{"id":164,"date":"2005-02-08T09:33:49","date_gmt":"2005-02-08T16:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/blog\/?p=162"},"modified":"2005-02-08T09:33:49","modified_gmt":"2005-02-08T16:33:49","slug":"deux-petits-contes-en-anglais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/2005\/02\/08\/deux-petits-contes-en-anglais\/","title":{"rendered":"Deux petits contes en Anglais"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re not reading the stories over at Brief Lies<\/a>, you’re missing out. Some good stuff so far, and we’re just getting rolling. You should all get involved. For ease of access, and because I’d love some creative feedback, or even just little comments, I submit to thee my two stories so far, below. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

————————<\/p>\n

Tacos aren’t romantic at all<\/strong>
\n-Ahniwa Ferrari<\/p>\n

So last night my roommate\u2019s girlfriend came over and they made tacos and I had some and they were amazing like tacos of divinity or ambrosia or something. So we were sitting around eating our tacos \u2013 mmmmmm \u2013 and I\u2019d had some ice cream earlier and that was good too but not like a heavenly taco, and I was telling them the story of the Summer of 2000 when I walked across town in a state of pure romantic distress. I was also distressed because I had no tacos, mind you, but also flustered by romance. I like tacos but I don\u2019t find them romantic. They\u2019re sexy though, but I wouldn\u2019t bother buying them champagne or taking them on a moonlit walk on the beach. They\u2019re sexy and I\u2019d just use them and then leave before they woke up, and I wouldn\u2019t be able to respect them anymore afterwards.<\/p>\n

So I was walking across town, all the way across, from the west end to downtown and then up the hill to the southeast, to see my friend who\u2019s my roommate now and whose girlfriend made tacos last night \u2013 coincidentally he knows this story already \u2013 and about halfway there I was like \u201cWell fuck, I\u2019ve walked a lot, and if I turned around I\u2019d have to walk a lot more just to get home, and that\u2019s where I came from so I\u2019ll keep walking forward and get to my friend\u2019s house and then maybe he\u2019ll drive me somewhere and we can have tacos.\u201d So after like another hour or something I made it to his house and he wasn\u2019t in his room asleep like I thought he\u2019d be so I could easily wake him up and make him drive me somewhere. At first I didn\u2019t know where he was and stood outside wondering how I might be able to find a taco at two in the morning walking \u2013 I\u2019d be walking, not the taco \u2013 and as I was wondering I saw the light flashing in the upstairs window like you see when someone is watching a movie, all blue and the dark and then flash and flash and from outside it seems so bright you wonder how someone could watch it without going blind.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019d found my friend, but he was upstairs and I was on the ground outside and I couldn\u2019t just walk in because he was living with his mom at the time and I didn\u2019t want to get shot or hit with a frying pan or have anything else violent happen to me. I warily eyed the fence that ran around the little house and thought that if I could get up on it I would be nearly at eye level with the window upstairs and then I could throw little twigs at the window and get my friend\u2019s attention, because surely he\u2019d prefer my company and tacos to whatever movie he was watching. So I climbed up the fence, and then I fell off but I landed on my feet, and I had to climb up again, which I did. Then I could see my friend, but throwing little twigs at the window didn\u2019t seem to be having any effect. There was a tree that loomed over the fence, and had branches that extended very nearly to the window, so I grabbed a branch and shook it so that it hit the window and made a big motion which my friend wouldn\u2019t be able to miss. And so I guess he was watching a really scary movie and the branch hitting the window on its own \u2013 because he couldn\u2019t see me \u2013 really freaked him out and he screamed. But then he looked out and he saw me, and we laughed about it and he drove me to Denny\u2019s at three in the morning until five in the morning while we drank coffee and ate food.<\/p>\n

But not tacos, because Denny\u2019s sucks and they don\u2019t have tacos, and I was bitter at first but then I got all strung out on coffee and cigarettes and romance and lack of sleep so then I was okay with it, and I had a sandwich instead. Sandwiches are okay, but they aren\u2019t as good as tacos at all.<\/p>\n

————————<\/p>\n

Dimmer Switch<\/strong>
\n-Ahniwa Ferrari<\/p>\n

Cal leaned against the wall and made an effort not to squint as light danced across the room and fake smoke drifted past his eyes. He\u2019d heard that the parties senior year were bigger and better, but he\u2019d never imagined they included light shows and smoke machines. Still, he knew that to the people who threw these parties image was everything, and the expense was the equivalent of pennies. In any case, he hadn\u2019t come to see fancy special effects. He had a purpose.<\/p>\n

Liza was the kind of girl every boy in school had dreams about. She was head cheerleader and valedictorian, and had already spent a year studying in France. She\u2019d come back with a certain savoir faire that made her seem mysterious and unattainable, and an accent that over time had faded until you could only ever hear it when she got very emotional. It was fate\u2019s cruel joke that her locker was right next to Cal\u2019s, but he doubted that she had ever really noticed him.<\/p>\n

If you asked someone at school what they thought of Cal, most people would sum his character up in a single, concise word: \u201cWho?\u201d . He wore clothes, ate food, walked about and talked, laughed, smiled and joked with his friends; all in such a way that no-one but his friends were ever inclined to pay him any notice. How he\u2019d ever gotten friends in this state is a mystery, though could most likely be attributed to the fact that they\u2019d been his friends since the third grade, before he\u2019d realized that he was destined to a life of inexorable obscurity. He went about his business like a shadow, was never called on in class, got straight \u2018B\u2019s, and avoided school activities or doing anything in which he might stand out like the plague. Even his senior picture in the yearbook had turned out fuzzy, as if he were blurred around the edges; a ghost.<\/p>\n

Tonight was different. The dimmer switch of Cal\u2019s personality, halfway down his entire life, was now in the full \u201cOn\u201d position. Dressed in a suit, he had a distinct outline, a physical presence that dominated a particular space. His hair, usually a bland brown and neatly parted, seemed to change in the light, one moment wild and the next, keenly sophisticated. His eyes, usually brown, were now hazel and chestnut and cedar, mahogany and driftwood, and they sparkled as they set upon Liza Anne Hartley and never strayed.<\/p>\n

Liza had noticed him, too. Noticed, but not recognized, despite having the same lockers for the past four years. She laughed as a friend told a joke, excused herself, and let her feet follow Cal\u2019s gaze across the floor. As she reached him, the music changed from a loud beat to something slow and intimate. She wasn\u2019t used to being shy, but her breath caught in her throat and she was held transfixed by Cal\u2019s presence. It was years of natural social instinct that allowed her to ask, \u201cWould you like to dance?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cal smiled, his teeth flashed pearls. His brown eyes engulfed hers, blue, and the music flooded out the world.<\/p>\n

As he left the party, all he could think was that if he hurried, then he and his friends could have a good long party themselves before the night was over. He ripped off his tie, threw it out into the night breeze, and grinned as he remembered his response:<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, I don\u2019t dance with cheerleaders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re not reading the stories over at Brief Lies, you’re missing out. Some good stuff so far, and we’re just getting rolling. You should all get involved. For ease of access, and because I’d love some creative feedback, or even just little comments, I submit to thee my two stories so far, below. Enjoy! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahniwa.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}