Day Fifty Three--One Day Before Nanowrimo Begins!

For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.  Frank Gehry

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project-- David McCullough

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step--Lao Tzu

Nanowrimo begins tomorrow! Still on the fence? Check out these Pep talks.

I still plan to write a long, rambling, bad novel about I- have- no- idea what, but might get a clue today.

Prompt: Brainstorm for ten minutes on story ideas for your novel.

Day Fifty Two: Travel

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.--Anais Nin

It is better to travel well than to arrive--Buddha

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up--Ernest Hemingway

 

Today's prompts come from Bryan Cohen's blog Build Creative Writing Ideas:

1. What is the best vacation you've ever been on? Who were you with, where did you travel to, what were some of the sights that you saw? Write down every detail and pose a hypothetical trip with the same people if you went back today.
2. What is the worst vacation you've ever been on? What fights occurred, how lost did you get, how much money did you lose, etc.? Pose a hypothetical of the trip going perfectly and see what major things would have changed.
3. What is your most memorable airport/airplane experience? Did you sit on the runway for a long time? Talk to a runway model on the plane? Have to run...way far to get to your gate on time? :) Use lots of details and try to remember all of the emotions that you had at the time.
4. Talk about a time in which you had to show someone foreign to your neighborhood, town, country, planet around the area. Do you feel as though you were a good tour guide? What did this person (or alien) think after your demonstration?
5. Create a story in which you are in a foreign country in which you don't speak the language...and you've lost all of your belongings (cash included). How do you deal with this situation?
6. Why is travel so stressful? What would you have to do to take all of the stress out of traveling for yourself? A closer airport? Calmer family members? Your own jet? Talk about it as if it was happening and detail your first stress-free traveling experience.
7. Did you ever have a foreign love experience? If not, make one up and talk about how you met, how your love progressed, and what it was like leaving him or her (if you ever did leave!).
8. Have you ever traveled back to the "mother country" to discover your family's roots? If not, make up a story in which you did and see how much you can find out about your ancestry. Did you learn anything about yourself and the kind of person you are on this trip?
9. Talk about a road trip that you've had. Who was there, where were you going, and what seedy rest stops did you go to along the way? If you haven't been on such a trip, create the ideal trip for yourself by getting your best friends together and going to your favorite driveable location (that is at least 100 miles away).
10. You are in the airport and you are about to travel home for the holidays. Except one problem. You're snowed in! Talk about your night (or nights) at the airport and if you meet any strange and interesting people.


As I always encourage with these prompts, you can use them both for writing and as a way to grow. Plan out that trip that you've always wanted to take that you know will be a growing experience. Or just create that novel you've always wanted to pen out. Either way works fine by me :). As long as you are creating using these free creative writing prompts, I am sure that you are using your time wisely. Happy writing!


Bonus Prompt - You have been granted the ability to fly! I mean, like Superman! Where do you travel with this newfound ability now that you don't need to save up frequent flyer miles?

Note: The above text (except for quotes on travel) was taken directly from Bryan's Blog. The picture was taken from Switzerland :0) Have Fun!

Day Fifty One: Free Write!

"... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things." Anton Chekhov

"A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening." James Dickey

 "It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Benchley

I admit it! Too tired tonight to find an original prompt. Fortunately, free-writing is always a good exercise.

10 minutes...don't stop to reword or correct or punctuate.

Take it a step further: Start a story, poem or essay with a phrase that showed up in this exercise.

Have fun!

Day Fifty: Tag--You're God!

You're everywhere. You're omnivorous--Homer Simpson, to God

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself--
Peter O'Toole

Yes, I rather like this God fellow. He's very theatrical, you know, a pestilence here, a plague there. Omnipotence. Gotta get me some of that--

Stewie Griffin 

Baby character in animated TV series 'Family Guy'. 

This exercise from the book The Three AM Epiphany:

God.The Spectrum of narrative perspectives goes from benighted, flawed, unreliable first-person narrations to godlike omniscience--all-knowing understanding of everyone's thoughts and deepest motives. But God's POV is also, presumably, a first-person narration--or perhaps God speaks occasionally in the royal we or the second-person plural. What would God see? How would God know a very ordinary set of events--or how could mere human readers see all that a god (let alone God) sees? Since God should know how to be efficient and get right to the point, do this exercise in only 200 words.

Day Forty Nine: Three Words

Remember to Live~ Goethe ~

In three worlds I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on~ Robert Frost ~

Knowledge is power~ Thomas Hobbes ~ 

This exercise is from the book Three Simple Words by David Stoddard. It's simply a book of a wide variety of three word phrases to use as writing prompts.

Here are today's (to do with what you will...):


Not so fast

Now he's dead

You're not welcome

Exercise 49

by Laurie Guerin

You’re not welcome.  When I said you were it was automatic, because I am afflicted with terminal  politeness.  For example, I decided to have dinner alone tonight at this fabulous little diner by the beach.  You know the one.  I sit down with my glass of cab at the only free, clean booth in the place. A booth for four big people or six reasonably sized ones. I stare at the big screen mounted on the wall. The sound is off, but there are subtitles and I see the Niners are playing and I couldn’t care less. I’m so happy about not caring less that I smile at the table next to me and raise my glass to the four middle-aged idiots sitting there wearing  matching red shirts.

“To the Niners,” I say.

The idiots are so frenzied with obsession for the Niners that they don’t pick up on the mockery in my voice, which only adds to my delight. They raise their mugs of MGD high and one of them shouts, “Yay-yah!”

He pronounces the word  ‘yeah’  with two syllables.  

 “A pretty lady with good taste! Where have you been all my life?”  

 I cringe at the expression ‘Pretty lady.’ Does anything give a man’s nature away faster than the use of that phrase? He may as well stand up and announce himself as a botched swinger whose wife left him at the end of the disco era.  

His friends laugh.  One clasps a hand over the guy’s mouth. “Keep it down, Dude!” he says. “This isn’t a sport’s bar.”

 I cheerfully fire-up my laptop, and type the first two sentences of this letter to you (a letter I may or may not send) when I notice a smaller table has just been vacated.  I decide to free up my table once the smaller one is bussed.  I’m waiting, when a reasonably-sized family comes around the corner; Grand-parents, a mom and two kids. They’re all carrying green trays, searching for a place to sit. There’s outside seating, but the fog is rolling in.

“Hi!” I say to the little girl. “I was just thinking I’d move to that smaller table there. Would you and your family like to sit here?”

She stares at me blankly with her mouth open.  I hope someone will warn her—and soon—about the association people make between gape-mouthed breathing and low IQ. I recently met a family of mouth-breathers and thought what a shame it was that no one had taken the time.

“That would be fantastic!” Her grandfather says. He’s a handsome man with a square jaw and silver hair. He has a slight roll around his middle, so I know more than I care to about how he looks in the nude.

His wife and I gather up my things. He follows and begins to clear my new table.

“Oh, I was going to ask the bus boy to do that.”

“My pleasure,” he says. His eyes are robin’s egg blue. There’s not a better description. He wears a shirt of the same shade. “You were so kind to give up your table.”

“Terminal politeness." I want to say.  “I can’t help it.”

 In this case it's good. I settle into my new spot and look over at them.  His family chats happily while he, his eyes glued to the screen, feigns interest.

In your case it was not good. I am plagued now, by thoughts of all of the things I should have said or done, but didn’t because I was too busy being nice.

I think of your hideous, snorting dog, for one, with his smashed in face—not by accident mind you, but deliberate breeding.  How you had to bring him everywhere. How I’d wake up in the middle of the night, my face steamed by his vile breath.  

I think of your cooking, of your vegan-ness. I should have run at first glimpse of that soggy, watery bok choy you couldn't get enough of. 

I’ve been eating meat daily. I’m eating it this moment, in fact. Skirt steak, medium well.  I’ve never craved flesh like I do now.

 

Day Forty Eight: I Steal

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.--Howard Aiken

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing--George Orwell

I would like to make a toast to lying, stealing, cheating and drinking. If you're going to lie, lie for a friend. If you're going to steal, steal a heart. If you're going to cheat, cheat death. And if you're going to drink, drink with me--anonymous 

Today's prompt is taken from the book The Writer's Idea Book by Jack Heffron:

Mona Simpson begins her story Lawns with the sentence "I steal." Begin a story or poem or journal entry with the line "I _________________" Push forward from there. If you can think of one action that speaks to who you are, what would it be? Write at least a few paragraphs. Try this experiment a few times, using different actions. 

Exercise 48 

by Laurie Guerin

I question.

I question everything including my own questioning. I question authority and I question the opposite of authority although I can’t find a better word to represent it than ‘weak’ or ‘powerless’ or ‘unauthoritative’ the latter of which was flagged by spellcheck which causes me to question the legitimacy of the site I found the word on.

The answers to my questions about religion have led to more questions.

“You have to feel your way to believing,” my religious friends have said. “It’s not about logic or double-blind studies.”

I question double-blind studies. Still, the fact that there are questions that science cannot answer leaves me with hope. Hope is the closest thing I have to religion, though it sputters and buzzes like a florescent tube in a pawn shop window.

Last night I went to my first Buddhist talk.

                “The mind can be defined as that which experiences,” said the teacher. A middle-aged man with a comb over, he wasn’t what I expected. I thought his head would be shaved. I thought he’d be in an orange robe. I thought he’d be sitting on a cushion surrounded by students able to hold the lotus position indefinitely. He wore baggy jeans and slouched in a chair. I liked him. He was approachable. Someone I could question.

He explained that the mind experiences different states of consciousness. Dreams for example. “When we have a nightmare in which we are being chased by a vicious dog it feels real. Until we wake up and think ‘Oh, thank God! It was just a dream.’” 

Actually, I don’t remember if he said ‘Thank God.’ He might have said ‘Thank Goodness.’ I’m pretty sure he didn’t say ‘Thank Buddha.’

He said Buddhists believe that life is dream. That when we die, we awaken to another consciousness.  

I liked that idea. I could imagine waking up from dying and realizing life had been a dream. I wondered if the people who wrote the song ‘Row, row, row your boat’ had been Buddhist.I wonder why I think more than one person wrote the song and realize it's because no one ever sings it alone.

A woman raised her hand and said “I just had the thought that we are all dreaming right now, because if we were not here, this moment would not exist.”

I questioned her thought.

So did the teacher.

“Not exactly,” he said. “A more accurate way to see it would be to understand that all twenty-seven of us are having different dreams of what is happening in this room right now. Different perceptions.”

“Ah ha!” she said.
“Ah ha!” I thought. It was true. I was dreaming that the woman in front of me was flipping her blond hair too much and that the two women on my left were laughing overly hard at things the teacher said. Things that were only slightly amusing.

Perceptions. Mine. And so negative. Just being aware of them as fabrications of my mind shifted my thinking. I softened. I noticed how the blond woman’s hair seemed shot through with sunlight. I settled into the easy laughter of the women next to me.

Something in me relaxed and I realized I felt more at ease than I had in a very long time. My mind was calmer. My questions hung suspended by invisible chains over my head.

“What untrained beings might do at the moment of death is to grasp tightly to life, too afraid to let go. The risk of dying in this state is that they will carry this grasping into their next life and in desperation, hop into the nearest womb they find.”

The chains above my head rattled.

 “Someone with training can maintain a consciousness throughout the process of dying that allows him to have the presence of mind to remain calm, to determine the path his next life will take.”

He gave an example of a guy who was way up in whatever the enlightened being hierarchy is—a lama or guru or something. The guy decided in advance that he wanted to be reborn as the son of two of his favorite students. That way he could continue his study of Buddhism. The students did, in fact have a son who was later verified by the Dali Lama and others to be the guru guy.

The chains clattered and banged.

I sighed.  

“Why?” I asked my husband in the car. “I was totally on board until all of that rebirth stuff. Isn’t there any spiritual practice, any religion that admits to not knowing what happens after death?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? No one would show up for a religion like that.”

“I would!” I said. “I would show up for a discussion of possibilities without conclusion. For something that allowed…”

“…Questions?”

My inclination to question is, without question, unquestionable.
            It won't be my last Buddhist talk, because there was so much that resonated, and that's something. I've realized that there isn't a ready-made religion or philosophy for me, but I can cobble something together a piece at a time. It's probable that everyone does this to some extent, even people who are able to call themselves Christians, or Muslims or Buddhists. And those who embrace every aspect of a religion literally and wholeheartedly still have a different perception of God, or the prophet than the guy in the next pew (or on the next cushion, or prayer mat, or...)

All of us are livin' the dream.

Day Forty Seven: Journalism

A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion--James Boswell

American Splendor is just an ongoing journal. It's an ongoing autobiography. I started it when I was in my early 30s, and I just keep going.--Harvey Pekar

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words--Anthony Doerr

 

This exercise is taken from the book The 3 AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley

Write part of a story in the form of journal entries. Everything that happens will most likely happen between the entries. Make sure your readers can see the events offstage, but also present your journalist's blind spots--she will not present the whole story, just parts of it. 
...keep all the entries close together in time (within a week or two)... Make sure that the journal writer is still telling a story--showing as often as telling, revealing things about herself. In other words, you have to work just as hard in this exercise to choose the words of this narrator. Writers will tend to think that this journalist can say anything and not look outside of herself.  Avoid completely self-absorbed narrators here --and everywhere. 700 words

Exercise 47

by Laurie Guerin

Friday:

Jack is not himself, or at least the self I thought I knew. I invited him over for dinner and he was extremely condescending, even borderline cruel.

                “Maybe you should have steamed the asparagus for another twenty minutes to make them more flaccid,” he said. I laughed, because they really were overcooked and flaccid was a horrible but apt description, but he didn’t crack a smile. Just kept stabbing at them and then pushed his plate away.  Sam was there—he managed in typical Sam fashion to show up just before dinner with a bottle of wine. He laughed too, but stopped when Jack literally glared at him.

                “Dude,” Sam said. “Have another glass of wine.”  He filled Jack’s glass to the brim thinking maybe that would lighten him up.  What did Jack do? He picked up the glass and downed the wine in one gulp, which would have been fine if he had done it in the spirit of fun.  Instead, he pushed his chair back, apologized for being such bad company and headed for the door.  I was almost in shock. I mean, this is the same guy who just last week was dying for me to meet his family? Who practically begged me to hop on a plane--to Texas of all God-forsaken places?

                “Jack!” I jumped up and followed him outside. “What is going on with you?”

                He looked back at the house. “Is he part of the package? Because I didn’t realize you were a two-for-one deal.”

                He was talking about Sam, of course. We could see him through the dining room window, still sitting at the table.

                I couldn’t believe it. The three of us have been together for almost the entire summer, no problem. In fact, one night I had to work late and the two of them went to the movies without me. He’s told me how many times how much he likes Sam? Suddenly he’s playing the jealous boyfriend? I said as much to him, but he just shook his head and got into his car.

                “Yes!” I yelled before he closed the door. “He is part of the package and too bad if you don’t like it.”

                Because it’s true.

Sam has been my best friend since grade school.  I’m not about to drop him for some guy—even one I like (before tonight I would have written love) as much as Jack. Plus he’s gay with a capitol G so it’s not like he’s a threat romantically. Jack’s just going to have to deal.

**

Saturday:

Did not sleep a wink. I was sure Jack would call to apologize, but he didn’t.  Sam gave me a hug and left not long after, told me he bet Jack would be back before sunrise. I didn’t tell him what Jack said, because it was so out of left field. What am I going to do if Jack doesn’t call? I really do love him. I just don’t know what to think now.

Saturday (Later):

Phew! Jack called at around noon. He was so sweet and apologetic. It turns out he was getting sick. He woke up with a fever, poor thing. I’m not convinced that it was the fever talking, but maybe he was just short on reserves. I’m going to make sure we talk this out when he’s better. I think I’ll surprise him and take over some chicken soup later. Just have to find a recipe and make sure not to steam anything to the point of flaccidity (is that even a word? Haha!).

Sunday:

                 Guess who beat me to Jack’s?  Sam!  It was pretty funny, both of us showing up with chicken soup. I hadn’t even told Sam about Jack being sick, but I guess he was so worried about Friday night that he popped in unannounced too.  By the time I got there, the two of them were sitting side-by-side on the couch like best buds. It was funny, because at first it looked like Sam had his arm around Jack, but he was just giving him a neck rub.  Jack scolded me for not calling, said that he would have showered and spruced the place up if he’d have known.  So sweet! I hated to leave, but had to meet up with Stephanie and the gang. Sam walked me to the door, promising he’d look after Jack.

                Looks like that little storm blew over!

Day Forty Six: Nanowrimo Warm Up

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. --Ernest Hemingway

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life--Eudora Welty
 

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel--WH Auden

 

There is all kinds of advice floating around about how to prepare for Nanowrimo. I'm going with the "Minimally or not at all crowd." That said, I want to get an idea of what writing a novel in one month will feel/look like in terms of time, content, etc, and perhaps generate some ideas in the process.

Exercise: Pretend it's the first day of November and you are starting your novel. Write eight pages.

That's it! No rules. Just see what you come up with.

Day Forty Five: Truth Telling

Free speech is the privilege of the dead, the monopoly of the dead. They can speak their honest minds without offending. We may disapprove of what they say, but we do not insult them, we do not revile them, as knowing they cannot now defend themselves.--Mark Twain

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor--Albert Einstein

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say-Anaïs Nin

unvarnished [ʌnˈvɑːnɪʃt] 

adj

1. not elaborated upon or glossed; plain and direct

2.free from any effort to soften to disguise; "the plain and unvarnished truth"; "the unvarnished candor of old people and children"

Exercise:

There is something waiting to be said. This is your opportunity to tell the unvarnished truth. Write a letter from the heart (free-write style). Don't worry about punctuation or syntax or presenting a well-constructed argument. You may decided to send the letter, but for now--this is for your eyes only.

Some prompts to help you get started:

Here's what you didn't know...

It was this moment I realized you and I...

I'm not ready to apologize, but...

My biggest fear is that one of us will die before I tell you...

Enough time has gone by...

Later
Keeping this one private, but I there were some surprises. Not constructing an argument or needing to be right allowed me to be more honest as did taking Albert's advice to "leave elegance to the tailor."

 

 

Update: Day Forty-two thru Day Forty Four

Hey Fellow Writers,
Have been busy with a personal matter, but will be back tomorrow.
In the meantime:
Write on!
xo

Day Forty One: Freewrite

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there--Thomas Berger

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted--Jules Renard

Today is free write day! Write for at least 10 minutes non-stop. Don't even lift up your pen. At the end of your 10 minutes, find your favorite phrase(s) or sentence(s).

Take it further: Free write for 10 minutes beginning with your favorite sentence or phrase.  

 

Day Forty: Hands

 A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist--Louis Nizer

To receive everything, one must open ones hands and give.-- Taisen Deshimaru

When you step on the brakes, your life is in your foot's hands--George Carlin

Today's prompt is from The Write-Brain Workbook ,by Bonnie Neubauer:


Finish these shorts:


Her hands were so delicate...


He took my hand in his...


The calluses on his hands...

I have to hand it to you...


Take the next step
Close your eyes and explore your hands as if for the first time. They deliver the writing goods, yet we barely know them. When done, write one thing that surprised you about what came to mind. 

Remember: No rules--play and have fun! 

Later 

 Exercise 40

By L Guerin

Her hands were so delicate. They’re what keep coming back to me, those hands. How she took mine in hers when she saw I was crying about Pops. I was ten and he was the first person I ever saw go down. I knew people got old and died eventually—even knew some got crazy beforehand, but not my people. Nana had been here so long she still line-dried her clothes. And Pops used a magnifying glass instead of glasses. These were permanent people.

He took my hand in his. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know what we’re doing…What I’m doing. You have kids. I’m not sure I can do kids. I tried with…”

                “Shhh,” I said. “Let’s not worry about that. I’m not looking for a father for my children. I just want to have fun.”

                It was true. After agonizing and ultimately turning down a premature marriage proposal from a man who looked great on paper, I was determined to have a more playful approach to dating. A single mom for two years, I wanted a few weekly hours of freedom from responsibility and heavy decisions.

                His brow stayed furrowed. “But there’s something happening here that’s about more than that. At least for me.”

                “For me too. Let’s just take it moment by moment,” I lifted my glass in a toast.

                A month later we attended our first parenting class together.

The calluses on his hands were misleading. I was reminded of a book-- one of Vonnegut’s, featuring a character who sandpapered his fingertips so he could feel every nuance of a woman’s body. He wanted women to become his “willing slaves.”

This man’s fingertips were rough with dry resin. Despite vigorous attempts with a nail brush, ebony dust remained under his nails. This man’s fingertips were not sandpapered.

But they might as well have been.

I have to hand it to you, Kid. You make everything look so easy, so smooth. With your perfect life, you seem to have all of the answers-- didn't miss a day in the "How to Be a Success" master class. Even people with an innate sense of direction hire you to be their cartographer.

Only a handful of us know; you’re just as bored and desperate as the next guy.

  

 

Day Thirty Nine: Spin the Bottle

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.--Eduardo Galeano

The first kiss I had was the most disgusting thing in my life. The girl injected about a pound of saliva into my mouth, and when I walked away I had to spit it all out--Leonardo DiCaprio

I had to have my first kiss in front of, like, a hundred people. I didn't know what to do. So my sisters told me to, like, practice on a pillow, you know? But it didn't kiss me back so I didn't know what to expect--Lacey Chabert

This prompt is taken from the Write Brain Workbook by Bonnie Neubauer.

Finish the story. Start with:
At my first boy-girl party...

At my first boy-girl party I was fourteen which was practically elderly.It took me that long to get invited, but finally, miraculously  a group of semi-populars had given me their stamp of approval. 

Boy/girl parties were not on the list of events I had attended. My list looked like this:

                Monday

Read

                Tuesday

Read

Church Youth Group

                Wednesday

Read

                Thursday

Read

Babysit Twins

Watch Little House on the Prairie

Friday

 Babysit Rodgers Kids

Read

Saturday

 Babysit Smith kids

Watch Sanford and Sons followed by

Chico and The Man

Sunday

 Church

Family Day

Watch The Wonderful World of Disney

                My new friends were old pros at Boy/Girl parties. Even the biggest nerd in the bunch, Rhonda Meyers, assured me that making out with a guy was ‘Not a biggie.’

                “Everyone always fights over Bill Rogers. He’s the best kisser by a mile.”

                I couldn’t imagine kissing anyone, much less everyone, but rules were rules.

                “You have to kiss whoever the bottle points to, but you don’t have to kiss them for a long time. You can do like a peck, or you can do thirty seconds in heaven.”

                Thirty Seconds in Heaven was ducking into a closet with a boy and kissing him while everyone outside the closet counted to thirty.

                The day of the party we took the bus to PW Super and made a beeline for the cosmetics. Bonnie Bell had just come out with something called ‘Kissing Potion’. It was shiny and sticky and flavored. I bought peppermint. Rhonda bought strawberry. On the way home we took the glass vials out of their boxes and rolled the stuff on. 

                  Mine tasted like envelopes.

                “This should do the trick,” Rhonda said. I could see my reflection in her lips. I didn’t know what ‘the trick’ was that the potion should do, but I hoped it did it for me too.

                The lights were dim and bean bag chairs were scattered throughout the room.  The Captain and Tennille were singing about love keeping us together and the air smelled like popcorn and dime store cosmetics.

                “Come on guys, it’s time!” Stephanie Simms gathered all twelve of us into a boy/girl circle and put a coke bottle in the center. I managed a stealth swipe of potion and sat down next to Bob Stephens who looked like Woody Allen.

                The bottle pointed at me a total of one times. It was Bill Rogers’ spin. My underarms prickled and my face burned when he got on his knees and leaned across the circle with his lips aimed at me. I kept my eyes open for the kiss which lasted a total of zero point three seconds. Zero point one second shorter than a kiss from my great-Uncle Flip.

                There would be no thirty seconds in heaven with Bill Rogers. Not for me. Not ever.

                Everyone paired off and headed to various make-out spots. Everyone but Bob Stephens and me.  I avoided eye contact until he pegged me in the head with a few unpopped kernels.

                “Hey! Are you going to keep being lame or what?"

                “I’m not making out with you,” I said.

                “I’m not asking,” he said. “Gross.”

                “Good because if you did ask the answer would be a big, fat, 'negativo'."

    “Wanna see what’s on TV?”

     "McMillian and Wife, Duh!" I said. 

     "Better than just sitting here."

     He turned on the TV.

     "Popcorn?" He offered me the last of the bowl. 

      We sat side-by-side with a bean bag chair between us. 

      Rock Hudson and Susan St. James were in the middle of busting a woman for putting cyanide in her husband's coffee when Bob leaned over.

      "You smell like stamps," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I happen to be a collector."