Flash Fiction Story for Valentine's Day

Nina wanted you to believe that it was merely hormones. That's why she reacted so violently. It was just her time of the month. It wasn’t. Nina wanted you to believe that she didn’t already know about the pen. She did.

She already knew when you first met in the break room, which always smelled of burnt coffee. She “accidently” bumped into you, splashing scalding coffee on your favorite Spiderman tie. This led you to apologize with that Irish guilt of yours, even though it wasn’t your fault.

Nina said, “Well, now you’ll have to take me out to Starbucks,” which would have been cute in her Oklahoma accent if she hadn’t been so congested due to seasonal allergies.

“Sure,” you said because you have never said no to anyone.

Nina wanted to believe that you fell madly in love with her at that moment like you said you did two months later, but she just couldn’t. Falling in love was inconsistent with her life so far.

Nina found your Myspace page almost a whole year before you met, back when you were still working in medical records and she was a part-time medical assistant. She knew then.

You had fallen on one knee in a spastic moment of adoration in her favorite, used bookstore. You were asking her to be you one and only. You didn’t have a ring so you put a twist-tie around her finger.

Nina said yes because she really didn’t think there would be anyone else since there had never been before. Her life was straight-forward like a shopping list. Plus she was almost sure that she loved you.

You had asked Nina to move in and she started doing your laundry right away. She liked to fold your warm briefs into triangles. She bought you colored and striped underwear. She hated tighty-whiteys.

That was how she found the pen, with its tell-tale inscription. To Ben, with Love. From Kari. You had forgotten to take it out of your pocket. It was a dull silver and black. She picked it up gently as if it might burn her fingers. Nina held onto it for two weeks while you tore through the entire apartment, your stomach caught in whirling circles. You lost your appetite. You couldn’t imagine where you had misplaced it, but didn’t mention it to Nina. You didn’t know that she already knew.

Finally, Nina confessed but with a tone that made you feel like the guilty party. “Look what I found,” she said accusingly. And, immediately after, “when were you going to tell me?” As if you had hidden it from her on purpose, proving that you were a liar like all the others.

“It’s nothing,” you retorted, reaching out for it. Nina tightened her grip. “I’ve just had it forever. It’s like a lucky charm.”

Nina almost felt bad but then she remembered. “Really?” Nina asked because she already knew who Kari was. “It doesn’t mean anything? Then you won’t mind if I replace it with a nicer one?”
Then she threw the curve ball before you had a chance to respond: “Who gave it to you?”

You abruptly opened the refrigerator. “What do you want for dinner?” Nina knew all about this avoidance trick. She had used it before. Nina just wanted you to admit it out loud. This monster that she had known about for over a year. She just wanted it said so it wasn’t a secret anymore.

“Please,” she pleaded.

“Don’t you trust me?” you asked. Nina thought it was such a cliché that she didn’t want to answer. But that wasn’t the only reason.

“I want you to get rid of it,” she finally admitted.

“No.” You snatched your corduroy jacket off the hook. “I need to get some air.” Nina could see that you were shaking. She wished she could make herself very small and crawl inside you and see what was really going on.

As soon as the door shut, Nina threw the pen on the hardwood floor that was impossible to keep clean. When it broke she started breathing again.

Nina knew that you were running along Lake Michigan. That’s what you always did when she wanted to talk about you. About your past.

Nina fixed the pen and told you it was just her hormones. She went crazy at that time of the month. She didn't bring it up again. It's two years later and she still pulls out the hidden marriage certificate with the names: Ben Holden and Kari Inson. She traces the names with her finger. She wonders if you even know that it’s missing from your desk drawer.

Literary Updates for January 2010

Dear friends,

The first month of the new decade has been exhilarating. I decided to try something different on my Open Salon blog. All of the posts during the month of January had something to do with the theme of “The Body.”

If you want to catch up on the posts, here’s a list:

1/5 This Is My Body
1/8 “Cat” (A Flash Fiction Story)
1/12 Exploring the Body (A Poem)
1/15 Misbehaving Body
1/19 Dear Body (A Brief Letter)
1/21 Body Language: Inside the Mind of a Playwright
(A Guest Blog by Julie Ann Seals)
1/25 Oo La La: Sexual Pleasure and Body Image
(A Guest Blog by Laura Anne Stuart)
1/26 A Portrait of the Body as a Young Woman (Part of a Joint Blog Post)

Thank you for reading and responding to these intimate musings. I truly believe that writing is communication. The circle isn’t complete if no one is reading. So thank you very much. I wanted to especially thank my guest bloggers for giving of their time and experience. This has been a wonderful collaboration.


Peace.
~Gwen

P.S. I now have an author page on amazon.com and you can check it out here.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

- Rumi

Body Language: Inside the Mind of a Playwright

Julie Ann Seals is my guest blogger today and she is one of the enchanting people that I befriended at Oral Roberts University. I think we became friends because my roommate was a friend of hers and we had an apartment off campus with a washer and dryer. I would come home from work on Saturdays to this blue-eyed nymph doing her weekly laundry in my home. We soon bonded over our adoration of Kurt Vonnegut and a shared weakness for worn-out jeans.

Julie is a playwright and actress (although she won’t call herself an actress) at the Nightingale Theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s one of the best local theaters that I’ve ever been to. When a place is hidden in the shadows of extreme religiosity, sometimes it breaks forth and shines like a diamond. I watched my first lesbian love story, complete with partial nudity, at this theater.

I asked Julie to write something the body and the art of acting.




Body language is the often subconscious enhancement or explanation of our verbal communication. Beyond facial expression and vocal intonation, the body gives social cues regarding the underlying intent and emotion of individuals. Often, along with the subconscious expression of the communicator, there is a subconscious interpretation by the receiver. So what exactly is going on when an actor--whose words and sometimes actions are dictated by another entity--is onstage attempting to convey an imaginary character to a theater full of strangers? How much of the subconscious is moved into the conscious? How self-aware can a gesture be before the audience recognizes the forgery?

If the answer to those questions, particularly the second one, were cut and dry, I imagine we could elevate the likes of William Shatner and David Caruso above pop culture self-parodies: every smoldering removal of sunglasses beckoning an Oscar nod. Alas, there are as many schools of thought on this as there are actors (and directors...and writers...and so on). Furthermore, not all characters require the same physicality, nor do all plays call for the same level of naturalism or theatricality. So, there is some disparity even within the individuals who address this issue.

Personally, when I am onstage (at an all-volunteer community theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so you know you can trust my expertise), about the only thing I'm thinking is, "Don't look like a jackass. Please, don't look like a jackass." My greatest acting weakness is my physicality. I know how to sound good. I'm excellent at memorizing lines. If a role requires me to be lying in bed paralyzed, I'm golden. I'm just too self-conscious to express myself very well with my body.

Anyone who has seen me in a show may hesitate to call me self-conscious, considering that many of my roles have required minimal clothing. (Remember: it's community theater. In Oklahoma. We gotta do something to keep its doors open.) I'm not embarrassed by what my body looks like; I'm just limited in what I can do with it. It does not matter if the director leaves me to my own devices or if the piece is highly choreographed: I struggle if it requires gross motor skills. The audience can tell I'm acting (which is great when we do Vaudeville), whether I'm operating consciously or subconsciously.

However, I am not really an actor. I'm actually a playwright who performs sometimes because I've got the sweet ass and the moxy to give it a shot. Of the real actors I work with (I do not consider a humble venue to be a limiting factor for talent), I have noticed that they do not all approach material in the same way, nor do they all share the same strengths. One thing that always impresses me with them is that they are capable of fully committing to whatever action they take, whether they have consciously chosen it or the theater gods have bestowed it upon their worthy forms.

I mostly make my way in the theater as a disembodied voice in my actors' heads, and I leave it to them to make everything look right (with, perhaps, some gentle nudges). I provide them with the sounds, and they in turn grace me with the action. Of the talented, working actors I know, many operate within a fairly narrow physical vocabulary. Rarely are they asked to stretch beyond their comforts zones, and I'm not suggesting they should be if the result is not stage-worthy. At my home theater, the Nightingale, we've learned and are still learning how best to suit our material to the strengths and limitations of our ragtag players. Often the limitations of a specific actor become the very quality we exploit in writing and onstage, as if we're collectively struggling with and celebrating the eccentricities of our individual natures. Because we do not have the luxury to rely solely on our strengths, we find a use for the whole turkey. The bar is low, the house is half empty, and we have each other to lean on and learn from. As we continue this process, self-correcting as best we can, we find that we are able to dive ever deeper into the language of our craft and of our own bodies, eventually awaking and then shaping the voice within, the one residing in our muscles and our minds, immeasurable and unknowable even to ourselves, no more real than the stories we serve, but true and undeniable in the mind of the audience. Bravo, Caruso...Bravo.

Happy Holidays!

A few years ago, David and I created our own set of holiday cards featuring a penguin couple.








However you're celebrating this year, have fun and be safe!

Tis the season to be merry!

Wishing you and yours a magical holiday season and a glorious new year!


~Gwen, David, & Jasper