I wonder if I should just rename this blog the "Hmmmm" file...This was taken on my very first writer's retreat with my wild mid-west writerly ladies, L and M.....L saw this little number fluttering in the breeze and we were inspired to write short stories in its honor. Mine is as follows:
On the Fence
The pink bra felt tight. That was the problem. Sara felt like she could barely breathe and it wasn’t just the thin Colorado air and it wasn’t just what Johan the asshole was saying as they whizzed down county road 162, the jagged peaks of the Presidential peaks scraping the sky all around them in the distance and the ribbon of road flatlining ahead, inexorably sliding them into the future.
It was the fucking too tight, Victoria’s Secret, super pushy-cushy monstrosity that was currently squishing her altogether too sensitive mammary glands into a violent huddle.
“I’ve got to do it,” Johan repeated, “I’ve got to go back. This road trip isn’t gonna work. And honestly, we just aren’t gonna work. You should go, though. Go on alone. It’ll be good for you.”
He was quiet after that, turning his head to the sun, which was just about to nosedive into the dip between the two fourteeners centered in his window.
A pickup truck sped by a little too closely, nearly clipping her front bumper as it swerved back into the traveling lane.
“Shit,” she murmured, and pressed the brake
.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She shook her head. She didn’t mean him. She meant the effing horrible truck driver. No, the whining idiot in the passenger seat didn’t rate any of her very precious regret.
They had only been on the road for three days and she already wanted to kill him.
For starters, he had the tiniest bladder known to man, and had even peed in empty water bottles rather than wait for her to find a bathroom. The last time he did it, she went over a bump and they were smelling his pungent piss for miles, before she pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot and made him clean it up.
If that wasn’t enough of a problem, he revealed that his skin was particularly sensitive and he was sure that he was going to get skin cancer, especially once they hit the mountains. He talked about how the thinner air acted as a magnifying glass for the UV rays or some nonsense. His solution was to slather himself with zinc oxide. Face. Arms. Legs.
After a while, the stuff began to melt. It was disgusting.
She shifted in her seat. The bra was killing her. It really was. It was a torture device. She wondered why she ever thought buying it was a good idea.
Oh, yeah, she remembered. She thought he would like it. Which was a supreme joke, because she really didn’t want him to even see it anymore.
This trip across country, sea to shining sea, was supposed to be the greatest romantic adventure known to man or woman. They would meander across the country, seeing everything that they cared to, they would make love under the stars, they would become as one through their mutual love of the road.
It wasn’t working out that way.
Johan hated the road. He was a picky eater. He got cramps in his legs from sitting too long. He thought the desert was boring.
And now, he wanted to go back to L.A.
She tried to focus on the beauty of the rough and uncompromising landscape, the rocky plains, shooting out from either side of the road, fenced in by strangely delicate razor wire boundaries. It was magnificent.
She slowed, and then stopped on the side of the thin band of road.
“What are you doing?” he said. He was panicking, she realized. It was no longer her problem. “Is something wrong?” he asked her.
“Nope,” she said. She opened the door and slid out onto the asphalt. Shut the door with a decisive clank. The air was colder than she expected, the wind more insistent. It tousled her hair. She looked up into the broad expanse of cloud-streaked sky and smiled.
It was a perfect day. Except for one thing.
She tugged her shirt off in one quick movement and let it fall to the ground. Then, she twisted the front clasp of the torturous pink bra and shrugged it off of her shoulders.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled from behind her. He said something else, but the wind stole it and threw it away.
She stood for a moment under the sky and felt her skin prickle and her nipples harden.
A horn startled her as another pickup truck sped by and she laughed. She turned to see a real live cowboy hanging out the window of the truck, his mouth hanging open as they motored by. She swung the pink bra above her head like a lasso and waved at him as they disappeared into the far away.
She picked her way through patches of rough weeds to the prickly wire fence and wound the straps of the bra around the spurrs on the top line.
She leaned down and picked up her shirt as she made her way back to the car.
She noticed a sign down the road a bit. Salida. Five Miles.
She had one more thing to hang on the fence, and then she’d be free.
