The Tirade Letter

Posted on by meltingneurons
Image of a letter being written.

I wanted to write you a story all soaked in love and pretty things, but instead it’s going to be about rat scum, the blistering soul music of choking on personal shortcomings, and maybe a joke or two. Bad jokes at that, certainly nothing like comedians are doing these days with their hyper-intelligent breakdown of cultural idiosyncratic tendencies by way of reflection based wit.         

Will you laugh at my jokes about museum quality antiques going up in flames while a house full of puppies burns?

I’m not so sure your sense of humor—wish I could get a feel for that before writing the story, because you know, once the ink’s on the page it’s a bit too late for regrets. I prefer to live with an abject awareness and semi-permanent psychologically unsound box of my personal mental fabrication to insulate them out, regrets that is. I’ve heard of better ways I suppose, but who has the time or money for that?

Certainly if you have to confront some dilapidated and uncomfortable feelings at some point that may smack of inadequacy, do it in stand up fashion and just face the music. Life can be good, it can be shit, and a myriad of shit colored varieties mixed in between. Doesn’t have to dictate the characters we all play on the larger stage, we can so eloquently write our own flaws.

Otherwise it would be like taking diction from some phone line person babbling away while they get busy scuttling their own sense of disgust by third-party. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that kind of ethical whore who is susceptible to that kind of mind game. Willing to uproot and gag down on the more successful perspective because they had the audacious idea of getting to it first so they could be in better position for the final thrust? 

Emotional purification through mindfuckery and a psychological blow job seems far too easy a road out if you ask me.

Like I said, I don’t know your sense of humor, so I’m not sure whether I should pull back a bit on the off color commentary for your sake. Then again, I don’t know your personality either and maybe you’re one of those people that appreciates a no-holds barred rigmarole tirade of non-penitent truths delivered in the voice of the speaker who says it how it is instead of how they want it to be.

Or you aren’t and you’re one of those deceitful little rat fucks that huddles behind false smiles and bravado attitude that refuses to be honest even with yourself and is liable to turn tail and betray the trust of others faster than the lab tech can reload your daily selection of cheddar, medium not sharp.

I really hope that’s not the case though, and if there’s any sense to this fantastical story and scheme that I’ve been told about the genetic structure and predisposition of whatchamahoosit chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA, then I’m fairly certain you aren’t like that.

Blood fairy constitution by virtue of dad’s semi-descended Oingo Boingo soundtrack and mom’s canal of misjudgment.

Fuck it, here goes nothing.

Dear…….

Nude Dancing and a Picnic

Posted on by meltingneurons

-in response to “Mandy Shupe” from Flash Fiction.

I feel rather than see the presence of another one, no two humans as they enter my shaded glen of woodworked perfection. One of them is liquored to the gills and the smell of morning whisky stains against my paneling not unlike the lacquer of years past when first I was blessed in methanol fumes. It is the bigger of the two, the other is waif-like and barely disturbs the air around her in the passing. The smaller flits across the greenery pooled around me as though she were afraid that lighting too long in any one spot would leave an indelible and unforgivable impression.

I have heard the clangs of bells all morning, their reverberations, their metallic dance of proud beasts struck with reverence. It must be a Sunday and soon all will be making their way to my embrace to share the welcome capturing of wood on ass and food in gut. Before the end of today I will grow mountains of items hot and cold to be plucked at by the scuttling people who traipse around my body in their semi-drunken wobble of tipsy delight, a special salsa to a beat that only they can hear.

Now, now it is too early for people to be joining me and I wonder at the carefree interlopers to my beachside glen….thunk.

Melted and reformed glass slams down on me, fizzy bubbles escape to run down the side and douse my groin in a champagne vignette of merriment.

The small one places a foot on my leg and presses itself up, and up again so that their feet stand stably on my strapped belly. Firm and confident, they still feel loose and comfortable, butterfly toes and bumblebee bellies hold more weight.

A shuffle above and some shimmying results in linen dropping loose and falling down across my arms, a double whump as harder hoof pieces trip off a shoulder to settle thump thump into the grass pond. I can sense the delight mounting as several more pieces come unraveled from around the tiny beast zip, zoots, zot and finish raining down around us.

Atop my chest now the hooves begin to tap out a rhythmic pattern, like the wasps who dance to each other instead of speaking. The toes slide, tap…tap, slide…slide tap and the body begins to whirlwind around itself faster compelled by something far beyond my understanding.

 The human beast wears nothing but their skin. Just skin and sunlight and the dancing partner of shadowed leaves racing to keep the pace. Skin changes colors and arrangement, from light pink at the points of her hillside chest to cream spotted with kisses from the sun in freckled patterns haloed in healthy Earth toned brown silhouetted by the great azure ocean above.

I am enthralled. It does not hurt, I have never been a dancefloor before now. Though once a man did tie a throat rope up to the thicker of branches overhead and do a soundless jig in mid-air, his shadowy feet casting wildly about until they moved no more.

Today I am something new.

The champagne runs between fingers and the larger beast laughs, guffaws, others are stopping to stare. I don’t mind them. They can’t yet see but come next Sunday there will be new secrets painted across me, applied one freedom filled dirty footstep at a time.