306090 2/9

My last 10 entries for the 30/60/90 project. The above photo was taken on a recent road trip to Dallas, it’s the underneath view of a billboard sign at a Shell station. It was threatening to storm and I took it on my iPhone.

Daily writing prompt, Day 16
“I got nothing for ya,” was all he had to say…
- Kristen Gandrow, writer/dramaturg

“I got nothing for ya,” was all he had to say as he walked out the door. God, I hated when he used slang in that way, made him seem so unsophisticated. “See you, mañana,” he called out over his shoulder. How is this stranger my son, how was this miserable piece of shit created out of my DNA, how it is possible that such a pedestrian creature is related to me, I wondered and focused the single gleaming thought of my fist with my jutting upright middle finger at his retreating figure. He slammed the door behind him.

I sat there, mouth dry, just sat there. Like always, like everyday. I couldn’t say anything, god knows I can’t do anything. It’s not like I haven’t tried. Three months, three months since I last uttered a word, it’d been 12 weeks since I so much as wiggled my finger, it’d been 92 days since I lost control of my ‘68 Mustang, crashed headlong into a concrete barrier and woke up here unable to speak and unable to do anything but blink. At first, I thought I was dead. Now, I’m pretty sure I’m not but I have my days.

That’s not fair, he’s not a piece of shit. Keith was a good kid, he is a good kid, he has a good core anyway, and he’s like a clock about visiting his old man. Better than my wife anyway, ’til death do us part my ass. When he was four, four-years-old, he decided that he was old enough to bathe himself, he told me so. It breaks my heart when he carries me to the tub and gives me a sponge bath. I wish I could thank him, I wish I could tell him how proud of I am of him, I wish I could tell him something. Instead, I’ve got nothing, it’s me who has nothing for him.

Daily writing prompt, Day 15
Write a love note to the lover you haven’t met yet.
- Daniel Alexander Jones, playwright/performer/director

one one thousand
two one thousand
just one more minute
just fifty eight more one thousands
let me stand here, in front of this wall
let me blend into my surroundings
please, no one ask me to dance

why are you even here if you’re not going to dance,
Norton asks me,
there’s a reason why they call it a dance, you know,
he says with his wheezing chortle –
god, I hate that laugh

thirty one one thousand
thirty two one thousand
why is Cyndi Schloemer looking over here?

Norton, leaning against the wall strewn with crepe paper decorations,
picks at a zit between his mouth and left cheek with his right hand,
that Cyndi Schloomer is hot, he says –
it’s Schloemer, jackass, I think –
I’ll bet I could get her to go with me under the bleachers

forty four one thousand
forty five one thousand
why is she coming this way?

with a grunt, Norton pops the whitehead and smears the liquid between his fingers,
licking each one, hey, he says,
Cyndi’s comin’ over here — oh god, how does my hair look?

greasy, I think — I say, instead, nice
fifty six thousand
fifty seven thousand

Cyndi is striding across the dance floor,
dodging awkward couples here and there,
coming towards Norton with laser focus,
stopping just in front of us,
putting a finger to her lips before asking, do you want to dance?

Norton looks like he’s just been shot,
the color drains out of his face before he burbles meekly, sure

not you, she says, you, jabbing her finger at my cousin’s two sizes too big brown houndstooth jacket

I don’t remember fainting and I don’t know how long I was out,
this is what I remember:
I watched two elephants conduct their mating ritual over five weeks,
trading trunks of water and feeding each bananas,
I saw a school of salmon fight their way upstream to reach their breeding grounds,
I listened while a male mosquito’s love song adjusted to meet his female’s frequency,
I stared at two intertwined ribbon fish riding the ocean currents across the cool depths,
a length of knotted rope,
like the Caduceus Wand of Asclepius,
writhing their way aloft on a backwards circle of warmth, and then I opened my eyes and a dozen curious faces were staring at me, including Cyndi and Norton’s unblinking eyes

Funny to think that was 20 years ago, Cyndi and I actually dated for a while in high school. I’m reminded of her when I look at my nine-month-old daughter because both she and Lily have the same kind of glow about them, coming from somewhere just outside of the frame, lit from beneath.

It breaks me a bit to think that a boy — or it could be a girl, I suppose — that someone, anyway, will someday break her heart. It startles me to think that she will fumble through awkward feelings, surging hormones and with love in general. I wish for Lily that she finds bliss immediately and knows nothing but. That’d be nice. But it’s unrealistic, I suppose.

I wonder how she’ll ever appreciate the good stuff if she never learns about the not-so-nice stuff. If not through experience and trial-and-error, how would she ever? Wait, how can a father in good conscience ever wish on their child emotional misery and torment? I can only hope that she finds her way in the best way possible.

I think about the minor deceptions that happen in all relationships — the idea that no one has ever felt this strongly about someone, the notion that we’re all virgins when we meet someone new, pushing aside all of the natural doubts and indecision and jumping into each new adventure with both feet — and I imagine that Lily will come to her mom for advice faster than to her grumpy father who’s taken up smoking a pipe and reading some extremely unhip book when he gets home from work, but I hope that she comes to one of us. I know she will, she’s a good girl.

Right now, my heart swells when I look at her precious face and I know this feeling will continue in different shapes and sizes through the years, even when she’s listening to whatever rebellion rock too loud in her bedroom at ungodly hours after being told for the umpteenth time to keep it reasonable, I know that. Or when she runs away from home to join a motorcycle crew. Or when she wraps her new Honda something around the tree in the front yard. Regardless, I will hug her tight, tell her that I love her — baby, I love you, I’ll say, and you’re grounded for the rest of the summer.

Daily writing prompt, Day 14
What happened last night?
- Michael John Garcés, playwright/performer/director

Charles (naked): What happened last night?
Van Zandt: What do you mean?
Charles: What do I mean what do I mean? You can’t answer a question with a question.
Van Zandt: You just did.
Charles: Just did what?
Van Zandt: Answered a question with a question. That kind of double standard hardly seems fair.
Charles: What happened last night?
Van Zandt: Susan came over for dinner. You know.
Charles: And?
Van Zandt: I didn’t sleep with her, if that’s what you’re asking.
Charles: I don’t care about that.
Van Zandt: Then, what are you asking?
Charles: She’s passed out in my room.
Van Zandt: She’s what?
Charles: She’s passed out in my room.
Van Zandt: I thought she went home.
Charles: This isn’t funny, man.
Van Zandt: I heard the front door and everything.
Charles: She’s in my room, in my bed.
Van Zandt: She said she was going home.
Charles: She doesn’t have any clothes on, man.
Van Zandt: Don’t look at me. After you dragged your lightweight ass to bed, we had one more drink and she left.
Charles: Then why is she in my room?
Van Zandt: Bro, I have no idea.
Charles: Do you know what mom’s going to say?
Van Zandt: She always said said that you two would be a cute couple.
Charles: This isn’t funny.
Van Zandt: Who’s laughing?
Charles: What did you say to her?
Van Zandt: What did I say to her?
Charles: Yeah, what did you say to her?
Van Zandt: What would I have said to her that she’d end up in your bedroom?
Charles: You didn’t tell her about –

Susan stumbles into view. She has a sheet wrapped clumsily around her.

Susan: Good morning, boys.

She breezes past Charles and lays a kiss on Van Zandt.

Susan: Have you seen my keys? I can’t find them anywhere.

She collapses in a heap on the floor, as though her bones have disappeared from her body. A beat.

Van Zandt: You weren’t kidding, were you?
Charles: Why would I kid about this?
Van Zandt: I thought you might be getting me back.
Charles: Back for what?
Van Zandt: A childhood of teasing and playful jabs.
Charles: I’m not kidding.

Van Zandt pokes at Susan. She doesn’t move.

Van Zandt: Freezer?
Charles: There’s no room.
Van Zandt: We can’t just leave her here.

Susan starts snoring lightly.

Charles: Yeah, you’re right. We can’t just leave her here.
Van Zandt: At least she’s not dead.
Charles: Thank god for little miracles. What happened last night?

Van Zandt takes a deep breath, shrugs and holds out his hands.

Daily writing prompt, Day 13
Feigned indignation
- David Gonzalez, criminal defense attorney

his blonde curls smile at me,
my hands up in the air,
he points the toy gun at me,
my arms up there,
his blue eyes say etcetera, etcetera and he shoots me anyway

I’m not sure if you call it revolt or indignation,
but it’s an urge to hold on tightly,
a gold-plated watch given for years of service ceremoniously throw out of a 13th floor window,
check your pulse in this tempestuousness,
make your way to take the elevator one floor,
push through the climate controlled hallways,
you can only fight so long before it brings you down to your knees

I tell her these things while I hold her hand,
I whisper nursery rhymes,
I hum songs I barely remember,
I flip through the channels on the television wondering why HBO’s such a letdown,
I do this because I have nothing to say,
because I’m finding it hard to separate my sympathy from my feeling,
because I don’t know what I would do without her,
because you can only fly so long with the autopilot on

the hospital machines beep and hum around me,
I think of what I can do to wake her up,
shaking her doesn’t do anything,
the doctors grimace,
whispered pleas have no effect,
the nurses shake their heads (the one with the short brown hair gave me her home phone number, pushing it deep into my shirt pocket, saying if I needed anything),
the shots and needles and transfusions do nothing –
she always said that she’d wake up from even the deepest coma to answer a telephone that was ringing and I wish there was one in the room that I could call

I don’t care,
I can’t care,
I won’t, you can’t make me, the little boy said after he wasn’t picked to play with the kids and he sat with his head pushing against the chain link fence — he won’t cry because he knows the names that they’ll throw at him

I’ve lost track of the days — is it Wednesday or Thursday?
this chair has become my second home, I think I feel her hand squeeze mine but after a second I realize it’s my optimism,
it’s not reality, that is so full of holes right now, gaps and negative spaces in the world,
I wish it was like a pair of socks, a worn out pair that I could just throw away and pluck new ones from a plastic bag

bang, bang — shoot ‘em up, kid

Daily writing prompt, Day 12
Things would be better if . . .
- Jacqueline Lawton, playwright/performer/dramaturg

As a kid, I imagined that a jellyfish would overtake the world. Like the album cover for Journey’s Escape — though I know it’s not a sea jelly at all, it’s a painting of a kind of spaceship rocketing out of a glass sphere but it always looked like a jellyfish to me, a jellyfish springing into flight, flying into orbit. Things would be better if this happened, I think, if the world economy would be saved by a creature from the deep.

When I was in middle school, I fell in love with Vanessa Kudlhimer. Looking back, I don’t know if I fell in love with her as much as I fell in love with the idea of her. Even in my mind’s eye, I knew that it could never work out with us — me, a gangly nerd with glasses that never sat level on my nose and her, a beauty destined to be on the cover of glossy magazines with her pearly smile. Things would be better if I didn’t jam that four-page long love letter into her locker that Wednesday after school (she always winked at me in the hallways after that) and if she didn’t move away to Decatur, Illinois the next year.

While shopping for my first car, I came across an advert for a Delorean. It was gray stainless steel with gull-wing doors and a pristine fiberglass underbody, low mileage and was listed at $2000 OBO. Only 9,000 of them were ever made. I was $500 short and my dad remained unconvinced about its durability. “They went out of business,” he said. My retort was, of course, “The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” By way of an answer, he snorted and left the room. Things would be better in my future life if the owner had been willing to come down in price.

I got the call last night. More like this morning, I suppose. When I heard the phone ring, I knew that it was something bad. Call it a hunch, intuition, something, whatever. It was my dad. His voice was gruff and slow, raw really, I could tell that he’d been crying. They thought they’d found the growth on her thyroid in time, but it’d started spreading before her surgery last year. Sure, they could try the radiation again but in this case the third time would most likely not be a charm. Nothing to do but make her comfortable at this point. Nothing to do. Things would be better if there was something I could do.

Daily writing prompt, Day 11
The most indefensible thing I’ve done in the last two weeks
- Kristoffer Diaz, playwright

Kara: Truth.
Franklin: Chicken.
Kara: It’s what I’m comfortable with.
Franklin: That’s not really the point.
Kara: It’s a choice. How is one better than the other?
Franklin: Not better persay, just less boring.
Kara: Just because you want all the attention in the world.
Franklin: Not all. Just most of it. Besides, I don’t demand it.
Kara: You might as well.
Franklin: If there are those that would give it to me …

Long enters, carrying a bowl of snacks.

Long: What’d I miss?
Kara: What’s so not exciting about truth?
Long: Truth again?
Kara: Don’t you start too.
Franklin: For you, we might as well call the game Truth or truth.

Tammy enters.

Tammy: I used the last of the t.p.
Long: There should’ve been a roll on the top shelf.
Tammy: Didn’t look there. Kara, did you pick truth again?
Kara: There is nothing wrong with truth.
Franklin: There is if you pick it twenty three times in a row.
Long: Who needs a drink?

Tammy raises her hand and raises Franklin’s. He obliges. Tommy tries to raise Kara’s hand. She fights it.

Franklin: Girl, you are wound tighter than a tiger on a hot plate.
Kara: I’ve had one glass of wine already.
Long: That was chardonnay, that’s not really a drink.
Tammy: And it was from Mexico.
Kara: Look, I know I’m not a party party girl, I just know my limits.
Franklin: Kara, we love you. We do.

Danny enters with a grocery bag. In his free hand, he’s holding three bags of tortillas.

Franklin (cont.): But you’ve got to let it go.
Danny: Check this out, y’all.
Long: Finally he comes with the mixers.
Danny: They make tortillas in flavors now.
Tammy: Have one more, Kara.
Franklin: What would it hurt?
Long (inspecting the tortillas): Salsa? Butter?
Danny: And pesto. It’s baked right in. Awesome, right?

Danny and Long bust open the bags, shoving the tortillas into their mouth. It’s almost obscene.

Kara: Fine, fine.

Tammy squeals.

Kara (cont.): I’ll have one more. Just one.
Franklin: That a girl.

Tammy exits.

Danny: This is really …
Long: Yeah, this is …

They spit out the wet chewed up chunks of tortilla.

Franklin: That is foul.
Danny: You have no idea.
Kara: And I want to do a dare.
Danny: A who?
Long: Blessed be.
Kara: If not now, when?
Franklin: Excuse me, did I hear right?
Kara: In for a penny, in for a pound.
Danny: Someone dare her to do something, quick! Before we slip into tired cliched sayings land.
Long: Seven minutes in heaven.
Franklin: Are you 10?

Tammy returns with a tray full of drinks.

Tammy: What’d I miss?
Danny: Kara just grew a pair.
Tammy. No.
Kara: If you all are gonna make such a big deal about this …
Long: No, we just need a minute.

Kara reaches over Tammy for her drink, downs it in one gulp and polishes off every drink on the tray.

Kara: C’mon. Dare me.
Franklin: Sweetie.
Kara: Anything.
Long: Darlin’.
Kara (blurting): I’ve done something indefensible, something I just can’t justify. I haven’t been able to sleep the last three nights.
Tammy: Honey, you don’t need to share this with us.
Long: Yeah, just let sleeping dogs lie.
Danny: Cliche land just ahead.

Kara whispers something into Franklin’s ear. His eyes go big and he whispers it to Long — a look of shock. Long relays it to Tammy, who shakes her head vigorously, as though to lose it. Tammy tells to to Danny, who covers his mouth. They all look at Kara, who hiccups slightly.

Daily writing prompt, Day 10
SARA
(Screaming into the phone.)
The sky has gone yellow!
- David Gunderson, writer/editor/performer

Sara (screaming into the phone): The sky has gone yellow!
David (standing right next to her, talking into his finger): I love heartache, especially long distance.
Sara (into the phone): A pig’s heart is very similar to the human heart in anatomy, size and function.
David: Did you say yellow?
Sara (into the phone): It’s always something.
David: Always something with me? With me you? Or with you you?
Sara (into the phone): Canaries and taxies.
David: You you?
Sara (into the phone): You heard me.
David: What does that even mean?
Sara (into the phone): Are you seeing this?
David: No, not at all, I love it like that, just like that.
Sara (into the phone): It means whatever you want it to mean.
David (into his finger): Like Akkam’s Razor?
Sara: More like, When in Rome. What about heartbreak over a shorter distance?
David (into his finger): Like silly putty.
Sara: I’m thinking like 100 feet. From here to that wall.
David (into his finger): It’s heartache, not heartbreak. Heartbreak is devastating in any interval.
Sara (into the phone): The sky has gone orange.
David (into his finger): It was bound to happen at some point.
Sara (into the phone): Clown fish and yams.

David hangs up his finger and exits. Sara, also hanging up, gets down on one knee.

Sara (cont.): I hate it that he never says goodbye. Just a click and he’s gone.

Daily writing prompt, Day 9
Community service hours at the opera
- David Gonzalez, criminal defense attorney

these are the things I have done rather than writing this morning:

I brush my teeth, I floss, I brush my dog’s teeth, I water the herbs, I pull errant grass from the gravel beds, I make a music mix, I call four clients, I check on an order from Amazon, I call my mother, I make my bed, I think about the state of the middle east, I invoice all of my clients, I program the thermostat, I stare, I alphabetize my cd shelf, I make a tuna casserole, I clean up the lint trap, I change the air filters for the air conditioner intakes and I sleep:
squeezing my eyes closed,
I keep my hand under the one cool spot on the pillow,
counting backwards from one million,
opening my eyes wide –
nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine –
the early light of the dawn creeps in the corners,
trying to get in,
trying to slide under the bed,
trying to get around the ink of the night

I wait:
watching the coffee drip down into the pot,
counting each one,
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,
knowing that each one is more bitter than the last –
is it done yet, I wonder, or is there one more?
how about now? let it go six more, better to stop on a ten

in the end:
a white bull might be a tasty drink but it doesn’t sit well with me this morning staring at this blank sheet of paper, so smooth,
so clean,
so very threatening

Daily writing prompt, Day 8
You have ten minutes to prepare for an uncomfortable reunion.
- Steven Tomlinson, economist/teacher/writer

Carie’s glass clanked against the metal frame of the mesh lounger. I blinked in the sunlight and glanced over at her while the thrum of the artificial waterfall pitted itself against the calm edge of the infinity pool. “She’s gonna be here in 10 minutes,” Carie said, adjusting her sunglasses that were much too wide for her face, sipping on a swirled virgin piña colada, pink for strawberry and yellow for mango. “You know, it’s a wonder you two even talk. I’ve never stayed friends with any of my ex’s. You’re brave that way.”

A murmur of voices and splashes rose up from my right. A man in stretched red trunks stood at the edge of the water drinking out of a pineapple, twirling a cocktail umbrella between his thick fingers. I wondered how much material it would take to replicate his body in a sculpture, not in stone or wood but of pastry dough, maybe as a 5′4″ cream puff, twice as wide as an outhouse. He seemed proud of something, maybe it was the steak I saw him inhale this morning for breakfast or maybe it was his folds and folds of skin that revealed patches of hair up and down his back or maybe it was the teensy brunette that waved at him from the pool while frolicking with a squealing child. Probably the steak, I decided.

“You’re okay with this, right,” she asked. “Seeing her? Things aren’t going to be weird, are they? I should’ve asked you before, I don’t mean to spring it on you.”

“What weird,” I asked. “With me, no. Things’ll be fine.”

“Of course, things are always fine for you. It’s fine, it’ll be fine, you broke it off,” she squinted behind her gray brown lenses. “Besides, you don’t need as much as she does.”

“Need?”

“You’re self-sufficient, you always have been. That’s why I haven’t called you much, that’s why I don’t invite you out — that and she’ll be there. I don’t want it to be bad, you understand. She’s always around because of Allison and Lisa and Sam, you know. Her party of hens.” Ah, yes — the feisty four, the infamous four, I knew them well. The four vestal virgins, as they liked to call themselves. (You know, I don’t know what that meant really for their group. I mean, I know it was a reference to Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” but the lyrics had sixteen headed for the coast — no, fifteen I guess — and I don’t believe that any of them were vestal and/or virgin, well, whatever, I don’t know.) There was this one time that I turned up at the same function as the brood, this was maybe three months ago, they shot daggers at me from behind their champagne flutes for a solid hour. Who has that kind of energy? I left after my second drink, only so many dirty looks one can take at a charity bachelorette auction. Why they were there even, I wondered, an event to benefit an addition to the children’s hospital, I wracked my brain and I couldn’t figure it out. The girls — each one a bit different from the other — were in absolute agreement on one point, no kids ever. Having kids ruined any chance of domestic bliss. My ex always said that she could feel her uterus threatening to eject itself from her body every time she heard a fussy baby. And let me tell you, this made grocery shopping, any trip to the mall and beaches super fun.

“No worries, Carie. Things are not going to be weird, it’ll be great,” I said — though I really didn’t mean ‘great,’ I meant ‘fine.’ “Besides, this is your day.”

“Gag me,” she said. “If one more person tells me that …”

“It’s a tired idea, I know.”

She swirled her finger in her glass. “I don’t know why this should be the happiest day of my life. The happiest,” she asked. “It should be up there, don’t get me wrong — top ten sure, top five maybe — but the best day I will ever have in my life? No thank you.”

“Vernon’s a great guy,” I said.

“No doubt,” she said, sucking on the end of her finger. “We should get massages later, wouldn’t that be great?”

“It would be great, a massage would be nice,” I said. “But first, I need a double whiskey.” Five minutes and counting.

Daily writing prompt, Day 7
First line: I’ve never really cared for science.
- Jason Neulander, writer/director/producer

“I’ve never really cared for science,” she repeated and I stared dumbfounded at my mother. It was as though I was just now seeing this woman who baked every birthday cake I’d ever had in my life for the first time.

Who is this woman, I asked myself while I remembered a similar event a few years ago when she told me matter-of-factly that she’d voted for George W. Bush — not just once but both times. The same feeling of shock was washing over me now as it washed over me then.

Here’s the thing, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew that I didn’t inherit my bleeding heart from my mother. I knew that she was a pragmatist, she saw the world in four different shades of gray unlike the millions that I tended to see. In fact, I don’t know where my left lean came from exactly — my father was some kind of special ops, top secret hush-hush type (for their anniversary, his new wife — only five years older than me — bought him a Bushmaster XM15 Carbine and this man, stoic to a fault, squealed, yeah squealed) and my step-father watched three hours of Fox News every night (more than that, took it seriously). Ugh. But I thought my mom was different, I thought she had an open mind and self-sufficient opinions.

“There’s something unsettling about the idea of men and women living with dinosaurs,” she continued. “I like the Garden of Eden much better, I like that God rested on the seventh day, I like –

“Mother,” I said through slightly barred teeth, “Dinosaurs and humans never lived together. Dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago and humans didn’t show up until 50 million years later.”

“Where did these numbers come from,” she asked, wagging her finger.

“It’s fact,” I said. “Scientists, biologists, archeologists.”

“It’s a story,” she said. “They are all stories, scientists didn’t dig up any bones with those ages. It’s not like they were labelled. They only found dinosaurs’ bones, nothing about how old they are.”

“Carbon dating, radioactive dating, whatever,” I stated. “Isotopes, protons, neutrons.”

“This is why I’ve never cared much for science,” she said. “It’s all so unsatisfying, all white coats and goggles. I’d rather have a good story.”

I opened my mouth to say something in return and realized that there was no convincing her. My mother’s so stubborn that once she’s made up her mind, it’s impossible to get her to change it. I closed my eyes, breathed out and counted down to 10, listening to my mother go off on Charles Darwin.

Daily writing prompt, Day 6
It’s hard to watch the world dance away from you, as if you no longer wanted to dance …
- D. Bruce Pate, writer/minister

I’m watching Sandy sway to and fro to the music, a mid-tempo radio hit with an inane chorus. “C’mon,” she said. “Why don’t you ever dance?”

“I told you before, I have a high dance tolerance.”

She clucked her tongue and pointed at me. “Nothing to do with that,” she asked.

“What?” I indicated the clock in my chest. “This?”

“Of course that. That’s as obvious as Magnum P.I.’s mustache.”

I ran my fingers over the clock’s face, about 22 inches across. All my life, it was here. I was born with it, doctors couldn’t and still can’t figure out how it got here. Just last week, I’d changed out the front to be very minimalist, no numbers on the face and two thin solid hands. I remembered with a chuckle when I was younger and tried in vain to hide the clock, wearing jackets and sweaters — the more bulk the better, I thought at the time. “That’s like me saying that you throw like a girl,” I replied.

“I am a girl.”

“Exactly,” I said with a twinge of satisfaction. “My high dance tolerance has nothing to do with it.” An odd feeling in my chest lingered around my throat.

Sandy sat down next to me. “Why won’t you ever let me wind it?”

“I can manage just fine on my own,” I said. “I don’t need your help.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. “I’m going to get a drink, you want another?”

I nodded and watched Sandy walk away. I knew that she’d come back with at least two extra drinks, most likely shots (or some other vain attempt to coax me onto the dance floor). I wasn’t joking about my high dance tolerance, I think some people just dance easier than others — like Sandy. Some people require certain types of encouragement — liquid courage, peer pressure, etc. — but some are like me, just not easily prone to dancing.

I have nothing against dancing — this is where I’d like to make some Amish joke but I can’t think of one funny enough so pretend I did, okay? This is not to say that I’m proud of my high dance tolerance. In fact, I think it’s a detractor. When I see someone else dancing, I feel an envious twinge. And when I see someone dancing completely without inhibition, with clear abandon, I might chuckle and shake my head a little, but I experience a shudder of jealousy that radiates through me, starting from just under my bottom left rib.

The gurgle around my throat continued. What the hell, I wondered, Was it something I ate earlier. I saw Sandy walking back, balancing six drinks in her two hands. When I take a step towards her to help I felt a lurch right in the middle of my chest. It felt like a plate’s that’s just slipped out from my soapy hands, seconds away from crashing onto the floor and I realized that I’ve left my winding handle at home. It’s so bulky, it’s so inconvenient. I remembered that I didn’t crank myself up tonight before coming out, I was running late. Fuck, I thought, as the floor came closer and closer to my face. Not now, why now, fuck. The last thing I remember is the look on Sandy’s face, a mixture of fear and concern. Damn it, not now, I really wanted to dance to this song.