How to Fix Things Up

[Steven Hunley]

How to Fix Things Up

by

Steven Hunley

Darling,

After having it out with you this last time we decided to split. It was the Armegedon of our relationship. But I’m having a hard time of it now.

I see your pictures all over the internet. Facebook is full of the suckers. Your pictures there drive me crazy. But I have a solution.

I finally figured out how you could fix things up. You’ll have to ugly yourself up just a bit. That would really help. Turn yourself into a monster. Start at the top and work your way down.

Your hair, muss it up. Make it straighter and shorter and not so curly. Don’t give it a chance to express the wildness that is you. Tame the sucker.

You’ll have to change your mug too. Un-sensuous arch your eyebrows. Disfigure them. Dull your coconut-brown eyes a bit. Don't allow your glance to be eloquent. In the Three Musketeers d'Artagnan's glance was eloquent. Yours was too. I won't have your glance be eloquent unless you're looking at me. So make them look like rotten coconuts on an oil-spill beach. Take away the clean white sand that surrounds them. Yellow-jaundiced or blood-shot eyes would be much better. Think toxic. Think Hepatitis-eyes here. Lower your Everest-high Sir Edmund Hillary-Tensing Norgay cheekbones to sea level like most other women. Kissing them always gave me a nose-bleed anyway, so lower them. That would help too.


That ultimately feminine face full of expression will have to go. Stoney it up. Make like a statue with it. Regular Easter-island stuff. Change it so it shows no emotions. Then I could deal with it better. The worse thing about you I miss is your face.


And the mouth. Harden it up. No more Wet and Wild lipstick. Make the curve of your lips less expressive and lyrical. Your voice will have to change too. Change what you say and the way that you say it. Make it a robot voice. Make it sound like computer generated sh*t. Strangle the life right out of it. While you’re at it, thicken your throat. Remove its’ sculpting post haste. I always fell for your sculpted throat and you knew it. So what does that make me, a throat man?



Readjust the shoulders and arms. Add flab if you can. Let gravity lower your breasts. Allow them to show signs of your age, will you? Attach irons to each nipple with clothespins and strings and pull them down where they belong on a woman your age. Show them no mercy. Nature never shows any other woman’s breasts mercy so why start with you? Help nature out.

Your belly button? I don’t know about your belly button. There’s something about your belly button.

Another thing that would help me to forget you would be if you’d gain about fifty pounds. Then you could lose the curve of your waist where it flares out to your hips. You always held that against me. Do something about your hips as well, since we’re there. Let’s save time. Let’s be civilized. Let’s be god-damned sophisticated about this.

And what about your bottom? Grow it bigger. Grow it flabby. Stop taking your walks every day and sit on it more often. For hours. Flatten it out, will ya? That would really help. It would be a boon to mankind and not such a distraction to all concerned. Its’ curves are much too dangerous for casual tourists. Have mercy on mankind. Womankind would appreciate the lack of competition too.

So now the legs. They must be dealt with. Their proportions are much too perfect. Perfecto is the word for them. Reminds me of what I’m missing out on. All of you reminds me of what I’m missing out on. So definitely the legs. Make them fat, or maybe turn them up-side-down or in-side-out. Wreck their proportions with reckless abandon. That only leaves the feet.

You must do something about the feet. I don’t care how that fellow before me sucked on your toes, they’re really not so much. I can’t believe you let him do it. Still, they are a distraction, a reminder. So don’t varnish your toenails. I said varnish. In the old days they didn't say nail polish, they said nail varnish. If you don't believe me, check with Somerset Maugham. So no varnish. Instead, let them get ragged and yellow and ugly. Try for athlete’s foot, if you feel sporting. Uglying them up would be just the thing for them, and better yet, just the thing for me.

After you’re finished, take a picture and send it to me. Let me gloat to the fellas that this is the girl that threw me over, tossed me out. The one I broke up with. After they see the pictures they’ll think it no loss. They’ll pat me on the back and tell me I’ll get over you soon...sooner than I think. They got a sister, or a friend, or a friend of a friend. They’ll tell me to try online-dating, it’s cheap. Put myself up on the auction block. Join a group and all.

They’ll all wanna hook me up.

I can’t wait. I’ll pay for the postage.

©Steven Hunley 2011

[Hawkman]

I kept thinking of that scene from "A Beautiful Mind", you know, the one in the bar where the eponymous halucinating mathematician comes up with the theory that if none of the blokes in a bar try to trap the goddess in the room then everyone is better off! The trick is to only go out with ugly women. If you only go out with ugly women then you don't fall in love, you stay in control. When you're in love you are its slave and the goddess is always the slave master. She can discard you with equanimity, cast you off without a second thought and secretly gloat over your misery. There'll probably be two or three suckers waiting in the wings just tripping over themselves trying to register on her radar.

But having said all that, this would be a great curse. If you want to curse your ex, this is definitely the way to go. but not as a request. It has to be an order, a demand of your gods to wreak havock on she who has unmanned you.

It's a great, fun piece of writing, Steven. It lays bare the soul of a jilted lover for all the world to see, with originality, a neat turn of phrase and bags of humour. Gave me a smile this morning!

Live and be well - H

[kittypaws]

Steven...I luved it! Great fun write.

So this is what men think of when down on their playboy girlfriend? LOL!

Wish on!

kittypaws

[Buh4Bee]

Love the ending. This character must be some good looking woman.

[Neilson Black]

This is brilliant Steven, in alot of ways. I can go on to explain those ways, but theirs alot so I'll just sum it up with I really liked this one.

[BookBeauty]

I felt let down by the ending.

I was kind of hoping that, in the end, appearance didn't really matter and this guy really just loved who she is, and maybe this letter was venting it out.

But, on the other hand, this is very realistic.

[AuntShecky]

I was almost going to say that this is yet another example of showing what a superficial, vapid society we live in, but that would be too serious a message for this enjoyable story!

It fits squarely in the tradition of that novelty song ( by Harry Belafonte and others): "From my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you." That song advises a guy to choose an ugly girl so he'll avoid ever getting jealous, or losing her to another.

That song was all about the guy, not the girl. Likewise, in your story it's all about him, not her. Instead of wishing the girlfriend well or helping finding another boyfriend your narrator wants the ex-girlfriend to ugly herself down--not so he can cease being jealous--but so his pals can pity him and "fix him up." It's all about him!

Some of the lines in your story are really funny. The sentence about her changing the arch of her brows is funny, but it's a little awkward though. You need at least an "-ly". And it should be sensual, not sensuous.

What strikes me most about the story is its irony! It made me think of certain sportscasters--not the exceptional Vin Scully who covers the Dodgers in your port of the world-- but the guys who cover the Bronx Bombers. For nine innings they declaim about how great the Yankees are, all the while deriding the opposing team. What's up with that? If a victory should come, wouldn't it mean more if they were playing a formidable team rather than a bunch of lousy pushovers? By the same token, your unwitting narrator fails to see that being dumped by someone who looks considerably
less attractive than a supermodel doesn't make him God's Gift to Womanhood.
It just makes him look like he's been --forgive me-- scraping the bottom of the barrel of the dating pool.

Incidentally, the form of your story is ingenious. There hasn't been much
epistolary fiction since the age of Pamela.. Maybe this will bring it back.

[DocHeart]

Steven, Steven, Steven...

Sit down, pal. Here, have some of this. Well, yes, it's brandy, at least that's what they call it. But I tend to think of it as liquid rubies. Help yourself to a Camacho, too, and make yourself comfortable while I go see if I can find somewhere to empty the ashtray.

Now listen. First of all, good piece of writing, as always. Appreciated it, thanks for sharing, that word over there could have gone down here, and you could have given that sentence a haircut and that one a lethal injection. And all that other-mother jazz.

So let’s cut to the chase here.

My dear Steven, I won’t tire you with one of my analyses of what it is to fall for a beautiful broad. It’s all public domain anyway. What can I say. We just love strutting about with a good-looking girl hanging off our person. And when she dives naked beneath the duvet and takes liberties putting her (beautiful but freezing) feet between your thighs, you do not mind one bit. Because, soon, the silk on the inside of her biceps is surrounding your neck, the summer breeze of her breath is blowing on your cheek, and the angelic mounts of flesh she has for breasts are warming your back. And when her crème caramel pelvis is wiggling and rubbing against you, you could be bound in a nutshell but count yourself king of infinite space. Who said that? Was it Nixon?

The thing is, when a woman is young and beautiful, as soon as you venture into her boudoir it’s odds-on you bite the alloy. And you bite it hard. Makes you do stupid things. You take risks. You spend your money. You neglect your Bukowski and leave your decanter empty and forget about your zippo till it goes rusty. Suddenly you find yourself with an Armani sofa, a two-hundred euro cappuccino maker and a steady supply of extra soft q-tips. Before you know it you couldn’t get yourself out of a snooker if your life depended on it. Your friends? You forget their birthdays. Your acquaintances? You barely make it to their funerals.

Have a top up. Don’t worry, I’ve got another bottle of this in the medicine cabinet.

But it’s all good, because each time you look at her, you tell yourself a great story. A marvelous, fascinating story about a new life, one of happiness that comes from having the perfect companion. She has imperfections like everyone else, sometimes major, sometimes unsurpassable, sometimes complete deal-breakers for anyone with half a brain. But you don’t see those, or worse, you make your story even more beautiful by kidding yourself you can fix them, eradicate them.

Something happens one day, and the bubble bursts. It may be something she says or does that hurts you. It may be that you have a dream about Bukowski breaking down and crying in your lap, “nobody reads me no more, nobody reads me no more.” It may be that Standard & Poors downgrades your country’s credit rating to CCC, and you suddenly have to cancel Christmas on Easter Islands and break it to her that you’re going to your cousin’s instead, who can’t cook siht and has the most annoying kids in the world, but it’ll be just as much fun, and then you notice that she starts pouting and you think - wait a second, she doesn’t want to spend time with me now that I’m not flush? Or it may just be that, one night, you have bad pizza and too many Coronas and you wake up at 4am with heartburn that might also pass for a heart attack, and while trying to vomit knelt over the porcelain cistern that she made you buy, you have an epiphany: time is finite. And you think, what the fukc am I doing? The next day you demand things she cannot, or will not give. Plans. Exclusivity. Commitment. Sincerity. Cohabitation. Marriage. Sex from behind. Whatever your poison is. And that’s it. Show’s over. Original script by Steven Hunley. Music by Steven Hunley. Produced by Steven Hunley. Directed by Steven Hunley. Copyright Steven Hunley 2012. Lights on.

You know, they say some Dutch sailor invented brandy back in the sixteenth century, when he boiled wine to reduce the water it contained and in this way save cargo space. If this is true, then it proves that even utter stupidity can lead to great discoveries. Here, you get the last drop. Greeks say that’s good luck.

The real question, my dear Steven, is: are you really happy to let her uglify herself, as your epistle prompts her to? To achieve what? Ostensibly, to forfeit the memory of her beauty just to get over the pain of the first few days, or the first few weeks, or the first few months. Will you really reach inside your brain and disconnect the neurons that still give you a boner when you think of her just to get some sympathy from losers like me? Will you destroy the sensation (oh yes, you can still feel it) of her abdomen on yours, of all of her weight pressing on your torso during the sweaty finale of your orgasmic tangos? Will you cremate the smile that woke up next to you and made you see sunshine even in the rainiest of winters? Will you take a pair of scissors and cut her out of photos?

What about the beautiful story you told yourself while you were together? How will you be able to tell it if you vandalize her in such a manner?

The truth is, you threaten to do so, but you will not. Instead, you will continue seeing her on Facebook, and Twitter, and fukc knows what else they’ll come up with to forbid people from disappearing from other people’s lives, and you’ll look at her photos, and you will talk to her in your dreams. And when it’s been a few years and a few more beautiful broads down the line, you’ll remember your story, and how she made your life better. As much as your life could become better, under the then current circumstances.

And now, I’m going to bed. Thanks for the inspiration. I hadn’t written anything in months. I can call you a cab, or you can sleep on the sofa. I’ll get you a blanket. It’s not been eaten by moths -- this bit here had my ex-wife’s initials on it, and I scrubbed them off.

Goodnight.

[AuntShecky]

Gee, I think Doc's response to the story could almost be a story itself--it's that expressive! Please note that I'm congratulating myself, or as my dear ma, gone lo these 50 years, might have said "throwing bouquets," because I've read both the story and Doc Heart's reply in a consciously non-narcississtic way. Otherwise I would have condemning you both as sexists treating women as objects, yadda-yadda-yadda. Underneath it all would be a deep-seated resentment: I'm not young or pretty or sexy etc. so I can't "relate" to this story at all.

That's not how we're supposed to be reading anything. It's taken yours truly nearly a lifetime to realize that not every piece of writing is about "me." It's not necessarily the "what" but the "how" it's done. That's the only way to appreciate and enjoy a work of fiction.

Every work assumes "a willful suspension of disbelief" said my man Coleridge (a former classmate o' mine. Sat behind me in the last row. The Dean was Jonathan Swift.)

[Steven Hunley]

I would like to thank each of you for responding. It's good critiques that enable us to get more proficient as writers. Insightful help, whether on grammar, puctuation, spelling or content, whatever--is the one reason we post. I'm so lucky to have all of you as my peers. Bogart and Bergman had Paris. Hemingway and Fitzgerald had Paris. We've got litnet-and, to quote a once popular song-"That's all right with me."

But Doc. What a response. Doc-you have it all wrong. You've haven't written in a while. You should be out of shape. Instead.. it turns out you're "in the pink" and ready to go all the rounds. It wasn't a "story" as such, more like a personal essay or letter. Oh, but did it rock. You'd didn't chip away at it, you showed growth and strength and were poetic and philosophical. You are a Gibralter of writers. Keep on slugging by all means.

[kaybaily]

What a marvelous critique style to a story! Are your sure Steven that you and DocHeart didn’t collaborate? … his critique reads more like a creative extension of your entertaining and heartfelt story, or its a real attempt to console a friend with a broken heart. My guess is he gets it and is consoling you. . And the girl? I bet she looked back and realized what a horrible mistake she made. She probably missed your wicked wit and was thrilled to be back in your warm arms again.
I enjoyed this for so many reasons; your writing is unique and just keeps getting better!

[Jack of Hearts]

Yep, Doc's Dandy.

But Steven, this was a good read. And the title was well chosen.








J

[Secret III]

A blessing in disguise? Sort of candid and cute and humorous, you almost don't believe this character is serious. Good story.