dessi grew restless and turned to me again.

“When a fan spins, does the rest of the world actually rotate around it?”

“Seems unknowable, don’t it? That does seem like it would mess with gravitational forces though... Speaking of which, how would some dinky little fan blades exert that much force upon the entire planet?”

“Maybe they’re made up of super-compact neutron star.”

“Don’t tell me you’re already issuing empty hypotheticals to back up your theory.”

“I wasn’t theorizing in the first place, just thinking out loud.”

“Alright, alright. Say, how would it work if multiple fans were moving at once?”

“What, like they’re literally being moved?”

“No, spinning, genius. Stop being so literal.”

“I’m not sure how that would work. Maybe the planet would be spun in multiple directions at once.”

“That makes even less sense—wouldn’t it just spin in the direction that the largest single amount of blades are spinning toward?”

“I guess... Hey, where’s Shaun? I thought he was going to hang out with us today.”

“He’s probably still pissed off at me for what I said to him yesterday.”

“What did you say?”

“Well, we were talking about dreams, and after I shared the one where the nerves in my fingers separate and waggle around like spaghetti or a root system suspended in wiggling Jello, he told me about a fairly trippy one he evidently had.

“What was that about?”

“Apparently he dreamt that, for some reason or another, he had decided to cut his scrotum open. He did so, and afterward discovered that his testicles had pupils. They rolled back around and stared at him. I told him that given how high his voice is and how much of a testosterone-drained beta he tends to act like, that had probably actually happened at some point in the past and his mind was just replaying the memory.

“I also told him that those were probably the eyes of a parasitic twin, with his asshole being the mouth, his bladder being the brain and his dick acting as the nose.”

“Fucking genius, man. Well worth pissing him off.”
She pauses for a moment. “Say, does that mean that if he has a dishonesty fetish then his twin is Pinocchio?”

“Good one. Truth be told, I don’t even care that much if he chooses to cut off all ties with me over this. It’s not as if he does anything more than simply play WoW and LoL all day. Even just counting the books that he owns that I’ve borrowed, I’ve read more in the last six months than he has in the last couple years. I probably shouldn’t be too harsh on him over his NEET-ness, after all, he’s more of an autist than my ex, and my ex was professionally diagnosed.”

“Well, yeah, but she had tits, so even if they were just as autistic she would still seem less so in your eyes.”

“True.”

“How did you come to meet Shaun in the first place, Dave? I mean, you were the one to introduce him to me in the first place, and he is homeschooled.”

“Well, so was I up until I was 14. I met him at the park when I was 13; I remember that I didn’t really see him as being particularly cool or even seeming to have that much mutual interest, but I was pretty lonely at the time so I kinda clung to him. Even then I saw him as being an odd mixture of weird and bland, though.”

“Ah. That’s pretty much how I imagined that happening.”

“Enough about him, though. Did you get any chocolate today?”

“Nope; no carpet samples thrown at me as a practical joke, either. I think most of the school has forgotten I existed.”

“It could be argued that that’s better than the alternative.”

“I’m not complaining. Did you get any?”

“Do you even need to ask?”
“Not really, but I just felt like getting back at you. You’re wrong, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“You did get some.”

She grabs her bag from near the left chair leg and opens it up to show me a box of chocolate.

“Wow. Thanks, Dess.”

“This doesn’t mean that I’ve changed my opinion on the male body—I still consider the penis to be a grotesque almost Lovecraftian beast, but you’re a good friend and you deserve to be given the opportunity to fast on industrially-processed glucose just like every other druid-raping consumer out there.”

“Do you want a piece?”

“Nah, if I wanted one I would’ve just taken one before giving you the box. You’re welcome.”

I look up from the brightly-colored cardboard to the wall; the clock stares that it’s already 5:50, shortly before the library is to close.

“Ah crap, it’s nearly closing time. You want to catch the bus together?”

“Sure.”

And thus did we wander over to the bus-stop, sit around smoking factory-workers and drinking college students for eight minutes, and rode the city transit to our respective houses, and Valentine’s Day was over.

For me, it was one of the better years.
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As per usual, feel free to rip on this however you see fit. Bonus points for providing constructive criticism.

[TonyTwoFingers]

Righto. I'll go ahead and skip the trite corrections like spelling mistakes that I'm confident you could fix on your own.

1. As someone already put it, it's a bit directionless. While that's not always a bad thing for developing skills like dialogue, for example, it's not desirable when you're trying to tell a story. I don't know what your purpose was with this piece, but I'll assume it was to tell a story, and to entertain. Now, as you know, real life doesn't always have direction. Things happen for seemingly meaningless reasons, and the world keeps turning. While this may be true in life, it's difficult to weave in with fiction. Fiction, even if inspired by real events, is (as a general rule) much cleaner when there is a clear direction in the narrative. It has a point. Or a message. Or something that loans the story significance beyond the events themselves. Unless that's what you were shooting for. In which case, well done.


2. Sometimes it felt as though Dave was talking to himself. And I don't mean the dialogue was confusing, I mean that Desiree sounded a bit too much like him. However, that's largely personal taste, so I can't really complain about that in good conscience. Things that really stood out to me:

“Well, yeah, but she had tits, so even if they were just as autistic she would still seem less so in your eyes.”

“Fucking genius, man. Well worth pissing him off.”

They sound very much like things Dave would say. Again though, maybe that's the point and it's just over my head.


3. Some of the dialogue felt bumpy. This is minutiae to some degree, but still worth pointing out.

“Seriously? Haha, oh man, I guess I should expect as much to happen, considering the school, but it’s still damn funny to hear about these sorts of things when they do.” This feels a little wooden to me, the bolded section in particular. In realistic dialogue, very few people would probably say something like that if they shared the same experiences. "Seriously? Haha, oh man, I can't say I'm surprised. It's always funny to hear about these sort of things when they happen," gets the job done equally well in my opinion, and cuts down on some implied redundancies.

“Enough about him, though. Did you get any chocolate today?” I'd like a smoother transition than this, ideally, but even this could be improved. If Dave is kind of pissed at Shaun, and vice-versa, show it with words! "Ah, fuck him. Did you get any chocolate?" or something like that. Again, this is personal style though, so don't let what I would do corrupt your own voice.


4. You have a good style of prose, I'd use it more than you do towards the second half. Again, style. Don't hit me.


Overall, prose is good. You have a distinct style for sure, and that's sometimes the hardest thing to develop. So you've started out stronger than most. Dialogue could use some tightening up here and there, and that's tough to do. Most people will never stop learning how to employ dialogue, because there's always room for improvement. Also, don't be afraid to give your stuff a message! I know it gets old after a while to try and instill morals and such into your writing (I think you'd commented something along the lines of that on one of my works), but it gives it direction. Hell, do anything that will give your work direction. Because it's fiction (again, even if inspired by real events). Try to give it some long-lasting impression. What do you want people to take away from this? Discuss ad nauseum.

[Snuffkin]

To be perfectly fair, I have a good memory for conversations, and the dialogue was basically word-for-word what we'd said. I'm not kidding. Apparently we're shitty conversationalists.

[Snuffkin]

Oh, and also you seem to be neglecting quite a bit of (good) fiction when talking about the prevalence and importance of a "point". Ever read Waiting for Godot?

[Snuffkin]

"On the Road" is also kinda like that, but I prefer Waiting for Godot.

[kosherbacon]

There's no need to keep bumping with one-line responses. I doubt Tony's seen your first reply. Just edit that one.

[Snuffkin]

That wasn't the intention actually. I mean, what would the point of bumping it be? It was already at the top of the sub-forum.

I'll just assume given your lack of comment that you think my writing was shitty.

[imperial.standard]

The point still stands. If you have things to add yet no one has replied to your post, edit it instead.

[TonyTwoFingers]

Whoa, sorry for the wait. I haven't checked the forum in some time. Sure, there's some good stuff without a point, such as Waiting for Godot. But that stuff is hard to write well. It would be very difficult to pull off for someone who hadn't spent a considerable amount of time and energy finding a way to make it work.

It's actually very hard to do well, and while there are exceptions, there are many more failures at this style than there are successes.

[Snuffkin]

True.