Charlotte, sitting atop the bed “Indian Style”, looked about the room and thought that maybe she was being a little unfair to Clive. Every square inch of the decoration had been left to her and, as with most things left to her, it had wound up covered in Strawberry Shortcake paraphernalia – amongst other popular franchises from her childhood.
Gem and the Holograms posters (Ebay) covered the west wall while a mixture of Ms. Shortcake (Mostly Ebay, some from a car boot sale) and She-Ra (Presents from Clive) posters covered the East. The South wall had the dresser and the closet, both of which had an assortment of lunchboxes, action figures and the occasional, unusual artefact such as a My Little Pony Board Game or a Ninja Turtle. That last item often got used as evidence that not everything of Charlotte’s was explicitly feminine.
Picking her feet up with her hands, she swirled around on her bum to face the north wall. That held the only decoration that was contentious between Charlotte and Clive, a large oil painting of them making love. It had taken a good deal of marijuana to relax Clive enough to actually pose for the reference photo that her friend had used, but he’d been rather taken by the idea from the moment she’d proposed it. It was only once it actually hung on their wall that it occurred to Clive that visitors might wander in and see it. “Well the bedroom is our private space, they’ve no place to judge anything we have in here” she’d said to him “Besides, I’m sure their eyes will only be drawn to your winning smile”.
Since then, whenever Clive had talked about getting a lock on their bedroom door or maybe putting the painting away “just for a little while”, she would tease him and threatened to hang it up in the living room. “That’s where it is!” Charlotte yelled to an empty apartment. “I left the stupid thing in the living room…” she mumbled on her way down the hall and into a space which she’d let Clive define, for the most part. On the glass coffee table lay what she’d been seeking, a copy of Vogue which Devon had left behind the last time she’d been over. Clive was out with her now, no doubt making snide remarks between each other about everyone they saw over the rim of their martini glasses.
Charlotte knew Devon still hadn’t entirely approved of her being Clive’s girlfriend. Back when Clive had first introduced them to each other, Charlotte could see from the way Devon’s eyes moved up and down her body that every inch of her was being judged. Then again, the angle may have made Devon’s look seem worse than it was – Devon standing at a willowy 6’3 and Charlotte reaching 5’4 if she wore her thick soled sneakers with the Japanese cartoons along the side. The right side of the left shoe had a little boy being toilet trained, proclaiming that he wanted to be a “Pants Man!”.
Charlotte also knew that Devon had a habit of writing comments, notes and doodling along the margins of everything she read. This was her chance to see if there was anything past the mundane to discover in this “marginalia”, as Devon insisted on referring to it as. Twenty minutes later, Charlotte felt that she had only really gained a reminder of why she didn’t bother reading Vogue. Like most women, she didn’t have a frame that was suited to the latest fashions of New York, Milan and the other cities which she felt had become institutions simply by saying so enough times that everyone believed them.
The notes were mostly just catty remarks about various celebrities and models, with the occasional circling of something that Devon must have wanted to find an affordable knock off of. Some young Bulgarian woman in an ad for Clairol was dubbed “Horse Features”. A list of people Devon apparently needed to email was written in flat, robotic handwriting along the hem of a dress designed by a French man who seemed to have trouble buttoning up his shirt. Charlotte lay the magazine back on the table and sat back in the dark purple, suede beanbag chair she’d negotiated.
It was hard not to giggle a little at herself, thinking of what Clive would say about her looking for clues – though he’d probably refer to them as plot devices. It was such a gimmick with him, integrating storytelling into real life. Shrugging, Charlotte decided that she didn’t care what Devon thought anyways. If Devon was really Clive’s best friend then she’d not do anything to sabotage their relationships and, really, she’d try to get over her little prejudices.
Lost in thought as she had been, Charlotte’s shoulders tightened when she could hear the tell tale sounds of Clive scrabbling with the keys and Devon’s laughter, snorts and all. “In you go madam” Clive remarked as he held the door for his tall friend. As her long legs passed through the doorway, Charlotte crossed her arms to cover the Care Bear Cousin which adorned her lime green t-shirt.
Showing posts with label Clive's Battles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clive's Battles. Show all posts
Monday, 30 April 2007
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
Clive versus Nothing In Particular
“Stop telling me” he said “Stop telling me, because I don’t want to know”
“Look” Devon replied “I just think that as we get older, our lives will seem blander and blander no matter what we do. The more we experience, the less that surprises or thrills us. With less of those high points to make us stop and stare, we’ll perceive our lives as progressing faster and faster until entire years roar by as we used to experience a fleeting half hour.” Sensing no desire from Clive to respond, Devon pressed on after a sip from her glass of wine. “That’s why High School, with all its first times and the rawest beginnings of adult hood, seems like a more exciting and story-filled time than now. I think it’s the real reason why so many people idolize those years…not because they were quantifiably better, but because they just seemed more remarkable”.
Clive took a deep sip from his thermos, standing out on the edge of the lake in silent mortification. Turning around to face Devon, he couldn’t help but feel like an army general, talking to a scientist out of an old B-film, as he blurted out “So what on Earth are we supposed to do?”. Devon shrugged her narrow shoulders, causing her to have to re-adjust a shoulder strap that slid down. Putting her now empty glass down on the dock made the left strap fall again and this time she left it there, indifferent. “Well I suppose we could desperately cling to the trappings of our youth?”.
Clive glared and said nothing. He knew this was a dig at a large group of society in general, but also at Charlotte – who had recently purchased a collection of Strawberry Shortcake dolls identical to those she’d had as a little girl. Luckily she was with Devon’s new boyfriend Tony, about a quarter-mile inland at the cottage they were all sharing for the weekend. Probably rolling her eyes at all the shark hunting anecdotes Tony liked to repeat ad nauseum.
“You never have been able to totally accept my girlfriends” Clive said over the rim of the Thermos. Devon thrust her arms out wildly before bursting into the truly Californian exasperation which had made her stand out from all the other intelligent women Clive could have befriended during those “story-filled” years of High School. “Jesus Christ Clive, could you ever be more boring? Speaking of running gags between us, I always love it when you ignore my big points about mortality”.
Standing at 6’3, Devon wasn’t built like an Amazon but she sure could carry herself like one. Striding towards Clive with an overdone swagger, she mixed humour with her anger so Clive knew he hadn’t hit that raw a nerve. Besides, they both knew he was just trying to redirect the conversation because Devon’s lectures on the brief nature of life terrified him – her calm acceptance of her fatalistic theories being the most frightening component of all.
Gesturing grandly with every other word, her voice boomed as she continued from less than a foot in front of Clive. “Do you want us to be those kinds of people, Clive? Do you want us to be the bored intellectual do-nothings who just obsess over minutia with their inter-personal relationships to avoid the really big thoughts? The really big problems? What are we, Woody Allen characters?”. Grinning, Clive made as to reel back under her volume and then snapped himself upright – throwing the thermos up and over into the woods. Now it was his turn in this little game they’d played so many times before.
“Well Dev-onnnn, maybe we should be characters from an Ingmar Bergman film? Maybe we should sink all of our rapidly fleeting time and energy and life and love into the unanswerable? What! Do you think of that?!” Clive had been mimicking her body language all the while until, punctuating the end of his sentence, he made an absurd crotch thrust as if to say “See what I have and you don’t?”. Calculated nonsense, meant to try and make Devon lose the tight grip she had on her point.
But he quickly pulled his hips away as she made to backhand his crotch. Chasing after him, she yelled “Maybe we don’t have to be characters from some other asshole’s film? Maybe we could be our own people, whatever those may be? Like, maybe you could stop being the worlds biggest cock while having the worlds tiniest?”
Between giggles, Clive kept backing away from Devon until he was at the edge of the dock. Then both of them really started to grin as it became obvious that the new objective of the game was to see if Clive would fall back into the water while fully dressed. Stopping in her tracks, his old friend began to move her eyes rapidly over his body as if trying to find a pressure point.
“Maybe” Devon said “We could live our lives in such a manner as to encourage the kind of high drama that makes for interesting stories? We could go out of our way to set up cathartic moments, climactic arguments and pseudo-ironic happenstances. It’s not like we haven’t watched enough tv and film to know all the right things to say!”.
"Haha, I'll be the promiscuous gay guy who is more stereotype than man and you can be the woman who eats chocolate instead of having sex, because apparently it's empowering to gain weight instead of meaningful human interaction" Clive lost a bit of his own focus while blurting this out and Devon, deciding that she had found a weak point in his defences, lunged forward with the cry of "Sooo tiny!". Clive leapt back off the dock and as he went towards the water exclaimed "It is so tiny!".
Much later that evening Clive found himself sharing a beer with Tony during a moment where the latter had, oddly, fallen quiet. But it wasn’t to last and Tony surprised him by asking “Hey Clive, you know I keep going on and on about what I do – but what do you do, buddy?”. Thinking about it for a moment, Clive then replied “I argue, mostly with women it seems, resolving little or nothing at all...”.
“Look” Devon replied “I just think that as we get older, our lives will seem blander and blander no matter what we do. The more we experience, the less that surprises or thrills us. With less of those high points to make us stop and stare, we’ll perceive our lives as progressing faster and faster until entire years roar by as we used to experience a fleeting half hour.” Sensing no desire from Clive to respond, Devon pressed on after a sip from her glass of wine. “That’s why High School, with all its first times and the rawest beginnings of adult hood, seems like a more exciting and story-filled time than now. I think it’s the real reason why so many people idolize those years…not because they were quantifiably better, but because they just seemed more remarkable”.
Clive took a deep sip from his thermos, standing out on the edge of the lake in silent mortification. Turning around to face Devon, he couldn’t help but feel like an army general, talking to a scientist out of an old B-film, as he blurted out “So what on Earth are we supposed to do?”. Devon shrugged her narrow shoulders, causing her to have to re-adjust a shoulder strap that slid down. Putting her now empty glass down on the dock made the left strap fall again and this time she left it there, indifferent. “Well I suppose we could desperately cling to the trappings of our youth?”.
Clive glared and said nothing. He knew this was a dig at a large group of society in general, but also at Charlotte – who had recently purchased a collection of Strawberry Shortcake dolls identical to those she’d had as a little girl. Luckily she was with Devon’s new boyfriend Tony, about a quarter-mile inland at the cottage they were all sharing for the weekend. Probably rolling her eyes at all the shark hunting anecdotes Tony liked to repeat ad nauseum.
“You never have been able to totally accept my girlfriends” Clive said over the rim of the Thermos. Devon thrust her arms out wildly before bursting into the truly Californian exasperation which had made her stand out from all the other intelligent women Clive could have befriended during those “story-filled” years of High School. “Jesus Christ Clive, could you ever be more boring? Speaking of running gags between us, I always love it when you ignore my big points about mortality”.
Standing at 6’3, Devon wasn’t built like an Amazon but she sure could carry herself like one. Striding towards Clive with an overdone swagger, she mixed humour with her anger so Clive knew he hadn’t hit that raw a nerve. Besides, they both knew he was just trying to redirect the conversation because Devon’s lectures on the brief nature of life terrified him – her calm acceptance of her fatalistic theories being the most frightening component of all.
Gesturing grandly with every other word, her voice boomed as she continued from less than a foot in front of Clive. “Do you want us to be those kinds of people, Clive? Do you want us to be the bored intellectual do-nothings who just obsess over minutia with their inter-personal relationships to avoid the really big thoughts? The really big problems? What are we, Woody Allen characters?”. Grinning, Clive made as to reel back under her volume and then snapped himself upright – throwing the thermos up and over into the woods. Now it was his turn in this little game they’d played so many times before.
“Well Dev-onnnn, maybe we should be characters from an Ingmar Bergman film? Maybe we should sink all of our rapidly fleeting time and energy and life and love into the unanswerable? What! Do you think of that?!” Clive had been mimicking her body language all the while until, punctuating the end of his sentence, he made an absurd crotch thrust as if to say “See what I have and you don’t?”. Calculated nonsense, meant to try and make Devon lose the tight grip she had on her point.
But he quickly pulled his hips away as she made to backhand his crotch. Chasing after him, she yelled “Maybe we don’t have to be characters from some other asshole’s film? Maybe we could be our own people, whatever those may be? Like, maybe you could stop being the worlds biggest cock while having the worlds tiniest?”
Between giggles, Clive kept backing away from Devon until he was at the edge of the dock. Then both of them really started to grin as it became obvious that the new objective of the game was to see if Clive would fall back into the water while fully dressed. Stopping in her tracks, his old friend began to move her eyes rapidly over his body as if trying to find a pressure point.
“Maybe” Devon said “We could live our lives in such a manner as to encourage the kind of high drama that makes for interesting stories? We could go out of our way to set up cathartic moments, climactic arguments and pseudo-ironic happenstances. It’s not like we haven’t watched enough tv and film to know all the right things to say!”.
"Haha, I'll be the promiscuous gay guy who is more stereotype than man and you can be the woman who eats chocolate instead of having sex, because apparently it's empowering to gain weight instead of meaningful human interaction" Clive lost a bit of his own focus while blurting this out and Devon, deciding that she had found a weak point in his defences, lunged forward with the cry of "Sooo tiny!". Clive leapt back off the dock and as he went towards the water exclaimed "It is so tiny!".
Much later that evening Clive found himself sharing a beer with Tony during a moment where the latter had, oddly, fallen quiet. But it wasn’t to last and Tony surprised him by asking “Hey Clive, you know I keep going on and on about what I do – but what do you do, buddy?”. Thinking about it for a moment, Clive then replied “I argue, mostly with women it seems, resolving little or nothing at all...”.
Thursday, 22 February 2007
Clive versus The Slug People: Round One
“I can’t believe the things you say” Charlotte turned from the kitchen counter as she said this, lending a kinetic energy to her statement as her eyes settled on Clive. “I can’t believe the things you say!” Clive replied, struggling for more than mimicry in his defence.
The young couple had just returned to their apartment from a party where only one of them had been having much joy. It had been in a townhouse out in one of the newer suburbs and almost everyone there had been Charlottes friends long before she’d become involved with Clive.
Ignoring his paper thin remark, Charlotte pressed on. “I simply cannot believe that you got pissed…”
“Three pints is hardly getting…”
“You got pissed and started talking to your friend Greg about how you thought the rest of the party were all snails!”
“Slugs, love, I referred to them all as slugs. Snails at least have the foresight to invest in a portable home.” Clive had no idea why he sought to clarify this point. The overhead light dimmed slightly, obviously on the way to needing replacing. Hands falling down to her thighs for emphasis, Charlotte let out a huff of exasperated air as she leaned against the counter. “Slugs it is then. Why do you have to be so judgemental?”
“Alright, fair play, I was judging. But I wasn’t being judgemental in that I wasn’t trying to bolster my ego by pointing at all the shitty people. I was just trying to articulate a feeling is all.” Clive took a seat at the kitchen table. He knew Charlotte already had the moral high ground so she might as well be physically looking down on him too. Taking her silence as a cue to go on, he did. “It’s a feeling I’ve been having more and more ever since we got out of school. The feeling that I’ve no more time to waste and it repulses me, fills me with a kind of fear, when I am wasting time.”
“Okay…and spending time with my friends is a waste then, is it?” she said with a shallow calmness. “Yes, for me it is. I get nothing from them and I don’t care how mercenary that makes me sound. How self interested. How diabolically…”. His voice was rising, his left hand tensing slightly for a fist when he didn’t want to hit anything that could be touched. “Alright” his lover replied “Then how does this lead to you insulting them all? How does your disinterest and fear make them slugs?”
“Because that’s precisely what they are! That and an assortment of gimmicky, put on personality traits and problems which are forever being maintained as the most interesting things they have to offer! All they do is pass though life leaving nothing but waste product behind them. Fucking. Slugs. ” Darting in while he took a breath, Charlotte said “You know, I’m being entirely too polite with you considering what you’re saying about people who’ve been quite kind to me for some time.” as she stepped over and behind his seat. Placing her hands on his shoulders and looking forward at the clock on the wall, Charlotte thought “It’s enough hearing him get wound up, I don’t have to look at it as well….and I hope he winds down before it gets too late. I’ve got to open the store tomorrow.”
Clive noticed his left hand’s behaviour and he steadied it by curling the index finger around the one on Charlottes left hand, then letting it hang limply as he continued. “That may very well be but…the negative aspects positively drown the positive”.
“You’re being quite the little accountant Clive. Does it comfort you to think that others might not weigh you as being in the black on their own little ledgers?”
“Of course it does. It’s happened, I’m sure of it. But that isn’t relevant and if someone doesn’t enjoy my company then why should they be forced to be in it?” Charlotte waggled her left index a little, playfully swinging Clive’s forearm back and forth. He let her. “Alright Clive…I suppose you felt forced to be in the company of my sluggy pals then?”. “Well” he muttered towards the linoleum “A little bit, but mostly I was hoping that it might be a fun and rewarding time after all. But I was kind of fooling myself since I’ve never really enjoyed myself at those parties before.”
Charlotte slid her hands down to gently rest at Clive’s waist and playfully dug her chin into the top of his head. “Right, then when you were disappointed yet again you decided it somehow wouldn’t do any harm to tear into these people since you didn’t care if you ever saw them again…forgetting to consider my feelings.”
She was right on the money but not the whole of it. Clive really did find these people disturbing. Disturbing in how they seemed to throw away great swaths of the most precious thing we have, time, with total indifference. Disconcerting in how self-improvement was less important and valued than self-indulgence. Distressing in how they would talk about serious problems, like depression or chronic health issues, with the kind of wide eyed vigour usually reserved for telling people about your achievements. Discombobulating in how…
Okay, there wasn’t really anything about them which upset his sense of balance and it was getting late besides. Best to push it under and remember what’s really important. “You’re right Charlotte, I was disappointed and I did forget your feelings. Let’s just go to bed and forget the whole messy thing”. He gently slid Charlotte off of him as he stood up, but she had her own ideas and spun him around to face in her direction as he did so. “Well Clive, you might be on to something. I’ve been having my doubts too, though I don’t entirely agree with you. Stacy has been talking about her low metabolism way too often for my liking. But whatever, I have to open up tomorrow and I want to get to bed. I also don’t want you to just push this feeling of yours under and stew.”
Clive cocked an eyebrow as he said “Okay”, like it was a question. “Okay” Charlotte answered “We can talk about it some more another time, but I still might want you to apologize to some of those people. I’m not going to just saw off a huge branch of my social life because you got scared”.
“I wouldn’t say I got scared…”
“Yeah well don’t worry, I’ll say it for you. You got scared of your own mortality and took it out on these people as vengeance for their boring you.”
Clive shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Well you seem to be halfway towards getting what I’m saying. Now let’s go to bed and if you’re well behaved I just might let you play with my body”. Then it was Charlottes turn to roll her eyes, just before turning off the kitchen lights and making a mental note to change that light bulb.
The young couple had just returned to their apartment from a party where only one of them had been having much joy. It had been in a townhouse out in one of the newer suburbs and almost everyone there had been Charlottes friends long before she’d become involved with Clive.
Ignoring his paper thin remark, Charlotte pressed on. “I simply cannot believe that you got pissed…”
“Three pints is hardly getting…”
“You got pissed and started talking to your friend Greg about how you thought the rest of the party were all snails!”
“Slugs, love, I referred to them all as slugs. Snails at least have the foresight to invest in a portable home.” Clive had no idea why he sought to clarify this point. The overhead light dimmed slightly, obviously on the way to needing replacing. Hands falling down to her thighs for emphasis, Charlotte let out a huff of exasperated air as she leaned against the counter. “Slugs it is then. Why do you have to be so judgemental?”
“Alright, fair play, I was judging. But I wasn’t being judgemental in that I wasn’t trying to bolster my ego by pointing at all the shitty people. I was just trying to articulate a feeling is all.” Clive took a seat at the kitchen table. He knew Charlotte already had the moral high ground so she might as well be physically looking down on him too. Taking her silence as a cue to go on, he did. “It’s a feeling I’ve been having more and more ever since we got out of school. The feeling that I’ve no more time to waste and it repulses me, fills me with a kind of fear, when I am wasting time.”
“Okay…and spending time with my friends is a waste then, is it?” she said with a shallow calmness. “Yes, for me it is. I get nothing from them and I don’t care how mercenary that makes me sound. How self interested. How diabolically…”. His voice was rising, his left hand tensing slightly for a fist when he didn’t want to hit anything that could be touched. “Alright” his lover replied “Then how does this lead to you insulting them all? How does your disinterest and fear make them slugs?”
“Because that’s precisely what they are! That and an assortment of gimmicky, put on personality traits and problems which are forever being maintained as the most interesting things they have to offer! All they do is pass though life leaving nothing but waste product behind them. Fucking. Slugs. ” Darting in while he took a breath, Charlotte said “You know, I’m being entirely too polite with you considering what you’re saying about people who’ve been quite kind to me for some time.” as she stepped over and behind his seat. Placing her hands on his shoulders and looking forward at the clock on the wall, Charlotte thought “It’s enough hearing him get wound up, I don’t have to look at it as well….and I hope he winds down before it gets too late. I’ve got to open the store tomorrow.”
Clive noticed his left hand’s behaviour and he steadied it by curling the index finger around the one on Charlottes left hand, then letting it hang limply as he continued. “That may very well be but…the negative aspects positively drown the positive”.
“You’re being quite the little accountant Clive. Does it comfort you to think that others might not weigh you as being in the black on their own little ledgers?”
“Of course it does. It’s happened, I’m sure of it. But that isn’t relevant and if someone doesn’t enjoy my company then why should they be forced to be in it?” Charlotte waggled her left index a little, playfully swinging Clive’s forearm back and forth. He let her. “Alright Clive…I suppose you felt forced to be in the company of my sluggy pals then?”. “Well” he muttered towards the linoleum “A little bit, but mostly I was hoping that it might be a fun and rewarding time after all. But I was kind of fooling myself since I’ve never really enjoyed myself at those parties before.”
Charlotte slid her hands down to gently rest at Clive’s waist and playfully dug her chin into the top of his head. “Right, then when you were disappointed yet again you decided it somehow wouldn’t do any harm to tear into these people since you didn’t care if you ever saw them again…forgetting to consider my feelings.”
She was right on the money but not the whole of it. Clive really did find these people disturbing. Disturbing in how they seemed to throw away great swaths of the most precious thing we have, time, with total indifference. Disconcerting in how self-improvement was less important and valued than self-indulgence. Distressing in how they would talk about serious problems, like depression or chronic health issues, with the kind of wide eyed vigour usually reserved for telling people about your achievements. Discombobulating in how…
Okay, there wasn’t really anything about them which upset his sense of balance and it was getting late besides. Best to push it under and remember what’s really important. “You’re right Charlotte, I was disappointed and I did forget your feelings. Let’s just go to bed and forget the whole messy thing”. He gently slid Charlotte off of him as he stood up, but she had her own ideas and spun him around to face in her direction as he did so. “Well Clive, you might be on to something. I’ve been having my doubts too, though I don’t entirely agree with you. Stacy has been talking about her low metabolism way too often for my liking. But whatever, I have to open up tomorrow and I want to get to bed. I also don’t want you to just push this feeling of yours under and stew.”
Clive cocked an eyebrow as he said “Okay”, like it was a question. “Okay” Charlotte answered “We can talk about it some more another time, but I still might want you to apologize to some of those people. I’m not going to just saw off a huge branch of my social life because you got scared”.
“I wouldn’t say I got scared…”
“Yeah well don’t worry, I’ll say it for you. You got scared of your own mortality and took it out on these people as vengeance for their boring you.”
Clive shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Well you seem to be halfway towards getting what I’m saying. Now let’s go to bed and if you’re well behaved I just might let you play with my body”. Then it was Charlottes turn to roll her eyes, just before turning off the kitchen lights and making a mental note to change that light bulb.
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