She stood six feet four inches as far as I was concerned, but I’m sure she was only three foot one but no more than three foot one and a half. I was seven, I didn’t know what my height was way back then and I didn’t care. All I cared about was her. She had large brown eyes, an engaging smile, and shiny long brown hair. She was my Repunzel. Tina was her name, or was it Nina, or Gina, no, maybe I think it was Kristy; I don’t remember. What I do remember was that she was a feisty one. Her slim petite figure, as if children can have another type of figure, charges through the playground as we play tag. The boys would chase the girls, slapping them on their butts to steal a grope. At age seven too, how corrupted us boys were. Instead of sitting on the ground like the other girls, Tina or Nina or Daphne or whatever her name was would chase us back and steal a grope herself with her fist or knee or feet to our soft fleshy areas like our stomach, face, or her personal favorite, our groin. After regaining consciousness, I realized she wasn’t the one for me. I moved on, as I should. She was Kristina or Tristina or Trista or maybe Michelle. I don’t remember, but she sure was a feisty one.
Category Archives: Simple Shorts
A Baker’s Vision
This is something old that I’ve written. I’m guessing this was in, oh…2004, summer. It was a writing assignment a friend of mine at that time had given me to do. She got this writing assignment in a summer extension class she took. The premise is to write a story where a wedding cake ends up smashed on the road.
It is unfinished as I got tired of it…my insecurities in my writings got in the way. I don’t even know where I was going with it. Will it be finished? I highly doubt it.
Perfection. What is it? I’m surrounded by perfection; yet, I do not see it. I create perfection, and yet, I do not see it.
Every time a couple comes in, they flip through the book; they glance over perfection after perfection until they come to their own. There’s classic white, chocolate, yellow, cheesecake and more. Tiered. Stacked; two, three, five. Frosting of different shades and different flavors. Simple to fancy. Fancy to extraordinary. Extraordinary to perfection. Each made and decorated with extreme care, attention, and love.
The wedding cake is the symbol of the couples love and affection. It is what the couple shares with their friends and family at the reception. It is a part of them; an extension of their love and their being. It is a symbol of their faith and their promise; the promise of their union, their love.
During the celebration of the birth of their union, the cake is presented. From tradition, the celebrated couple makes the first cut into the cake, bringing perfection to an end. Then they temp each other with pieces of the cake, holding it to their lover’s mouth, taunting and teasing, until the final moment of devouring.
The cake is quickly cut into pieces. Passed on to others to taste their union. Devoured, dirtied, trash, crumbs, and nothingness has perfection become. It is nothing and insignificant, only a sweet treat in their guests’ eyes.
* * *
Today is like any other day, an early morning of work. My shop prepares every morning in the usual routine to ready it for life. It is a sweet lover’s delight. The aromatic smell of life fills the air. My garden of baked goods; pastries, doughnuts, cakes, breads, and many more delicious treats.
Patrons come and go, finishing their usual routine. Coffee with danish or tea with shortbread. Each taking a little piece of heaven to complete their morning.
One couple in particular surveys my smorgasbord of sweets. Slowly taking their time, they admire the smell of the breads, savor the deliciousness of the doughnuts, and quench their thirst with the blueberry muffins.
Once they finish their assessment, eagerly they approach. They ask for the book. With some hesitation, I pull out my bible of cakes and pass it on to them with care. They thank me. Caressing the book, they carry it to a table to verify their faith.
The couple is as lovely as any other, young and in love. They are oblivious to the world; ‘cause to them, there is only love. They do not care that they are poor as shown by their second hand designer imposters. Their love is the only thing that matters. They do not care that their four jobs between them just put them into the black of savings, for their love will conquer all. They are above all that is petty.
With each turn of the page, the bride-to-be’s breath just holds a little more and more, only to be released by the tightening of her mate’s reassuring hand. Their heads so close together, they are one, heads down, admiring the beauty that is before them. With each page, beauty comes and goes, matching their taste to their love. The groom’s jittery legs dances with anticipation for the next page and the bride’s slow revelation of what is to come.
The bride’s breath holds completely along with her lover’s jitterbug. Stillness. It is a moment of clarity. With a single look, all is said.
Turkey Tofurkey No More
It refuses to come out, it refuses to flow. It stays and stays, filling and filling up my small little container. The pressure builds and builds, even when you think there isn’t any more room, the pressure builds and builds, ever expanding the taut, yet flexible container.
Ache. Pain. Pressure. Gas. Bloating. All builds and builds and builds, never giving up, never giving in. All builds and builds, even when there is no more to build. What can I do? What can I do?
So I go and sit, go and sit, go and sit. Sometimes there’s flow, other times there isn’t. But there will always be constant pain, constant pain. No rest, no sleep, no relaxation. Nothing. Just pain, pain, pain.
What can it be? What could have caused this? Maybe it is the little fishes that swim in the sea. Maybe it is the fowl the goes cluck cluck in their cages, or maybe it is their shelled offspring that is so popular during breakfast. Maybe it is the shelled crescents that crawl and flap their little flippers in the sea. Who knows? Who knows?
The pressure builds to biblical proportions. There has to be a release, there needs to be a release, but there isn’t any.
It started in the middle of the night. It started late. Tossing and turning, waiting for the silent assailant to come and attack me. Unbeknown to me, it was fatal. It was debilitating. It was torture.
I doubled over with pain as the pressure builds and builds. My intestines rumble rumble and gurgle gurgle with the unidentified attacker. What can it be?
I get up, hoping that it was just a cramp. I walk it off, but my legs give out. There’s no strength. None to speak of.
On my knees, I set myself down on my side, laying there hoping that this will go away. It doesn’t. It stays and stays, causing more and more pain.
One more attempt at heroism. One more attempt at saving myself. I muster all the strength I have left and crawl, crawl like the way I use to oh so long ago. One arm, one knee; the other arm, the other knee. I crawl and crawl.
I finally reached the throne. I finally reach the throne where I sat so proudly with familiar humiliation before. Now it is my savior. Now it will ease the pain, or so I was lead to believe.
I hoist myself up to the throne and relax. But there is no sense of relaxation. The throne sits as it always sits, and I sit there feeling worse than I did before. Worse than ever. I never felt this much pain before.
There’s no release, even during relaxation. Maybe it’s because of the pain. I brace myself with each stab, that I’m too tense to relax. Maybe that’s it.
Giving up on the throne, I fall off. My, oh how the mighty king of yesteryear have fallen. When I fall, I fall hard.
Something feels like flowing, something needs release. There is a limit. There is a limit. I hoist myself up, but it flows in the other direction. It comes, oh so little, but it comes. It is some release, but it leaves me feeling no better.
Knowing that there’s nothing more to come, I managed to crawl myself back to the comfort of my bed. I tuck myself in, but there is no resting tonight. None at all. It comes and comes, never ending, never ending. PAIN.
I toss, turn, spin around and repeat the cycle hoping to find a position that will alleviate the pain just a little. But little did that help. It only causes the pain to double. The pressure increases exponentially with each passing second, with each passing minute. What is going on? What is going on?
I close my eyes, praying that the pain will go away. The pain stabs on for an eternity and another after that. I look at the clock, and the time never changes. Hell is eternal.
It gets no better. There’s no relief in sight. Eternity passes again after a couple more and soon, there is light. Is this the saving grace that I was praying for? Is this the cure to my madness, the pain, the assassination of my assassin? No, it’s just the rising sun, reminding me that the pain goes on and on, like days go on and on. There is no relief, none in sight. It’s just a sick cycle of pain on top of more pain.
I roll myself out of the half-assed tuck that I managed to put myself in. On my knees again. It seems so familiar, even though it was so long ago that I was on my knees. My day “officially” begins because it is morning, but my assassin and I know better. My day started hours before. My day started yesterday, and that day never ended.
I sit myself down on the floor and focus on something calming, the nothingness of life where there is nothing to feel. I meditate the best I know how, by closing my eyes as shown to me in the old school kung fu movies that I’m so familiar with. What a load of shit they are. There is no meditation, there is no cutting of the pain.
I toughen up and be the man that I’m known to be, or the man that I tell myself I am, only to know that I’m just a teddy bear of a specimen. I strip my clothes out of foolishness, hoping this will magically ease the pain, but again, fools dream.
I step in the shower, focusing on the running water that bounces of my body. I rub myself as best my tired arms would allow. I slowly wake; well, at least more than I was from the tired listless night, and I am able to focus. I’ve managed to be able to deal with the pain. I’ve gotten use to my assassin.
I step out of the shower, a little more refreshed from when I stepped in. I pull on my boxers, my jeans the way that everyone does, one leg at a time while balancing with the other. Even in my tired state I’m able to dance the daily dance that everyone is familiar with. I’m not going to let this assassin get me down. Not today.
Finished, I managed to WALK, not crawl, but WALK to my bed and lay myself down some more. This day goes and goes. It goes and goes. A hour goes by and I look at the clock on to lied to by my skewed sense of time. It has only been five minutes.
KNOCK KNOCK
The door. Damn, curse, fuck, who can it be? Who knows that I’m here, dying a silent death? I know it is someone that can’t help me. No one can. With a one and a two, I managed to work myself up to my elbows. With another one and a two, I’m sitting up.
KNOCK KNOCK
Keep your pants on. Hold your horses. I’m coming. I’m coming.
With a heave ho, I’m up walking my zombie walk to the door, dragging my feet with each drag. But I manage to make it there. I open the door without even asking. There’s no point. She’s going to see me eventually and then there’s going to be drama like every other time and every other thing that she’s worried about.
“What took you so long?” “Are you okay?” “What happened?” “Did you faint?” “You look sick. You look tired!”
The questions and the accusations keep coming and coming. There’s no point getting a word in. I know better. I just turn on my dragging heel and zombie walk my ass back to the lying position I was before I was so rudely interrupted.
She marches in along with the troupe. They surround me, suffocating me with the questions and the accusations. All eyes were on me. Why can’t they just leave me alone? Why?
Do I need to go to the emergency room, do I need to see a doctor? I don’t know. I can’t think straight in this state and with all the noise and concern voices all around. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it will go away all on its own. I’m sure it will. It’ll go away. I could bare the pain now. It is like second nature to me now. It’s no big deal.
KNOCK KNOCK
Another knock. Who can it be? Who is it?
The smaller one of the troupe opens the door to reveal it is the one that I made plans with. My long lost brother.
He walks into the room and sees me in this state. He asks what is the matter. A barrage of answers from the troupe. I’m sure he picked out what it is that is wrong. I’m sure with the whole troupe there, it is hard not to get the answer.
He got his answer and a quick “you’ll right?”. A simple nod from me and that is all that is communicated. From then, he laughs. He laughs at me. Making fun of me and my dire state. So typical.
Since he’s here, my day officially begins, for real. There’s no hiding, there’s no resting. We have to go, and I muster the strength to get up and out of bed, out of the room.
No, I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’ve decided. I could wait. This will go away. It will most definitely go away. I believe that it will.
Our plans has gone down in the crapper today. Too bad it isn’t the thing that is filling up my flexible stomach that is going down the crapper. Why can’t it be that?
I’m where I need to be. I’m where I have to be. I decide to go and lay down, hopefully me being still will trick the assassin that I’m already dead and maybe it’ll leave me. Maybe if it does what it needs to do, it will leave me. Hopefully it does.
I lay and lay and lay. Eons upon eons pass until I can’t tell one eternity from another. Everything is just a jumbled mess of passing time. Everything looks the same in this cramped room…the same view of non movement. Everything is burned into my eyes. They look the same, even with my eyes closed.
I open my eyes, expecting to look worse than Rip Van Winkle after his short sleep. To my non-surprise, I am no different than when I first laid down, and no different from the night before. The only difference is the strength of the pain. Since my little non-sleeping hibernation, the assassin went to work on my stomach again. Stabbing and stabbing with no regard.
………………..
Mumblings of a Hermit 隐者 