#76 - Words Left Unsaid

Today’s words: Cat, Sex, Lemon, Colour

Word count: 728

Completion time: 51 minutes

Summary: If you never tell someone what you’re thinking or feeling, you could be worrying over absolutely nothing

--

For one of the first times in her life, Charlotte was glad that her webcam transformed her into a blurry mix of colour; it was like crying when it was raining. She wasn’t crying about the lack of sex, she was crying about the emotional distance that she was feeling between her and Blake. It was true that Blake had never been with another girl before so she’d be nervous, but they had barely even kissed.

“You think she’s gone off of girls already?” Charlotte asked Gary in her thick Brooklyn accent as she readjusted the strap on her dress. He laughed a little, making her look up at him accusingly. “That a yes?” Tears began to sting her eyes, which she quickly wiped away with her index fingers.

“You guys have spent two days together, there’s no way you can tell what she’s feeling yet, give it time.”

“I’ve done everything...I’ve,” she looked up towards the ceiling and counted the list off with her fingers, “rested my head on her shoulder, told her she looks pretty, stared at her a little after we break away from a hug, but I can’t feel any intimacy...”

“Have you tried talking to her about it?”

Inhaling, she prepared to answer but held back before starting again. “I try...but it’s difficult to...you know, get the words out; I don’t want her to think that I’m worrying over nothing.”

Gary smiled sympathetically. “You’re worrying and that’s enough; if something’s affecting you emotionally, it’s never stupid or invalid...she should understand that.”

She whispered “yeah” under her breath and watched as more tears fell onto the skirt of her summer dress, a dress that was yellow like the colour of a bright, cheerful lemon. “I wore yellow today,” she said, touching the hem with her fingers and curling them around the thin material. “Yellow’s meant to be the happiest colour, right? I think I read that once.”

“Probably, I don’t know,” Gary said, trying and failing to study the dress.

“Why am I such a scardey cat?”

“You’re not.”

“Oh jeez, you heard that?” she put the back of her hand in front of her mouth and smiled, blinking away a few more tears.

“You know, she might be feeling the same way...she might think that she’s done something wrong or that you don’t like her anymore.”

She wrinkled her brow and chuckled. “No way, I’m crazy about her.”

“But look at it from her point of view...she might be anxious to get closer to you too, and because you’re the first girl she’s been with, she might not even be able to look at you without freaking out.”

She sat up suddenly. “I get nervous to look at her, too.”

“Yeah, see? And you’re experienced, so imagine how she’s feeling.”

There were a few seconds of silence on both ends before Charlotte said: “Wow...I was too caught up thinking about myself to even...” she put both hands on either side of her and leant forward a little. “You think she might be feeling this, too?”

“You won’t know until you ask, so just go for it.”

Soft footsteps were heard coming up the stairs, prompting Charlotte to say, “Hey, I think she’s done making dinner for us...I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“That’s fine, just remember – be open with her.”

“Got it.”

The bedroom door opened slightly and Blake popped her head around the door. “You ready for food?”

Charlotte’s heart began to take control of her entire body until she could feel every inch pulsing rapidly. “Yeah...um, is it alright if we talk real quick? It’s nothing big,” she hastened to add, “it’s just...something on my mind.”

It took a while for Charlotte to voice what she wanted to say, but eventually it all came tumbling out once the first issue had been dislodged. She found it hard to look her in the eyes as she spoke, but Blake was hanging onto every word.

“To be honest,” Blake began once Charlotte was finished, “I was kind of scared to say or do anything wrong around you...so I was quieter than normal, I’m sorry,” she confessed, taking Charlotte in her arms. “I’m not sick of you at all, not even a little bit.”

Charlotte smiled against Blake’s hair, drying the tears on her shirt that were filled with joy rather than sorrow. “Good.”

#75 - Light

Today's words: Commence, Preponderance, Point, Lamplight

Word count: 161

Completion time:  20 minutes

Summary: This is just how I felt about the person I’m seeing, and I really couldn’t think of anything else right now. I don’t really feel like this anymore, the narrator isn't me.

--

You’re not supposed to look directly at the sunlight

So I’ll substitute it with lamplight and, knowing me

It’ll fuck with my sight regardless

My plight is slight, but it will fuck with my sight

Regardless

So I’ll commence, I’ll

Leave the lamp on all day and

All night, and it will be okay

Because it’s better to be like this

Than to be in the dark

Even though it’s just a lamp like all the others

It seems to have a preponderance amount of light

Which constantly leaves me in shadow

I don’t have electricity flowing through me

So how can I compete with that?

That spark,

That charge,

That perpetual glimmer that made trolls glimmer

I didn’t have it.

But the lamp did.

And it always would.

Because it was built that way;

I wasn’t

So point your light in another direction

At something that can reciprocate

Because I’m just a dull dead weight

No-one could possibly equate

Us

#74 - I'm Not Gay, I'm Dating a Girl

Today’s words: Incarnate, Zest, Troubled, Posture

Word count: 624

Completion time: 50 minutes

Summary: It’s never that easy to hide your sexuality...something’s going to give eventually

--

It wasn’t very fair on her, but they had the same eyes, same relaxed posture when sitting down, same zest for life that encouraged me to try my best; to me they were the same person. Not to mention the fact that they were twins. They weren’t identical, but when I found out that they shared the same womb for nine months, my brain made up similarities that would have remained undetected otherwise. It’s a very exhausted stereotype that twins were two parts of a whole, but I couldn’t help myself...I suppose that the more similar I found them, the easier it was to deal with my troubled mind and fucked up situation.

Jody was bisexual, and he didn’t hide it so most people knew and he didn’t care...that’s what was so attractive about him – his confidence. A few people had made fun of him in the past but it didn’t seem to get to him, he’d just laugh it off and play along because he was secure in his sexuality; that and Kim was likely to raise hell like Satan incarnate if anyone crossed paths with her brother.

Kim. She was the person I originally went for, and it took me a while to realise that I had chosen the wrong gender, let alone the wrong sibling. Don’t get me wrong, she was great and still is, but it was Jody who had a futon reserved in my heart. However, instead of breaking up with her when I realised, I pretended that she was Jody to try and make it work. Now, they didn’t look very similar at all, so my imagination got a bit of a workout and my eyes were closed a lot more often – when we would cuddle on the sofa, when she gave me blowjobs, when she fell asleep on my chest.  And it worked – I got hard, I performed well, and we were both happy, so what was the harm [?] I asked myself.

Dishonesty. I hated myself. I could pretend that everything was okay, but Kim was in love with a lie, a projection of someone she thought she knew. Someone she thought loved her back. Someone she thought wasn’t, could never be, gay. How could a gay man kiss her, touch her, fuck her like that? If someone insisted that I was gay, she wouldn’t have believed them.

Why didn’t I just tell everyone the truth, tell Kim that I didn’t, couldn’t like her anymore because I liked Jody? Then tell Jody exactly what I told Kim? No-one knew that I was gay, and I had only been informed a couple of months earlier when I found myself on the ‘gay’ section of a porn site, wanking through about four videos before noticing that something was up. Liking guys doesn’t automatically make someone gay, but it made me question everything and eventually I concluded that I didn’t feel the same about girls as I did about guys, not even close. But by then, I had already been seeing Kim for five months.

So what did I do about Kim? Furthermore, what did I do about Jody? I had to end it with Kim eventually, I couldn’t keep it up...what if she wanted to get serious? I couldn’t pretend to love her as a serious partner, a husband, a father, all the while stealing glances at Jody and mind-wanking to explicit fantasies at family events. As for Jody, I decided that I couldn’t go there after I’d dipped my nib in the family ink, so I forced myself to move on and find another guy.

I haven’t found him yet, but I know he’s out there and when I find him, I’ll tell him how I feel.

#71 - Believe

Today's words: Starlight, Jellyfish, Bioluminescence, Agoraphobia

Word count: 434

Completion time: 38 minutes

Summary: Sometimes it’s comforting to keep on believing, even when the odds are stacked against you

Uhhhh, 'Believe' by Yellowcard just came on shuffle, what

The first time I made her laugh really hard was when I told her that I could see our future in the stars. “That’s impossible,” she said, “they’re just random stars.” No, I said, if they were just random stars, we wouldn’t have constellations or star signs (the fact that I don’t believe in star signs was irrelevant, I was trying to be romantic). And plus, I added, how would she know what I can and can’t see? I could swear blind that I saw a talking turquoise dinosaur next to me and no-one would be able to prove me wrong because my vision is my own.

The last time I made her cry was when I said, agoraphobia aside, that I would put oven gloves on and rearrange the stars in space to spell out her name. Okay, she didn’t cry, she cringed a bit and punched me in the arm whilst trying to hold back snorts, informing me that it was also impossible. I didn’t care.

I want to make the impossible possible.

When they told me that I couldn’t like boys and girls as a kid, instead of wondering why, I stung like a jellyfish and told them to go fuck themselves. I don’t know how I got those words together, but a suspension for a few days told me that it must have been a bad combination.

You see, whenever anyone gets in my way, instead of conforming, I fight back. I can eat dessert before dinner if I want, I can wear anything I like from Topman and rock it just like the men, I can rearrange space for the girl I kinda like, just give me the space suit, the rocket, and the gloves.

But one day there’ll be no starlight to reflect off her eyes, and just like the bioluminescence of a firefly, they’ll lose their light and die. Most of me wants to protest, wants to claim that no, they can burn until the end of time if it’s their will. When I’m up there in my space suit and I spot a dying star, I’ll give it CPR and make it live for another ten thousand years, you’ll see.

She says that I’m living in a fantasy, that one day I’ll be really disappointed and I know that, but just like a child willing for Father Christmas to be real (even though they recognise their dad’s face under the beard), I’ll keep on believing that I can do anything for as long as I can.

If nothing can last forever, at least give me that.

#69 - Girls Girls Girls

Today’s words: Copy, Riband, Distribute, Establish

Word count: 490

Completion time: 23 minutes

Summary: Sometimes the things you want to say can’t come out

--

At school, I always copy the other girls. I listen to music in the charts, gossip about celebrities I don’t know, and tell them all about some guy I liked.

That was the hard bit.

It was difficult to establish exactly what made the guy so special, why I chose him over the others. Was it the way he styled his hair? His smile? How friendly he was? Just exactly what was it about him that I was supposed to highlight? The other girls would go on about how ‘cute’ certain boys were, or how they were so ‘hot’ and which ones they wanted to kiss, but I found it hard to make that up without sounding like a bad actress in an equally rubbish film. That’s exactly it...it sounded like a performance.

Each girl would get her turn in the spotlight to drool over some guy and everyone would have to sit and listen, occasionally squealing or prodding for further information, a little like an animal at a zoo that they want to hear growl again. I didn’t have to do it, but if I didn’t, I was scared that they’d find out.

“Yeah, he’s nice, I really like him.”

I thought I could leave it at that, but apparently I had to expand, I had to distribute words for them like playing cards that they could hold between their fingers and analyse, or scrutinise.

“Why do you like him?? I heard he eats his own eye gunk.”

Well what made their guys so special? They were either dirty, vulgar, mean, unsympathetic, ugly, or all five at the same time. And the ones that weren’t felt like siblings, people I’d never want to go out with for fear of feeling morally unsound.

Then, of course, there was the question of why I didn’t make any moves on them, or why I never talked about them much afterwards. I said that I didn’t like them as much anymore, so they’d ask if I liked anyone else. Foolishly I said yes, but hastened to add that they didn’t know him, that he went to another school.

“What’s he like? Go on, tell us!”

He’s...he’s, beautiful, I suppose. He has long flowing hair and the way he smells always makes me hungry. He always wears a blue riband on his backpack from when he got second place in a cooking contest a few years ago. Sometimes, when we’re just sitting around, I’ll steal several glances at him and wonder how on earth anyone could look so good, so perfect. Oh and his laugh...it didn’t sound like a regular laugh, it sounded like the titter of a shy choir before a big performance at the Albert Hall, real sweet, you know?

“Wow, he sounds amazing!”

Well yeah, he is amazing. He’s better than that, he’s...incredible.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell them that he didn’t exist, but she did.