| Author | Message | ||
     Kenneth White Rating: N/A |
coward I was a clueless high school senior pressing my Prufrock spine against a barbeque-scented chair and concentrating on every short skirt or pair of tight jeans wiggling past me through nicotine clouds in a nocturnal lounge. My Casanova buddies were doing the Electric Slide with tipsy ghetto queens, eventually luring them into slow drags and flippantly promising an exciting one-way Voyage to Atlantis. I was neither a lover nor a fighter but merely a watcher, which can sometimes be the worst among those categories. Some people claim that crazy things occur after midnight, but we were already bewitched since 10 p.m. Three hours later made hardly any difference. I was worrying about how my mom was going to swoop down on me with a leather-belt vengeance for ignoring my curfew again. I stepped outside to the pay phone, rehearsing believable excuses, when I heard intoxicated tones stirring a few feet away from me. I turned around just in time to watch a torn woman yelling at her belching boyfriend who was spitting up slurred insults. My seared conscience whispered, "This is none of my business," as I crept towards the front door like an intimidated Levite passing on the other side of a wounded traveler. He suddenly barked, "Shut up," reduced her to the status of a female mongrel and laid the thunderclap of his trembling hand against her tear-stained cheek. A part of me wanted to look both ways like Moses and bury this wannabe Ike Turner in the Southeast Texas sand while another part of me knew that I could not shake off the impact of bullets torpedoing from a possibly concealed 9mm. Looking back on this adolescent episode, I wonder who was the bigger coward: either the boyfriend drunk with grapes of wrath or me for tiptoeing back into festive shadows silhouetting mirages of wall-to-wall grins? | ||
| Chris Hayden Rating: N/A |
Some colorful images here, Kenneth. | ||
| Greeneyedrican First Time Poster Username: Greeneyedrican Post Number: 1 Registered: 09-2004 Rating: N/A |
I was worrying about how my mom was going to swoop down on me with a leather-belt vengeance I dig your writing style...and this part had me laughing....so relatable |
