note: my fictional greeting card to everyone!

Back when I was in middle school, pimply-faced and voice always cracking, I had a crush on this girl. She was in my social studies class and her name was Chloe. She was half-Japanese and half-Irish, so she had green eyes but dark brown hair. She was very pretty and had incredibly smooth and pale skin. We never really spoke to each other except for the one time when we had to work on a group project together. I remember spending a Sunday afternoon at Seth’s house making a collage of West Africa while sitting next to Chloe and cutting up letters from construction paper. She had great control of the scissors and made the neatest letters I had ever seen. She told me that she had a pet cat named Jiro.

The day I started having a crush on Chloe was when I saw her in class on a brisk autumn day. She wore these very shiny cowboy boots that had high heels and a ruffled blouse that gave her a “Western” sort of look. She stood out from all the other girls, and the more I looked at her, the more I just wanted to have her to myself. I didn’t know or learn much about sex until high school, so my attraction towards her was more akin to the attraction that a kitten might have to a shiny object. I couldn’t stop looking at her and I just wanted to play with her.

I was too shy to do anything about my crush, so I just told a few of my close friends how I felt about her. The rest of the time, I sighed to myself and wrote out her name in bubble letters on my marble notebooks. When Christmas time rolled around, I paid a dollar to some club that sent an anonymous candy gram to her saying, “I wish I got to know you better. Happy Holidays!” I wondered for many weeks afterwards how she might have responded to such a message.

When Valentine’s Day rolled around, I decided to finally let her know how I felt about her and started to make an intricate Valentine’s Day card. I bought a thick pack of colored construction paper from the stationery store and tried to be creative, only to realize that I had done nothing more than cut hearts of different colors and sizes. It was hard to escape the prevailing commercial symbol of Valentine’s. A bolt of creativity eventually struck me. I looked through our school yearbook from 6th grade and found a black and white photo of Chloe. I cut out her head and pasted it in the middle of flower petals that I made from paper. The petals could’ve been confused with a lion’s mane, but I added a green stem just to be sure. I then looked for my own school photo and cut my own head out. If you haven’t tried it before, you might want to see how weird it feels to hold a photo of just your own head. I made an oversized bee from strips of yellow and black and placed my head at one end. The card showed a bee, me, hovering around a flower, her. Inside, I wrote: “Catch the buzz? He likes you! Happy Valentine’s!” It was a short and corny message, and I struggled with my decision to address myself in the third person. But the card looked nice by my standards and made me feel a bit confident about my efforts. I put the card into a nice white envelope and took it to school, where I slid it into her locker.

She thanked me the next day when I saw her in class, but didn’t say anything else. That day she wore a white and dark green striped long sleeve shirt with a bright green t-shirt on top. She also had on very bright orange sneakers and dark jeans. I wondered where she got her style. An older sister or a young mother, I guessed.

A few weeks later, she started dating some boy in high school. He would come by our middle school in his Toyota Camry to pick her up after school. I think he was sixteen years old. I thought it was weird because he was three years older, but then I thought that maybe she was too good for boys her own age and needed someone older and more mature. I continued to see her in social studies class but knowing she had a boyfriend made me like her less and less until one day, I stopped paying attention to her. The next year, we weren’t in any classes together, so I hardly saw her around. Whenever I did happen to think about her, I always wondered if she had kept my Valentine’s Day card.

Several years later, when I came back home from college, I caught sight of her at the local supermarket. She was scanning the pudding and yogurt section while I was looking through egg cartons to find the perfect dozen. I recognized her instantly and felt my heart racing at many miles per hour. She looked stunning and more stylish than ever. She turned her head and made eye contact with me, but she didn’t seem to recognize me at all and walked right past me. I didn’t want to embarrass myself so I casually moved on to the bacon section and threw a pack of America’s Choice bacon into my shopping basket. I looked at her backside as she walked gracefully to the checkout line.

Sometimes I wish I had written a bit more in that Valentine’s Day card, maybe telling her a bit about myself and asking her some questions as well. I might recall to the finest detail all of the things she wore back in middle school, but I will never know what kind of books she likes to read, what kind of food she likes to eat, or what kind of music she likes to listen to. I will never know how warm her pale skin feels or how gently she kisses. All I know is that she may or may not still have a card I once gave to her.

Note: I’ve been hoping to make 2006 a breakthrough year for myself in terms of creative writing, not so much in the sense of writing something so good that it’ll get picked up by a publisher (in my dreams and unlikely) but more along the lines of actually writing, researching, revising and rewriting before I post it for the public domain. I experimented last fall with The Elusive Hope serial, which was nice in that I actually wrote 10 parts but perhaps a bit rushed and abruptly ended. I’m working on a revision and some additional “chapters” to the story, so hopefully I’ll be able to have an improved story to share in the near future. I’ve also had more than one story idea that I’ve experimented with to varying degrees and hopefully some of these ideas will become full stories by the end of 2006. I’d like to post up excerpts from two particular ideas that I’ve spent a bit more time than the others. Two very different characters in two very different worlds, but I have a feeling people are going to tell me that it’s just two slight variations of myself. Fiction, people!

Story I
The next time we had class, Ellie sat next to me. She wore a beige long coat, jeans, and a white t-shirt.

“Hey Dave, how’s it going?” she asked.

“Good,” I said, nodding.

Class was interesting. Our professor talked about Southern blacks and their desire for political autonomy during Reconstruction. Although I strained myself to listen carefully, I couldn’t keep myself from dozing off. Ellie poked me a few times, but she eventually gave up. My mind flickered between the lecture and sleep. I finally came to and saw illegible scribbles on my notepad.

“You’re terrible at staying awake,” she said. “Was it that uninteresting?”

“Oh no,” I said. “I just have a habit of falling asleep in lectures.”

I walked out with her, and we talked about various things. I found out that she was a political science major and that she was from Virginia. She mentioned something about a boyfriend coming to visit her this weekend, so I asked her about her boyfriend. He went to Duke and his name was Joe.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “A white guy?”

“Yeah. We went to high school together, and we know each other really well,” she said, her tone a bit defensive.

“Cool,” I said. I told her I had to check my mail, said bye, and walked towards the student center. I was also feeling hungry, so I decided to pick up a roast beef sandwich and a Gatorade, the yellow-colored one.

Story II
“Are you sure you’re not at all attracted to Korean girls?”

“Dude, they’re like ironing boards. No ass, no tits. Most of them are short, and they all look the same,” Kevin says. “White chicks are where it’s at. Tall, blonde, blue eyes, and nice tits.”

“What are you, Hitler’s second-in-command?” I say, although I’m very aware of Kevin’s white girl fetish.

“They have pink cunts, man. And pink nipples too,” Kevin says, his hard look now replaced by a sleazy grin. “Think of it as a delicious pink peach, just begging for its layers to be peeled off. Oh man.”

“I don’t know. Reminds me of lab mice or something, the way they have pink parts like that. And speaking of peaches, white girls have that nasty fuzz all over their bodies. I can’t handle that,” I tell him. I’ve probably fucked six or seven white girls in my lifetime, but I can’t say I’ve found them particularly appealing. And they’re always so eager to give head, which sometimes takes away the fun I usually have with timid Asian girls who I have to coax into going down on me. I’m not sure if Kevin has had any white pussy yet. He’s put on some weight since working, and he’s not as charming or interesting as I am.

We sit down at Gam Mee Ok, where I order two bowls of sullongtang for me and Kevin as well as a modeum soondae, a platter of miscellaneous pork parts, including my favorite – the pig intestine casing filled with blood. I explain how soulful and delicious soondae tastes, but Kevin is appalled and looks as if he’s a contestant on Fear Factor. We order two bottles of soju as well as two bottles of OB Lager. I watch as Kevin’s face turns red after the first shot. Luckily, my face never changes color when I consume alcohol.

“So I’ve been interviewing with some PE shops,” Kevin tells me. I feel as if I’ve heard his exit plans several times already, so I zone out and start nodding as he goes on and on about his futile attempts to land that dream job with a takeover firm. I’ve recently been promoted to vice president in my group, perhaps the youngest vice president in the entire firm at twenty-four. Kevin is only a third-year analyst and definitely envious. He has to find another job soon or go to business school. I scan around the room while Kevin continues to talk and spot a decent-looking Korean girl eating with another girl, who also seems Korean but is fat and ugly. The decent-looking girl appears to be about 5’6” and hovering around 100 pounds, which is probably unhealthy, but do-able in my eyes. Her long black hair has obviously been given a straight perm and she’s wearing a simple black top with dark blue jeans that hug her hips really well. And I look down at her feet to see that she’s wearing sleek black stiletto high heels. She seems pretty high-maintenance and could probably use a beat down, although I could be wrong and she could be a very down-to-earth type of girl who loves to talk about sports and have intellectual conversations about world affairs. Right. I end up laughing to myself. Kevin wants to know what’s so funny.

note: the final chapter! 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

A cigarette break. He doesn’t smoke much anymore, not with his new reformed lifestyle. He works out now. Today he ran three miles on the treadmill at Mountainside Fitness, the one in Mesa, where he has been a member for over two months. He watches the high-definition flatscreen television, which is playing Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. He listens to Beastie Boys and Green Day on his iPod. His gut has diminished considerably. He likes the dry air of Arizona, and he never knew so many stars were in the sky at night.

He gets into his 1998 Toyota Camry, a maroon one, that he bought used for five thousand dollars from an old white couple a week after he moved out to the West. Its smell still has hints of old people, but his occasional smoking and drive-thru meals have helped to replace the odor of antiquity with the fragrance of a middle-age man lacking a family. He keeps his gym bag in the backseat, along with newspapers, magazines, empty soft drink cups, and other artifacts of daily life.

He works part-time at Bookmans, the Mesa used books, DVD, music CD store only twelve minutes from Mountainside Fitness. He works the help desk, directing customers, mostly the elderly who aren’t shy about asking questions, to the right sections of the store. He also looks up used DVD titles for suburban teens and housewives. One time, an elderly man, probably in his late sixties, came and asked for Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy. This sparked a conversation about Russell’s other work, A History of Western Philosophy, which he had read at his father’s behest as a college student. The pleasant conversation, mostly about Russell’s clear and sometimes witty writing style, made him feel warm inside, and the elderly man, although much older and frailer, reminded him of his father. He received a paltry hourly wage, but he was content with the pace of his job. When things slowed down in the middle of the day, he used the computer to read NYTimes.com to stay current with the world from the familiar East Coast point of view. He even browsed articles in the Metro section. For lunch, he would drive over to Panda Express and have sweet and sour chicken.

****

There are no photos in his one-bedroom apartment. He likes his spartan decor, and he loves it that he has, at least going by Manhattan standards, a spacious living room. A used dark green fabric couch he bought at a garage sale occupies one wall and faces a twenty-inch television that was on sale at the Best Buy near Fiesta Mall. He has a sturdy $300 chocolate-brown bookshelf, which he splurged on at Pier 1 Imports, that he uses to store a modest collection of books, bought with an employee discount from Bookmans. He fries Spam and eggs for dinner and has it with rice and pickles from a jar. He plays The Beatles on his computer, which he also keeps in the living room.

****

He waits for Bernice while sipping on an iced tea at Cafe Pinot. Finding parking in downtown LA was a difficult task, but he managed to find a spot and wonders why Bernice hasn’t shown up yet. It was an eight-hour drive by himself, and he planned on driving back after dinner. He didn’t mind the long trip. What else would he have done on a day off in Mesa? He had worked out five times during the week, and he had taken care of all the necessary errands – laundry, bills, groceries, vacuuming – even before the weekend had started. Bernice was in Los Angeles for a few days on a business trip, and she had called him out of the blue, not really knowing how far Phoenix was from LA. Maybe a stop at a music store to pick up some new CDs after dinner? He had listened to his Oasis CD about six times during the drive.

****

The Wild Alaskan King salmon was a bit overcooked, but he had enjoyed the braised artichokes and the green olives that came with it. He only had a glass of wine knowing he would have to drive back. Bernice wore a fashionable dark brown pinstriped suit with a matching Coach purse and thin-strapped heels. She seemed to have gotten tan in the short time she had been in town, and it made her look younger. As he stared blankly at the endless road ahead, he reflected on his time in LA. She was curious about his new life and asked many questions, but an underlying tone of confusion, maybe even frustration, seemed to seep through whenever she responded to his descriptions of mundane, suburban routines. They shared some enjoyable moments back in New York for the brief period they knew each other, but time did not afford them a closeness that might have convinced him to stay put. A movie date, a few dinners, a cocktail drink, and a cup of coffee at their last meeting. There was no sex. He thought it would do her a disservice by having sex with her before his move. He wanted to be gentlemanly, and to be a friend. She was smart, and he liked that about her. She was also guarded, which he also liked about her. She was driven and motivated, which he envied.

After dinner, she led him up to her hotel room, and they made love for the first time. He wondered if his workouts were finally paying dividends, but noticed the way his midsection still seemed undefined and dismissed the idea. Perhaps she had been lonely and wanted a good fuck? Or was this simply an expression of her gladness in seeing him again? He laughed off such an indulgent thought. He shyly told her that this would be the first time for him in two years. She looked at him endearingly and then pulled off his belt.

He wondered if he would ever see her again. They promised each other to write emails and call from time to time, but they were far from passionate young lovers, and he knew that sooner or later the inconvenience of it all would work its way into fading out any chance of romance between them. Wait, he thought, but it was just sex. He shook his head violently and pressed play on his car CD player. Oasis began for the seventh time.

****

He spots Janet in a magazine while he is at work. It’s a story in Runner’s World about successful women professionals who balance work with an intense running regimen. Janet has shifted her focus from triathlons to marathons. She has been made partner at a fast-growing law firm and has participated in both the New York and Boston marathons in the past year. Her husband, James Caldwell, trains with her and is a managing director at Morgan Stanley. A split-pane photo-image of Janet in a suit standing in her office on the left side and a photo of her running in Central Park on the other side occupies the top right area of the magazine spread. She looks even prettier than he remembers. A co-worker, Michelle, walks by and looks over his shoulder. “Robert! Is that the type of woman you like? You’ve been staring at the picture for the past five minutes!” She gives a slight laugh and leans over to read the caption. “Wow, looks like she’s done really well for herself.”

He looks up at Michelle, who is white, a bit overweight, red-headed, and jolly, with freckles. He smiles and nods. “She just reminded me of someone I used to know. Not my type, though.” He closes the magazine and puts it back on the shelf. A shy teenager approaches the help desk and asks if Bookmans carries Out of the Past directed by Jacques Tourneur.

“The one with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, right?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“No. Sorry. We don’t carry it. Might wanna try Amazon.com though,” he says.

The kid, disappointed, walks over to the New Releases wall of the DVD section.