Tasteful Nudes

Friday morning I awoke to the sudden realization that I haven’t had human contact since Wednesday. I’ve been alone, watching TV, eating junk food (the local McDonald’s cashier boy knows my order by heart and always winks at me… I think he’s gay but he’s so young) and writing a short collection of stories that I plan to publish… sometime.

I don’t talk a lot about my writings, actually I never do, but this is different. This collection, creatively titled ‘Tasteful Nudes’, is something I’ve never done before. The stories, the two I have written, are each over twenty pages and have, at least, twenty thousand words.

The first story is called ‘Fag Hunting’ and like the title suggests involves a man who hunts down gays. Its gritty and one of my harshest stories to date. In it the characters make fun of religion, lesbians, gays, and themselves. The second story, considerably tamer, is about a boy named Kip Kipper. Kip doesn’t understand love; his mother is a lesbian with a new girlfriend every month, his father left and the people he tries to love always leave him hanging. It starts with Kip’s childhood and goes through his adult years.

The other stories are planned, outlined and are ready to be written. They are called ‘Tasteful Nudes’, ‘PrincessBoy’, and ‘Intersections’ though the last story may change. Since this is the first time I’m actually talking about them I’ll try to keep everyone posted and maybe, just maybe, when I do get the collection published I’ll have free giveaways for my trusty readers.

Saturday morning my mother and I meet my aunt at the airport. She came down for the week with her boyfriend to visit his parents. We wake up at the most ungodliest of hours, eight A.M, to drive the hour to the airport.

They were waiting for us at the departures, my aunt looking like Dora with a pink backpack high up on her back, sunglasses, and a little fanny pack that held her license and cash. She waved us down, screaming and hollering and my mother, so excited, jumped from the car before it stopped and fell.

At the restaurant, after about twenty minutes of pulling gravel and wiping up blood from my mothers knee, we chatted and caught up. I haven’t seen my aunt in a year or so, give or take, sometime around then and she hasn’t changed. She talks about her two sons and daughter and how they’re expecting kids. She talked about their younger sister with her two kids and how they’re doing in high school and college. She talked about New York and how it hasn’t changed, “I won’t change for New York until it changes for me.”

And then, at the end of lunch, she pulls out her Ziploc baggies, filled with cash, each bag for a different amount. “This bag is for ones. This is for fives. Tens. Twenties. This bag holds my change. Nickels. Dimes. Quarters.”

I couldn’t hold in my laughter. She kills me, literally, physically, cinematically, metaphorically and so on…