Open

This is another freewrite I did. "O-P-E-N" is referring to the flashing sign that I was watching across the street and the rest of it was inspired by a random lyric I heard in one of the songs they were playing.

Enjoy, and I don't mean to offend anybody. It was all good fun... ;)

***

O-P-E-N. Flash Blue Flash flash flash flash. O-P-E-N… And over again.

“And Jesus was a sailor.”

Flash flash O-P-E-N

But if Jesus was a sailor, he probably had a lot of fun when they made port and in that case, he died for his own sins too.

Flash Flash.

Too bad. If only the general public knew it. I could write a book about this called “Jesus the Sailor” and it would open their eyes and maybe even gather a cult following.

Flash Flash

They’d call themselves the ‘sailorists’ and I’d go down in history with L. Ron Hubbard and maybe Matt Damon would be our official spokesperson and jump on Dr. Phil’s La-z-boy and get some bad press for that.

O-P-E-N Flash Flash.

Too bad it was just a song. Jesus isn’t a sailor—a musician just decided to make him one… kind of like the other Jesus, the guy on the bus. The one who’s one of us.

… because everyone in Poway rides the bus.

***

Conversations

This is a freewrite I did with Melissa when we met today. It's called Conversations and it started with a starter phrase from the book she's reading. The phrase was: "You must have slept". Enjoy!

Oh... it's a series of conversations, so don't be confused...

***

Conversations

- You must have slept.
- Yeah, it was Shakespeare. What do you expect?
- Your English teacher made you go?
- Yeah, for extra credit. I have a fucking 79.4 percent in that class.
- That sucks.
- I woke up in the second half and thought they were talking about refrigerators.
- Were they?
- Dude… it’s Shakespeare, they used fucking holes in the ground.
- Oh.
- You obviously didn’t go.
- I just told you. I was at Bill’s house.
- What’s Bill up to?
- He’s got a new girl.
- Yeah?
- Yeah, the secretary in his dad’s office.

…

- Where were you last night?
- Bill’s.
- You didn’t do anything, did you?
- No, mom. We had to go over some paperwork.
- I don’t trust you, Anna. You know that. What were you really doing?
- Paperwork! I told you!
- Michelle’s mom told me Michelle tells her the same exact thing!
- Yeah well… Mrs. Hudson is crazy! God… Why don’t you just leave me alone!?

…

- Last night, I saw the most wonderful young singer.
- Oh really? What was her name?
- His. He was Joseph Joplin. Excellent steak, John.
- He can’t hear you, Barbara. When he’s barbequing, he’s completely gone.
- My husband’s exactly the same way! All the time! He got a phone call the other day and you know what he says? “Mr. Hudson? Yeah… Oh! That’s me!”
- How funny! What was he doing?
- He’d just gotten home from walking Baxter.

…

Baxter lies in his basket in an empty house. They’ve gone out for the night, but it doesn’t bother him. For once, they’ve left him inside and he gets bored easily.
He’s already covered the shoes and the side of the couch. He even took care of the handbag on the floor in the kitchen and now he is slowly working on a little booklet of paper he found in the recycle.
If Baxter could read, he might have stopped after noticing the word “Shakespeare”.

***

I Burned My Finger... But enough of that...

So Melissa and I went to Starbucks to write tonight and we worked on this: We created a character to kill off together, each person writing one sentence and then passing the notebook for the next person... We also set the ending line before we started writing: And the kitten piddled in her flowerpot. Enjoy!

***

Hortense-Maria Deloy is a 32 year old Yale drop out (she failed to declare a major, but got straight As) who works as a pole dancer for free, owns a high end website which nobody knows she owns, wears her very very curly hair very very short, has horned rimmed glasses and is wearing a black mini-skirt the day of her death.

She's had three boyfriends, five one-night stands and one girlfriend (The Dean of Yale's daughter). Her father is a radio-preacher and her brother a missionary. She drinks coffee mixed with tea and has spoiled milk for her hang overs.

***

Four years out of Yale, Hortense-Maria Deloy settled in the mansion left to her in her father's will. She wandered the halls for days, reminiscing about the photographs of celebrities posed with her father.

Her favorite was the one of him with Robert Redford outside the MGM Grand Hotel. She spit up on his jacket immediately after it was taken; her father had not been pleased. But of course, a godly man admonishing his four year old daughter in public was unheard of--until then.

Hortense smiled at the memory-- it wasn't often that her dad was publicly humiliated.

On the fifth day of wandering her house alone, Hortense heard a hurried knock at the door.

One hand went to her hair--perfectly chaotic curls cut close to her head that made her look like an electrocuted cow. The other hand straightened the horned rimmed glasses and pushed them back up the bridge of her nose.

With a toss of her head she opened the door-- and found a wild-eyed woman with smudged make up and straining eyes leveling a gun at her.

"Oh," she said. "Hi Mom."

"I've never forgiven you." Her mother's hand trembled on the trigger.

Hortense made a face and sighed. "He was too young for you anyways,"

"He was NOT!" Her mother shrieked. "I loved that man with a passion you will never be able to understand... you were no more than a child!"

"Just like dad?"

Her mom had a faraway look in her eyes. "That man was an idol, a god, a genius born for the camera. And your father was nothing more than a second-rate preacher!"

Hortense smiled dreamily. "That man WAS a god... Oh those lovely, round little--"

"Fingers!" her mother yelled. The dreamy look was replaced with one of inconceivable rage. "His beautiful, beautiful fingers! And you-- you SPIT UP all over them!"

AND THEN HORTENSE-MARIA DELOY GOES CRAZY AND RUNS INTO A FLOWERPOT THAT SHATTERS AND PIERCES HER RIGHT AORTA, MAKING HER LEFT VENTRICLE EXPLODE!

Her mom looked down at the corpse.

"Shit," she said. "I waited too long." She noticed the neighbor's cat, who had come running at the sound of shattering ceramic.

Hortense's mother gave the cat a familiar nod. "Do your best, pussy."

And the kitten fucking piddled in her fucking flowerpot.