Here's a collection of short pieces--two microstories and four entries in the Katonah Village Library's Bulwer-Lytton writing contest, in dubious honor of the 19th century English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with "It was a dark and stormy night." I did my best to equal his awfulness, but I didn't rise to the level of the winning entry at the library. But practice makes perfect.
Let’s open with two 100-word stories I recently wrote:
Embracing the Man-Bra
After years of hitching up droopy pants, I finally took action beyond tightening my belt: I bought suspenders after seeing them on “Queer Eye.” I chose a snappy black set at Tractor Supply Company. Immediately I noticed a difference as my britches reach my bellybutton and shirts stay tucked in. Eureka! I describe suspenders as the “man bra,” uplifting what an aging body can’t hold up. I’m looking and feeling like a new hombre. Next up: thinner suspenders for the Wall Street vibe and others to wear under summer shirts. Finally I’m enjoying the support I need. Thanks, Man-Bra!
Demon Rum at Princeton
Given my teetotaler background, my first encounter with booze at Princeton had to be memorable. Guys in my dorm organized a Friday party with trashcan punch, as in screwdrivers. I liked it and kept pounding them down. Soon, my roommates and I were drunkenly dancing in a circle. Next memory: leaning over my bed barfing my guts out. Saturday morning: headaches, nausea. I wobbled to Commons for a restorative brunch. Recovered, I pulled my first all-nighter writing a psychology paper. That weekend introduced me Oscar Wilde’s axiom: “All things in moderation, including moderation.” Alas, I took his advice too well at certain turning points in my life, typically involving demon rum.
And now, my entries in the Katonah Library’s Bulwer-Lytton
bad writing contest. These are terrible very long opening sentences of novels:
The Long, Long Wait on the Train Platform
Sheila shivered under her tastefully knit woolen muffler as
she waited at the Katonah Metro-North station, the winter dawn’s icy wind pummeling
her like a dinner-deprived Labradoodle, while she peered up the track willing
the train’s arrival (“breathe,” she whispered, “Namaste”), since her large
macchiato from Dunkin’ Donut had raced through her digestive system like a
downtown express and she feverishly imagined the train’s clean, hopefully
unoccupied restroom, because she really, really needed to pish.
Another Day at the Ox Office
Jennifer’s request for “exotic, intense yarn” as a birthday
propelled husband Noah on a wild goose chase (not that geese produce yarn)
across a secretive network of farms dedicated to exclusive curated yarn
offerings, where sophisticated knitting connoisseurs jostled to personally
gather raw materials from pampered mammals, genetically bred for peak pelt
performance, and that resulted in Noah, sprawled legs akimbo on a musty
scratchy woolen blanket, gingerly plucking thick, yard-long hairs from the swollen
scrotum of a baffled but visibly delighted musk ox who moo’ed with masculine
modalities; for Mr. Musk, it was just another day at the ox office.
Stugots at the Seder
THAT Passover seder began when the college kids demanded the
right to cross out references to Israel in the siddurs and use the term
“enslaved future colonizers,” which enraged family patriarch Zaydie, who
clutched the siddurs to his bony chest and called the collegians “ungrateful shmucks”
in his Chernobyl-via-Miami accent, so in a compromise the collegians snapped
their fingers when they disagreed with a passage and that kept the peace until
somebody demanded “free range anti-Zionist vegan matzoh” and Zaydie shouted,
“You, stugots, go sit in the formal dining room we never use!” (when
excited, Zaydie lapsed into Neapolitan dialect he learned when stationed in
Italy in the 1950s) so the families could finish the ritual with the search for
the hidden matzoh piece called the afikoman, beloved by toddlers but
disrupted this time when teens chased the little kids around filming them for
social media and one knocked over a bowl of boiling matzoh-ball soup that slightly
scalded matriarch Bubbie through her Lululemon cargo joggers, but the doctors
at the table applied ice packs so this year’s seder ended with no shrieking trip
to the ER, Baruch Ha-Shem.
Manly Memories at the Dinky
Memories of Princeton University tumbled in Dudley’s memory while
he rode the “Dinky” shuttle from Princeton Junction to campus, where he had studied
classics, invaluable for his position as senior vice president of Poppy’s
investment house, and he mused on manly nude oiled initiates playing “Trees andTrolls” in his highly selective eating club on “The Street,” and his
junior semester abroad, spent pursuing lissome European coeds unencumbered by the rigid
Protestant neuroses of “imports” who flocked to Old Nassau on weekends, but, alas,
now he desperately fished for his Reunions hotel reservation misplaced in his paisley orange and black jacket and matching trousers.
