one from the vault
N. used to tackle me into the wood chips after school and make me walk her home. One minute I was Dhalsim hurling inflated rubber fireballs at my friends, and the next my nose was tickling a stale footprint, ninety pounds of giggling girl on my back. My buddies asked no explanation for the strange phenomenon that led me away by hand, and I never had one to offer. That flying tackle would launch me out of my playground coliseum entirely, into an arena where punching the hardest didn't make you the best, and make-believe was a whole new kind of game.
Things went on their eleven-year old way. In the mornings I snuck in five more minutes, at lunch we traded X-Men cards, and after school N. and I would find new ways to touch each other without, well, touching each other. In the mornings I would nab my sister's stainless-steel snake ring, which N. wore proudly until P. got off work. Her mother rented an apartment up the hill, so we had four days a week to play until the sun went down. She spent the other three days with her father, whom I never saw, on the east side of town.
She was a pretty, good teacher. I learned from N. that losing at tag could mean far more than winning, when her hand on my elbow held me fast. She would hide where she was sure to be found and lose every one of the wrestling matches she started, resting only when I had her pinned and panting underneath me. I should have suspected something when she decided one day to win. We were in the guest bedroom arguing over which was the more useful superpower: Wolverine's titanium-alloy claws, or Zack Morris' "time-outs." I pointed out that Wolvie's claws were virtually indestructible, to which N. replied that Zack was cute and boxed me in the ear. The debate dissolved quickly into a flurry of left hooks and half-nelsons. Three short minutes later I was on my back and she was on top of me, pinning my legs with her shins and my arms with her knees. She leaned down close and whispered in a voice that reeked of daytime soap:
"Fuck me, Ryan. Fuck me now."
And then she kissed me. With her tongue. That was the day I learned that girls mature faster than boys. I waited until she was done, then squeaked that I should prolly be getting off the bed now, that it was almost dinner-time, and do you hear the phone ringing? N. climbed off and I slid away to the blacktop kickball kingdom I'd always known. My friends had no idea. N. and I fell apart after that; our passing brushes had lost their forbidden charm. Anyway, we most likely wouldn't have done it, if even we could have done it, and with that out of the way there were no more surprises. We went separate ways for middle school the next year, and it was over. The last I heard of N. she was coaching cheerleaders in Minneapolis.
that dog. - minneapolis
(right-click and press "save target as" to download)
click here to buy it from Amazon
Things went on their eleven-year old way. In the mornings I snuck in five more minutes, at lunch we traded X-Men cards, and after school N. and I would find new ways to touch each other without, well, touching each other. In the mornings I would nab my sister's stainless-steel snake ring, which N. wore proudly until P. got off work. Her mother rented an apartment up the hill, so we had four days a week to play until the sun went down. She spent the other three days with her father, whom I never saw, on the east side of town.
She was a pretty, good teacher. I learned from N. that losing at tag could mean far more than winning, when her hand on my elbow held me fast. She would hide where she was sure to be found and lose every one of the wrestling matches she started, resting only when I had her pinned and panting underneath me. I should have suspected something when she decided one day to win. We were in the guest bedroom arguing over which was the more useful superpower: Wolverine's titanium-alloy claws, or Zack Morris' "time-outs." I pointed out that Wolvie's claws were virtually indestructible, to which N. replied that Zack was cute and boxed me in the ear. The debate dissolved quickly into a flurry of left hooks and half-nelsons. Three short minutes later I was on my back and she was on top of me, pinning my legs with her shins and my arms with her knees. She leaned down close and whispered in a voice that reeked of daytime soap:
"Fuck me, Ryan. Fuck me now."
And then she kissed me. With her tongue. That was the day I learned that girls mature faster than boys. I waited until she was done, then squeaked that I should prolly be getting off the bed now, that it was almost dinner-time, and do you hear the phone ringing? N. climbed off and I slid away to the blacktop kickball kingdom I'd always known. My friends had no idea. N. and I fell apart after that; our passing brushes had lost their forbidden charm. Anyway, we most likely wouldn't have done it, if even we could have done it, and with that out of the way there were no more surprises. We went separate ways for middle school the next year, and it was over. The last I heard of N. she was coaching cheerleaders in Minneapolis.
that dog. - minneapolis
(right-click and press "save target as" to download)
click here to buy it from Amazon
This entry was posted
on 9.19.2005 at 7:36 PM.
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4:05 PMjesus christ there's a god-AWFUL sentence in there that i forgot to edit out. done. any of you creative writers out there, feel free to post critiques and whatnot. not having a writing group, this is my only way of doing that anymore. and i sure as hell can't see the problems myself.
shit, anybody wanna start a writing group?
-ry
2:25 PM
hey man, it's nice to see other umw kids doing mp3 blogs, good old h: drive...
2:52 PM
hey, what's up man? do i know you? you go to MWC?
p.s. my CSS is still all fucked so you havta sign yr comments...otherwise only I can see who posted them.
7:32 PM
yeah i go to mary washington, my name's peter riedel, i think i have met you once or twice
7:34 PM
peter riedel. tell me you aren't mike from richmond's little brother. i have to eat dinner now.
ryan
10:22 PM
ha ha nope
11:05 PM
Hi Ryan,
Is the girl you wrote about, Nicole, is she a volleyball all star and worked in the stanford housing department recently? Does palo alto sound familiar?
Jessica
12:21 AM
hey jessica. this a piece of fiction that i wrote years ago, that sprang from a creative fiction exercise in my undergrad. i used that name b/c i used to have a childhood friend named that. i've removed the name now.
thanks for your comment. i'd totally forgotten about this blog until i saw it. i wrote all this way back when, before i knew anyone would ever read my stuff.
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