I loved both of them, men and women. I still do. But women were so much work, so much sifting through things being said and done and wondering what was truthful and real versus what a woman considered truthful and real, always subject to change. Tick-tock and ding, ding - new definition of reality. Thank Christ, there’s none of that with men.
Making our reservation at the Divorce Hotel was surprisingly easy. I was chewing gum while I dialed. I never chewed gum during my marriage. Maybe I was shifting into someone else. People shift. That happens. And we erode, too. We’re more like the earth than we realize.
Like all of our travel plans made throughout our marriage, I was in charge of coordinating the hotel, airfare, cab, and discovering the lauded restaurants frequented by locals. For this short trip, I did not pack his bag for him, though I imagined he might be wearing henleys for the entire weekend, the top button always undone, the crewneck collar flapped open slightly.
Checking into The Divorce Hotel, we were not greeted with enthusiasm. None of the staff wished us a joyful stay. The concierge ignored us when you made me laugh loudly in the marble lobby. Obviously, they’d been informed that we were not the usual guests. We were checking in to check out. This hotel would save us thousands in lawyers’ fees. At dinner, I drank champagne, you wore a silk tie. Feeling oddly auspicious even while freedom and failure summoned us with weakening restraint, we toasted, like gleeful spendthrifts, to getaways.
You’ll listen to Motown with greater curiosity, brought to surprising sobs by the tragedies of Tammi and Marvin. Your cyclamen will not be neglected. You will swear less. You will learn how to perfect spaghetti Bolognese. You will be more resilient.
— La Rochefoucauld
The “First Love/Worst Love” cast (and its director, Julie Civiello)! What beauties they are, no? xx - RC
“All Alone in a Crowded Room”, Vivienne Strauss :: http://www.vivienneart.blogspot.com/
How will I stay in love next time? What will I do differently? I will not cling. I will remember to forget remembering the past with mawkish nostalgia, as it is reliably inaccurate. I will learn how to ride a bicycle and I’ll be ready for anything.
Eve knows that dour and droll are not synonymous.
She pulls at her pintuck sleeves and glances at her husband, Ron, his popped collar obfuscating his neck, flat-front trousers taut across his quads. He exercises forty minutes every morning, squats and stretching included. Eve doesn’t bother him during his workouts. She reads the obituaries and tries to discern whether the deceased was, in fact, a moral person while awaiting Ron’s showered arrival in the kitchen. His dark gleaming hair reminds her of chocolate frosting, something she privately consumes. Dressed in mint greens and apricot oranges and Palm Springs’ sky-blue, the couple resemble pleated and pressed sartorial imitations of Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paintings.
“Remember when Jesus ended up in the ER?”
She refers to Ed Raphael, the lead in the staged production of Jesus Christ Superstar the previous summer. She and Ron found him half-dead in his driveway, victimized by an electric gate gone haywire. Jesus’s understudy, a significantly less vibrant actor, Jeff Dodge, took over the role. Eve says, “We’re now at that age where we risk finding friends unconscious in their homes.” The effect of being droll was lost altogether on Ron, who found the conversation too macabre to continue.
“She Was Determined To Live Without Compromise And With Good Taste”, Vivienne Strauss :: http://www.vivienneart.blogspot.com/
I want to take my bodyboard into the water, not for myself, nor for my comrades, but for Mina. I want to surf along the lip of one of those waves; I want the sea to carry my unceasing love to their still bodies, I want the sea to tell them I’ve found someone I want to marry and that I have to say good-bye…
Most of all, I want to believe that being picked to help on the tug was no accident. I want to feel it somehow happened like that because things happen for a reason. I want to believe this more than anything.
"— Simon Van Booy, “As Much Below As Up Above”
It was their first vacation together and being accustomed to the city’s 99-cent stores and Thai massage parlors, the girl was overcome by the space afforded in Maine’s landscape. Moments of dizziness accompanied by numbness that came and went in her cheeks were held accountable to agoraphobia, which was the only logical conclusion, but she was not fearful in the grid of the city, its teeming din, onslaught of scents and sound. Here, red barns truly existed in verdant green hills. The girl and her young lover, a shoemaker with an ardor for O’Hara and Keats both, pulled off at one of the barns, a grey and ramshackled structure. As they entered, she told the boy a fable about the young couple who died here, buried behind the barn, underneath a willow tree.
In the barn’s surprising coolness, the boy snapped photographs of forgotten, rusted wheels and scythes. The girl hoped he would accidentally capture bright spots of unexpected light, the makings of phantoms. She called to him, removing her wrinkled linen shirt, and turned away from the lens at the imminent flash, quite sure the photograph would evince the budding wings emerging from her delicate, naked back.
Body Parts, 2012, pigment print on paper on panel (polyptych). Image courtesy Tama Hochbaum and George Lawson Gallery
Before encountering Ben, Lisa had considered herself like the Swedish-born, six-legged calf she’d read about online, the farmer unable to entertain euthanasia due to her venerable desire to live. Like this calf, Lisa continued on despite her deformity of desperation, which cleaved itself to her, a warm and faithful companion.
She was sure she’d given the wrong impression to Ben, with all the shoulder-biting, the wall-banging with both open and closed fists. The first time, it was loud. Frenetic. The second time, he pulled her hair quite hard and she clenched his considerable ass with both hands. Again, loud and frenetic. In any case, not the way she’d intended. How could she explain that this was not what he could expect?
Were Lisa not stretched across Ben’s bed, wriggling her unpainted toes, staring at the ceiling, he’d have been standing in his kitchen, leaning against the counter, spooning a soft-boiled egg with celery salt into his mouth.
She abruptly sat up and announced, “I’m not usually like this,” twisting her damp hair flirtatiously, imitating something like an etoile on the stage in toe shoes, forgetting altogether about the hideous spare limbs, tucked out of sight.
Ben said, “Well, you’re like this with me.”
minutelovestories is a collection of Rebecca Cox's super short stories orbiting the moments of love, in whatever transformative, crushing, galvanizing, confusing, hilarious, and oddly wonderful human and humane form it happens to transpire. Mixed into the fray are photographs, collages, and mixed media imagery from artists near and far, as well as the occasional quote or poem from an icon of literary love.
minutelovestories are minute and just a minute. each story is 200 words or less.
*all minutelovestories copyrighted, all rights reserved. these stories and images may not be reproduced in print or online without approval from Rebecca Cox.
