Diary of a Heretic

 Welcome to my online fiction. You've arrived as I'm rewriting a serialized work-in-progress, James Bond and the Girls of Woodstock. Links to those posts start in the sidebar on the right; just scroll down a  bit. Be prepared for more conflict; more epiphanies—and moral intrigue like never before. Look halfway down the sidebar for links to occasional Flash Fictions (stories in fewer than 500 words). Thanks and leave a comment, relevant or not! Click here for my feed.

Fletcher Rising

 

 He drank the minimum to maintain. At first, of course, maintaining at the theatre where he and Dickie had directed “Little Shop of Horrors” was nearly impossible. By the time the musicians had shown up, Dickie had contracted his first pneumonia.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

But two weeks ago, when Brooke gave him headphones, the music of Fletcher’s youth had turned him into a righteous punk. He still drank but to little effect.

In the meantime, while Brooke tried to revive the embalmed American tragedy, Fletcher woke to find the imaginary playhouse where he and Dickie traded lines from Noel Coward plays was gone—the echoing mausoleum had become a heap of cinders.

Sweeping up the psychic mess, he staggered. A jolt shot through a quarter century of nonexistence. For Dickie had said repeatedly—not his last words, but nearly, “Promise me, you won’t live in the past.”

How had Fletcher forgotten that? Sorrow forced him into oblivion and martinis kept him there.

Then as Friday night moved far into Saturday, Fletcher’s anxiety could not be calmed by gin or anything like it. His mind demanded clarity, because if he were reasonable, Brooke was fine.

Yes, yes, and yet—he paced and smoked, and found that slurping the usual only magnified his distress. The fog of alcohol dissipated his faith that the girl would incapacitate anyone in her path—one kick even without those stiletto heels.

At one a.m., he rang Sung in London. Because Sung, who hadn’t seen anything remarkable about Brooke at first, considered her kindness to his cousin Rhee the purest act of generosity in western civilization. What American girl gives up an hour every day to follow a maladjusted monk’s instructions issued through a Plexiglas wall?

After six rings—a message to leave a message. “Nothing urgent, Sung. Just hello.”

Sung and Bond were no doubt training already…What the hell had Bond said to Brooke Thursday evening?

All day Friday, she was restless and irritable. And after she left, Fletcher hurried upstairs where her laptop remained open to Ms. Kyle’s profile. Brooke must have some  kind of proof of an involvement between her boyfriend and the insipid twit. Otherwise, who could fathom Bond’s interest in such a silly, gawky woman?

Had Fletcher imagined Brooke’s lawless lover was capable of betraying her, he would have forbidden phone calls. Just see if he allowed another!

Although, either way he wanted Brooke to learn that so-called sexual fidelity was among society’s worst perverse fallacies. Most men occasionally behaved like dogs. For all he knew, women did too.

It had been Fletcher’s fondest fantasy that were she a seventeen-year-old he, the cocky imp would ride Manhattan like a merry-go-round—and then race home to Fletcher, eager to bestow upon him one delectation after another.

Tonight, however, he realized how wrong, how thoroughly untenable, his musings had been. The child he had known since her infancy, stripped down and stepped up to where anyone on earth would welcome her without question or documentation, now embodied an “eternal feminine.” One only a gay man could cherish, because living archetypes deserved devotion, not lust.

At three a.m., he fell briefly asleep before a plaintive song sounded from his mobile. He had pushed the wrong button. Last week Bond had sent Fletcher an MP3 meant for Brooke. Her errant lover’s rich, warm tenor bent a lamenting tune, as he played three guitar chords (not well).

There Is Lonely

A bit late, Bond, sorry.

 Fletcher turned on the light and pushed call-waiting, hoping to hear Brooke rushing; she was on her way.

But it was her father. “Where-zzz-are-ya?”

“Where are you, Jimmy?”

(About to pass out in Fletcher’s Woodstock driveway.) “Leave immediately or I’m sending the police!”

“Didcha tell Connie ’bout us or was it the she-devillin’ bitch?”

“Connie’s always known; I verified it.” Jimmy was fading but Fletcher yelled at him: He’d spend the money to help Jimmy—providing he went directly into rehab. The spoiled priest grunted and coughed. Connie had already told him that. Fletcher would accompany them if he wished. “Fuck off, ya whorin’ sodomite.”

Fletcher hung up. All he cared about was Brooke. And after he fretted and fussed and promised the heavens one thing after another, she was still missing by rehearsal time Saturday. Waiting too long, he had no choice but to don his Kangol and hope he could imitate Dickie’s graceful wit.

On stage, the mother in “Pious Lies,” whom Fletcher admired, hastened to explain she was completely off-book, but that she and Brooke opted to keep the words in hand until every phrase indicated she had known her husband’s secret all along. (“What wife doesn’t?” she and Brooke had agreed.)

Fletcher nodded. “You’re doing that so naturally, Annie, one forgets the challenge.”

As for the men whose vocal work remained comical, he suggested they focus elsewhere for now. Perfection was impossible while striving for it.

 Pleased with himself in the taxi home, he paused at the front door. Please let Brooke have returned, safe and happy. But no. He tried Sung again, no answer. And Bond? Wait until that criminal cur rang again—just wait!

Another sleepless night. Fletcher watched Douglas Sirk movies, saving those starring Rock Hudson until daylight. The doorbell rang at noon and Fletcher ran downstairs and swooped the nearly naked girl into the air. Putting her down, he turned away—God knows what showed on his face. Brooke had lost her keys. She sank onto the floor weeping. He lifted her to the couch and she wept through three wash clothes before noticing he was frantic she might be hurt.  

 “Just disgraced. I smoked super-weed with a guy I knew in high school. He swore it wasn’t dusted but afterwards I slept more than twenty-four hours.”

 

 

 

(to be continued)

One Night Stand

 

The first time Brooke stepped from a taxi wearing a strapless mini-dress and towering high heels, the doorman had hurried over and issued her inside while a throng of equally underdressed young women stood shivering behind a velvet rope.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

Last week she had tried a nightclub where one wall was a live-TV screen. The music pounded inside her and Brooke’s whole body followed. Watching herself in high-def had inspired her to imitate dances she’d seen in videos. The mix ended and—whadda ya know? Her first lover, the senior from Boiceville, bobbed in her face.

Pivoting, Brooke had run away with no intention of returning. But, now of course, her intention had changed.

Only nine o’clock and people crowded the bar. Brooke stood in a corner and watched her loutish ex-lover guzzling beer. Hard to believe—but seven months ago, still in high school, she was still having sex with that jerk-off.

How infuriated Tara had been! When he insulted Brooke, Tara had called him out. Yet despite Brooke not even liking him, she had hopped into his car for silent sex all through May and part of June.

Not April, though: During spring break, he invited her to watch “Palimony” (as had Matthew once but didn’t—stop thinking about him!) The movie opened and the senior had dissed handsome Mr. King. Without a word, Brooke had walked thirteen miles home.

Then six weeks before graduation, the dumbass, who had never acknowledged her and hadn’t broken up with Miriam—Brooke asked her friends—pleaded with her in public. “Please, Brooke, I might never see you again.” His friends gathered behind him calling, “Please, Brooke, please.”

She hadn’t had sex with Matthew yet, just this idiot, and sorry, world, Brooke loved sex. Not Barbie dolls, not hair-bows, or cupcakes; not the frilly, silly nonsense of an idyllic girlhood (as defined by fathers, those ultimate girlhood-experts!) Brooke loved reckless abandon and multiple orgasms—that was her girlhood.

“Brooke! Hey, Brooke!” The senior from Boiceville (now a freshman at Pace) stumbled over. “You look incredible, Brooke. You’re so beautiful but—everybody says that.”

“No, most people say something else.”

“Not me, Brooke. I’ve always said you were beautiful.”

She let that go. They danced to a breakneck  mix until he screamed at her, “I gotta sit down.” And—this was a first—“I wanna talk to you.” He took her to Starbuck’s, slurring nonstop compliments.

“In school, people were scared of you, Brooke. You were, like, supernatural.”

“Were you scared?”

“Kind of, Brooke.”

“I’m done with high school,” she said. “I finished early.”

“I finished a year late. But my dad expects…You look as unreal as ever, Brooke.” (Sure, he was drunk, but for someone who had never said her name, now he couldn’t say it enough.)

“If I dress like this, nobody cards me.”

“Really, Brooke? I gotta show three IDs.”

She said, “You look grown up to me,” when really he looked fat. And, not for the first or twentieth time that night, she worried about getting through this. “Remember smoking pot in your car?”

“I’ve got the best ganga, Brooke, at my place downtown.”

The next morning, wearing his Van Halen T-shirt, her tiny dress draped on a chair, she wept into her hands. He tried to hold her but she pushed him away. He still said, “Don’t cry, Brooke. I care about you. I always have.”

“So you say, but I’ve gotta go.”

“Just a second.” He left the room.

She was buttoning her coat when he returned with a pipe packed tight. “Try this; it’s my roommate’s.”

She took the tiniest hit and asked, “What’s in it?”

“Nothing, Brooke. It’s optimum weed.”

She didn’t believe it. He had been lifting the pipe to his mouth but handed it back to her. “Try it again; you’ll see.”

Definitely laced, she thought; and after a few minutes, she fell back on his bed without waking up until Sunday.

(click here for the next episode)

Bond Girls

 On Friday, Fletcher asked Brooke to accompany him on his cigarette break. He removed his headphones and the tinny refrain leaked out, “You really got me girl. You got me so I can’t sleep at night…” Fletcher taunting her for keeping Matthew sleepless? Or a coincidence? She didn’t care.

And she wished she didn’t care that Matthew was fucking the new Bond girl. But she did care. Last night his voice on the phone sounded all wrong when he told her three times that she was his only lover—so wrong that what Brooke heard was the opposite.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

“Five minutes everyone,” Fletcher said, wrapping Dickie’s old aviator scarf around his neck. He set his Kangol on his head and held open the theater door. The stunted trees on 43rd Street shifted in the leaden air. Taking her arm, Fletcher said, “My dear, you’re uncanny at gathering the bits people drop as they try to hide something. But even in a play, the characters—and the audience—occasionally need an insignificant breath.”

“How do you know when you’re skulking around, plugged into your golden-olden hits cranked up full blast?”

He blew smoke rings in a series, one inside the other. “Mood swings, Brooke?”

“Lucky you and your testosterone.”

“Humph.” He stubbed out his Dunhill and—this always surprised her—bent down to pocket it. Fletcher never littered.

“Allow me,” Brooke said, but he wouldn’t think of it.

Back in rehearsal, she refrained from mentioning the characters’ speech patterns. But twice, the son in “Pious Lies” asked if he was getting the shaky bravado Brooke wanted. “It’s becoming uniquely yours.” If Brooke weren’t careful, she’d praise him as immoderately as she had Sasha, Matthew’s ex. You’re an original!

What an idiot she’d been. Sasha’s surprised agreement was probably her way of teasing Brooke. For a second she wondered again if she could have misinterpreted Matthew’s emphatic lie: You are my only lover. Yeah, right. He was fucking a Bond girl. And thanks to “the girl’s” aloofness, Matthew in England slept without dreaming. In retaliation, Brooke should sleep forever. Except the minute she didn’t exist, Matthew would have no reason on earth to stop fucking Bond girls. Girls so refined that his prowess, which flooded silly Brooke with ungodly pleasure, scarcely fluttered their eyelashes. In her own Matthew’s long, strong arms, Bond girls lay silent—sex without babble.

That evening in her bedroom, she searched IMDb and found twenty-six-year-old Kayla Ashton making her debut in “Readiness Is All” as Ms. Kyle, M’s assistant. Kyle was a pretty, round-face girl who boasted an extensive Barbie doll collection.

Barbie dolls? Really?

All right. If Matthew couldn’t resist Kyle that was his problem, not Brooke’s. Betcha his sexual attentions made those damn dolls scream and not the implacable girl who collected them.

Shit. Brooke hated feeling jealous. It was worse than being in love, which now felt exactly as billed—hopeless. Time to adjust her expectations and not succumb ever again to pettiness. Also, not lie and pretend she couldn’t be fucking happier for the plastic bride and groom topping Barbie’s wedding cake.

“God, Fletcher!” She shrieked and jumped. Without a cigarette or martini, he had been peering over her shoulder. “Nobody comes into my bedroom uninvited, not even Tara.”

“Had your door been closed, dear, I would have knocked. Last night you skipped your yoga class. And ordinarily by now, that stunt driver is teaching you to drive ninety miles per hour through traffic jams. I feared you had taken ill.”

“Fletcher, go get drunk and stop worrying about me.”

“Ah,” he tapped the screen, “are we investigating the new Bond girl? Tepid-looking thing.”

“But so polished, so detached. You better believe her daddy never smacks her big, round smiley-face.”

“You are so young, Brooke, you may not realize that the pose comes from a lackluster mentality.”

“Excuse me, Fletcher. My favorite DJ’s playing in Chelsea.”

“At your favorite club? That’s not Chelsea, Brooke. It’s the meatpacking district.”

No comment.

In the well-lit spacious bathroom, she applied dramatic eye makeup while Fletcher silently wondered why. Kyle was the daughter of an ignorant woman he had always disliked.

“Your nightclub, wherever it may be, doesn’t close before dawn.”

With an ironic smile, she straightened an abbreviated garment displaying her ideal feminine form to surreal advantage. Stepping into very high heels, she said, “If I don’t dress like this, they might card me.”

“I doubt that, child. You’re equally stunning with or without goose bumps. I was once a denizen at the same dance clubs. Therefore I know: even if you’re only dancing with the crowd, that crowd is promiscuous.”

“What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll get AIDS?”

Without looking at her, he stood and exited as quietly as he’d entered.

Shit and more shit! Not only was Brooke abominably excitable, she was vicious. Nimble in the highest heels, though, she ran downstairs where he was mixing a martini.

“I’m sorry, Sir Fletcher. What I said was mean and—”

“Apology accepted, beloved girl. It’s grotesque how sensitive I am. Dickie died years before you were born; in fact, well before even your boyfriend Mr. Bond was born.”

(click here for the next episode)

Distant Undercurrent

When their salads arrived, Kyle said, “I assume you know who my parents are.”

Matthew ate a cherry tomato. “The truth is I don’t.”

“My father,” Kyle said, “is a BBC producer and my mother is twice removed from Sir Elton John.”

Matthew heightened his James Bond accent. “Does that make you thrice removed, Kyle? Because I’ve met Sir Elton and see no resemblance.”

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

“We’re distantly related.” She sipped her second glass of wine.

Matthew grinned but Kyle continued determined and implacable with no hint of fun.  A waiter brought baked Norwegian salmon with sautéed greens and small potatoes.

“If you have sex with me tonight,” Kyle said, “I’ll be grateful.”

He glanced at her sidelong. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those hopeless romantics.”

“No, I’m not.”

Impatient enough to risk meanness, Matthew said,  “You must leave directly after we finish.” Here he expected her to confess that someone had dared her. But she said, “Excellent,” and finished her pineapple sherbet while he signed the bill.

Matthew forgot about her the minute she thanked him and closed his door behind her.

Available within running distance was a swimming pool cleaned with ultra-violet light, not chlorine. He swam underwater listening to Brooke call his name. Then he slept, woke, and waited forever. Close to midnight, Sung finally handed him a new mobile. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll begin leading with your heart.”

In her third-storey, temporary bedroom on 110th Street, Brooke answered breathlessly. “Hi—hello!”

“Brooke—” his throat caught.

“Matthew! The beautiful clothes you bought me help when I’m doing rehearsals. Except today I kept thinking about you and shivering. So I’ve filled the bathtub with hot water.”

From deep in his chest, he said her name again.

And without him asking, Brooke described unbuttoning the red cashmere jacket he hadn’t seen her wear yet, the short kilt, black tights, tall boots, white blouse…

From a place not unlike the one they shared when making love, he murmured at first. But as he wrapped a fantasy tightly around them, his voice grew louder and slower and then thick and sweet. Until from faraway, a voice unleashed his name. And Brooke thought, Oh no, am I screaming?

He was on his knees. Please, Brooke, let me…

Yes—do that. She was dying for him and really screaming. She rushed like water from the highest waterfall and was rushing still when Matthew said, Christ and God and Jesus Fuck, Brooke, I Love You.

From across the Atlantic Ocean, they trembled and sighed as if gazing into each other’s eyes and then slipped together inside a hushed, hypnotic state. Matthew said he didn’t have the words to say what he wanted her to know. He needed to talk to her again and asked if she’d please sleep in his bed when she got home to Woodstock. “Monday night I’ll call at midnight, your time. Nobody will know but us.”

“All right.”

“You won’t feel sad because we’ll be on the phone.”

“No.” She wouldn’t feel lonely in his tower. And yes, when he called she’d be naked. Yes, she’d stand under the skylight. She’d jump in the silvery cast of the moon and stars.

“In four weeks I’ll be there for Christmas. And if between now and then you’ll sleep there, I’ll call home on Monday nights using a new phone every time.”

He told her about the soccer video where her legs spun in the air. And, don’t say anything, but did she know that whenever she was at the games, rooting for Dex, Connie focused on her? “I watch those videos of you, Brooke, over and over.”

She began to say Dex was playing in a championship game next week. But instead, she asked, “Is it because I scream? Is that why you say I’m your most excitable lover?”

“Brooke, you’re my only lover.”

“Oh.” She waited for the sonic waves to recede but a terrible undercurrent ran counter to all the times he had said, “I have always loved you, Brooke.” That was a metaphor. And this—she said nothing, because maybe she was not his only lover.

“Brooke, you are my only lover. If I ever implied a comparison, I was wrong. There’s no comparison. You are my only lover.”

But by the next morning his claim resounded. You are my only lover echoed relentlessly, meaning—he must be lying. Except he couldn’t be. He must be. He was.

(click here)