#217

i got home after reading her story aloud to a room full of strangers. i changed only the last paragraph. she wasn't there to hear, i knew she wouldn't be, and when i got home i was in the kind of haze that people describe after having just one glass of wine past buzzed. you don't have to drink to get it. for me, it was that 3am feeling, when you know you should be sleeping or at least trying to sleep, but you're not. it's late. past the time that stray cats fight in the street. later than the local taco bell is open. it's too late even for the "shake-it-weight" commercials with the steroid popping, airbrushed-abs models.
in this kind of haze i feel more honest, consequentially more vulnerable. i want to call someone, but everyone's asleep or with someone else. i wonder which is true for her.
this is the kind of honest that doesn't come to me easily, the kind of happy-scared-where-is-my-life-headed that social constraints and long developed emotional inhibitions usually supresses.
most people say it's nothing that daylight or a cigarette can't handle. but daylight is waning faster these days and for once in my adult life i'd like to breathe the free air.
i watched her read it to a room full of strangers; i hid in the shadows of the back door. the audience was hushed and tearful and beautifully heartbroken when she finished.
tonight i read her story. the audience was left hushed and hopeful and warm. i only changed one paragraph. i only changed the ending.

#216

the bar was full, except the one drink she wanted, so she ordered a name she heard him drop earlier. looking at the bottle, maybe she pronounced it wrong? at first sip it wasn't great, but he pointed to the bottle and gave it a thumbs up, so she kept raising it to her lips intermittently, usually when he was turned towards her, and this wasn't her.
thick mist spewed from a machine and covered the floor and the speakers were so loud and she wondered what it would be like if the fog and music were too thick to walk through, like running in sand or mud or the kind of wind that races across Illinois plains.
he looked older and angrier outside of the stage light, and the singer started playing a song she didn't even write.