I'm Pouring Some Whiskey - Writers Forum

mybluehell · 04-26-2005, 07:46 PM

**Pouring Some Whiskey**
((I'd love to hear any feedback anyone has to give))

I couldn't help but smile as she hurriedly flipped through her CD changer with her back to me, standing on her own bra which I had tossed carelessly. I could tell she was a little self-conscious of her body, though she shouldn't have been.

She apparently found what she was looking for and darted back to the bed where I was waiting, covers pulled to my bare stomach, and hopped under the blanket to find me still interested.

Wasting no time we returned to washing ourselves with sweat, bathing in our sex. The song was sad, and it almost distracted me from the task at hand.

"yea I still call you, but I get your machine..."

The room goes blurry like I'm drunk, both of us half whispering somethings out of lust, borne from our cleansing copulation, but too distracted with moving parts and floating, haunting lyrics.

"You say that I hurt you in a voice like a prayer..." is playing and it really gets to me so I focus, look down, back up at her, eyes closed but she must feel me looking and she opens her eyes and we just stare. Finally I can't take the penetration of those glaring, green eyes and I turn my head and see an enlarged photo I took freshman year of some train tracks, trees filling around the frame lacking leaves but it's somehow inspiring to me in this moment of actualization.

When I gave her that picture I'd figured that she would just discard it, but here it is framed. Truth be told, it has been years since I'd first envisioned, hoped, longed for this very scene I am acting in. Probably since the time I'd given her this picture I just can't take my eyes off of now.

Either she or I was seeing someone, always, like it was just not meant to be. Lauren and I fell apart, but a week earlier she, Christy, hooked up with Eric so I got with someone else and when their whole thing dissipated, I was somewhat involved and so thus it's been for I don't even know how long.

Last night, though, I got a call. The words "lonely", "regret", "no, it's not too late", and "why don't you come over" come to mind, and as I'm thinking this she starts to cry. I stop and immediately I wonder if I've either thought out loud, unlikely as it may be, or if I've gotten over-zealous and hurt her.

I ask what's wrong but she just wipes away a tear and its trail on her cheek.

"So I'm pouring some whiskey, I'm gonna real fucking drunk, 'till I pass out and forget your face..." is playing, just played, and I think I understand because it got to me too.

I ask if it's the song and she nods and I start to get up to change it but she says it's okay, that it's almost over. She says she's okay, don't worry 'bout it baby, it's okay.

I've never really liked when so many "okays" are packed in one sentence. Things, in my experience, rarely are as such when appeasements are so repeated.

But she assures me and one way or the other it shouldn't affect me because although I can taste tears when I kiss her, she has told me to continue, finish, make her feel something besides the truth and meaning in those stark words pulsing from those expensive speakers.
Later we take a shower together, gingerly lathering each other with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap that makes us tingle and it finally dawns on me what really happened earlier.

I ask, timidly, if everything was really okay, if I had done something wrong.

There was a pause that was completely unnerving but my face had soap on it so I couldn’t see and when I finally find the flow of water and wash it all off I realize that she had the same problem. She touches my arm, her back to the faucet’s flow, looks me in the eye, and moves closer so that our usually-covered parts mesh against each other and tells me not to worry and I believe her, but still worry.

I’m suddenly very aware that her touch is awakening me and so is she, and we share each other under the flicker of fluorescent lighting and a steaming hot stream of shower water.

I got dressed and am trying to act like nothing happened, like my clothes had never come off, that I hadn’t been as moved by those sung syllables, more for her sake than for mine.

We’ve hung out countless times without having ever had sex, without our saline kisses, but I can’t exactly remember the specifics of my mannerisms then or my nonchalance, so I feel like my words are forced. Everything I say or do, to me and in my dopamine-seratonin soaked mind, comes out as if I were in freshman year again, floundering and flailing in the presence of that week’s crush.

Night sets and we walk the couple of blocks to the local video store and find a movie with Bob Dylan and John Goodman and one of the Owen brothers and we agree that it’s got a good cast, good title, nice cover art.

On the way back to her apartment we spot a Cuban restaurant sporting a BYOB sign but next to it there’s a menu taped on the window and it says that they have sangria so we stop in.

The waiter speaks broken English and is really nice so I decide early on to give him a good tip. He asks what we want to drink, besides the water he’s just brought us, and I tell him a pitcher of sangria, preferably with fruit, and he walks away writing something down and doesn’t ask for I.D.
Christy seems impressed at the fact that he hadn’t asked for I.D., because, she says, she always gets carded.

I shrug it off and say that it happens all the time, which is half-true, and we start talking about music and what bands are good live and what bands sold out this year and last (a topic we generally agree upon) and then the food comes with the sangria and I realize that we are two out of four people here in the seemingly-increasingly empty room. Four of us dining in silence while various staff bustle past and some 3/3 timed music plays from speakers far over our heads making me think that if the tables were removed that it would be very possible to dance in this room. Given the setting, decorations and all, and the amount of alcohol I spot at the bar I had previously not noticed, I suspect that dancing probably occurs here more often than is indicated by the calm collected cleanliness of this place.

I start to think of that song again; “I guess that your truth is just the ghost of your lies…I see through them all the time…”, and our conversation stops, we eat and drink without speaking, walk without words, all the way back to her third floor apartment with the balcony.

Back at her apartment we put on the movie and watch about twenty-seven minutes of it, not even a full half hour, before we find ourselves in an embrace that has not grown sour, though since this time last night we’d been touching and kissing sporadically, on and off. It was still new and so furiously impending, sought after, that we might have gone on for a year. All we know at this very moment is that we might as well try, at least dry up those swollen glands until sufficiently satisfied.

When I wake up at nine forty-eight Saturday morning, watch the seven turn to eight, and carefully glide over her resting body, grab for my boxers on the floor, and head out of the room on tiptoes so I don’t wake her roommates who had been much louder than we were last night.

I make some coffee quietly, waiting for any well-welcomed awakening in this apartment, but none comes, not even Christy, and I write a note explaining my departure in case she doesn’t wake up before I have to leave, but she knows I have band practice on Saturday’s anyway.

When I go out on to the deck for a cigarette, one I’ve been craving since last night but she doesn’t smoke so I held back, I notice from my third floor vantage-view that there are a plethora of floral offerings popping up around yards down the street. So figuring that everyone around must be asleep, I walk and pick some pansies, roses, morning glories from the neighboring yards then quickly return.

I pin the flowers to the note and gather my things, leave the bunched note on her nightstand and goddamn this place smells way too much like home.

gohn67 · 04-26-2005, 08:18 PM

I'll crtique it, if you critque 4 other pieces here, since you posted 2 of your pieces already, its only fair that you contribute also.

horrorcrafter · 04-26-2005, 09:15 PM

Well, I'll review it. I've been to West Chester, so I feel sorry for this guy already...
If the point of this work is simply to describe the intimate details of your relationship with this girl, well, then, Job well done! If there was some deeper meanings I did not catch them. You have to ask yourself... Who am I writing for... and, more importantly, why should they read this? I'm simply trying to point out that I found this work very hard to get interested in, even though it was well-written and beautifully described. Good luck,
Horrorcrafter

mybluehell · 04-27-2005, 11:39 AM

yea, i see what you mean about how it could be hard to get into. i plan to keep rolling with it and maybe turn it into a novella, if thats the right word. longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. i already have a lot of other stuff that ties in with it well. thank you all for reading.

gohn67 · 04-27-2005, 02:12 PM

OK, I read, since I saw that you did a few critques. I liked the writing, I tend like stuff written in present tense for some reason. Very smooth read and I read striaght through.

I agree with HorrorCrafter, I didn't get it either.

Also a small thing is when they are in the cuban restaurant they never order food. Also you should show them eating because they ARE at a restaurant.

The other thing is that I think you went to a flashback, after the shower scene but I'm not sure. If you did, you should go to past tense or past perfect tense. I can't remember which one though. Google it or something/

mybluehell · 04-28-2005, 07:47 PM

well, thanks for reviewing me, gohn67. you're right about the past tense thing and the ordering food, and i should fix it but im too lazy right now, and also the point of the restaurant was to show that they just wanted to get some sangria, so eating isn't all that important. thanks again.

saintoflight · 05-01-2005, 11:37 PM

Sentence Structure I think needs to be looked at throughout text, i.e;

Quote:

She apparently found what she was looking for and darted back to the bed where I was waiting, covers pulled to my bare stomach, and hopped under the blanket to find me still interested.

Also other errors in sentence structure; so just go through it. I agree with the other critiques, it can be hard to get into. Who is your audience?

Anyway noone's perfect, so keep posting.

mybluehell · 05-02-2005, 11:07 AM

what about the sentence structure? i think i need to go back and read the whole thing backwards so i can make sure to get all of the past tense stuff out of there. thanks for the feedback.

saintoflight · 05-03-2005, 02:29 AM

Instead of saying;

Quote:

She apparently found what she was looking for and darted back to the bed where I was waiting, covers pulled to my bare stomach, and hopped under the blanket to find me still interested.

which is jumbled and hard to understand. The audience could think it's "you" hoping back to the bed to find yourself still interested?
"She apparently found what she was looking for and darted back to the bed and hopped back under the blanket, where I was waiting, covers pulled to my bare stomach, still interested". Or something like that I'm not sure but what you wrote doesn't fit, it's all jumbled. [/quote]

mybluehell · 05-03-2005, 12:37 PM

actually i was concerned that it might be hard to follow. thanks for pointing it out, otherwise i might have left it unchecked. greatly appreciated.

bicycle · 05-03-2005, 11:40 PM

i like the way you combined the song lyrics and the story together. it's a very nice story overall.

"Either she or I was seeing someone, always, like it was just not meant to be. Lauren and I fell apart, but a week earlier she, Christy, hooked up with Eric so I got with someone else and when their whole thing dissipated, I was somewhat involved and so thus it's been for I don't even know how long."

This part was kind of hard for me to follow, you might want to rephrase it some how.

mybluehell · 05-05-2005, 04:56 PM

thank you bicycle. there are some major edits that need to be made, and i don't have the time right now. thanks for the feedback. by the way, have you ever actually heard that song? "It's cool, we can still be friends" by bright eyes. if not, i suggest you find it and listen to it because it is the most painfully true song i've ever heard.

gohn67 · 05-05-2005, 06:03 PM

Quote:

"It's cool, we can still be friends" by bright eyes

I've never heard that song but Bright Eyes is awesome.
Sorry about the off topic.

mybluehell · 05-05-2005, 06:35 PM

yes yes, bright eyes is awsome indeed. the song is off of the T>A>Z> compilation, on some other record label (not saddle creek). anyway, i strongly urge you to find it. it is well worth the money and/or download time.