Hear Me Roar

Blogees!  I remembered about two hours ago the promise I made to myself and the internet to post at least once a week.  A week has gone by, believe it or not.  What did you do? 


Anyway, I'm having trouble with topics and inspiration, so I've decided to post some fiction I am working on.  Novel concept, right? (Novel, ha, get it??)  Anyway I wrote this a while ago and edited it a little less than a while ago, and have dragged it up from the lengthy desktop folder entitled "Creative Writing."  I hope you enjoy, and in case you are wondering about my awesome ending, there isn't an ending.  It is ongoing, and I am literally leaving you where I have stopped.  Let me know what you think!


(Also, it's untitled, so read this parenthesis as a title...)

My jeans are soaked to my thighs, this damn storm, let me tell you. In the early part of the century, back when men wore thick coats and bowler hats, long black garb that cloaked them in the color of death, real men, you might say, well in that part of the history of the world I survived a storm ten times this size, and my jeans, well...no, not my jeans because real men did not wear jeans back then, my pants, they were soaked, right to my thighs.

This was in the big city on the gold coast; San Francisco. It roared, oh boy did it. All curved cabs and ladies wearing gloves; even in the rain (torrential this time of year) they smoked cigarettes, inhaled it like they drank tobacco for breakfast. Top that off with vodka and orange juice, what you have there is one American way to start a day. This was pre Peace, pre Love, pre Haight and that damned Ashburry, two hooligans of grandeur proportions. Not to confuse the reader, I fell head-first through a cloud of acid rain just like the rest of you, but it was hard with this stiff hip, and all those boys wanted to do was run run run.

The city bumped and jived, a cesspool of sin and luxury, but fun, mind you. On this night, of the storm, that is, I was enjoying a whisky dry in a cozy little speakeasy. Easy jazz with chords of velvet; brass and stand-up, lover’s laments that made you want to curl up on Saturday and write lust letters to people you’ve never known. I could hear the wind beating drops against my sanctuary, my Mecca (pre-world knowledge of Mecca of course). There is nothing but the sound of a lightly brushed cymbal; a woman turning over in her sleep; the sky letting a feather fall silently. And that pianist! Such a virtuosity in his limbs, a lilt to his back. I remember his eyes closing as he played. All that, with those dim rouge lights, the small-talk of lovers, war and money (quality topics in any age I’ve found) on the tips of tongues. Lulled me, they did.

Anyway, that damned storm was so loud it clashed up against the sound of this aural phenomena, my song of songs, and drove me to a great fury.

I quickly became disgruntled, my inner peace shaken, and, anyway, my cup was empty. I nodded to the tender and he waved me off, looking neither distracted nor interested. I had been there some time, come to think of it, and when I stood the blood rushed to my head, making me waggle as I cleared a path towards the exit. Fur coats and lengthy umbrellas were crammed into the corner as people came in, and I grabbed my own parachute as I exited.

The wind hit me in the face, speckled me with drops of “light precipitation” as the news prints had read. Bullshit. These drops slicked my hair back for me, had me pumping the shaft of that umbrella like a flapper in the red-light. I routinely tried to light a cigarette, cursed when the wind blew it out, and decided to walk back to my apartment, just a few blocks towards the Bay. 

Now, in 1922, a man walking down the street with a curve to his path was highly suspicious. The Noble Experiment was in effect, and us lab rats ran around licking the ethanol off every surface we could find. I was just shy of military legality (something everyone should aim for) and had been hammered well into the morning every night that month. All this while Johnny Law walked around this city like the damn gestapo (anachronistic, I know, but I was ready and able, not willing mind you, for that second attempt at world peace, and they were like the damn gestapo). Upending coffee mugs and the like. Then they had the audacity to “retain” what we were drinking and imbibe it themselves. The Station was rowdier than any bar in the city night after night.