My Creative Writing class has come to an end now that professor Blower is having a baby. She was a good professor, though too kind to others for their average writing. Today I read my setting-focused story out loud for the class, and I stumbled and fumbled and stuttered and coughed through it but everyone had a copy so they could read along. They loved it. Professor Blower, before I read, said she had read it last night and it made her giggle because she recognized the website I used to watch movies. That's how specific I was. Then afterwards she said it was brilliant. Others said they loved it and it made them laugh and we had a hoot discussing the clever end because of its insight into the male psyche.
All of it was intentionally done on my part because I'm that good. Here it is:
Angie and I, both being Americans in Wales, needed a Mexican and Movie night. We shortened it to “M&M night,” to which we brought M&Ms. It was a monthly event with countdowns on Facebook and she’d text me the day of, asking “U pumpd 4 2nite?!!!”
I’d reply, “Of course.”
She cooked tacos and quesadillas, and I ate a bag of nachos while waiting. We complained that nothing tasted right. I told her, “It’s the ingredients, not your cooking.” We’d eat them sitting on her quilt. It was white with colored circles and I’d always sit on the orange one at the foot of the bed. She didn’t have any plates so we ate from paper towels on our laps. She warned me if I spilled I’d better only stain my pants and not her quilt. It was a present from her boyfriend’s nana.
She set the laptop on a purple circle and tilted the screen and asked, “Can ya see alright?” She wriggled closer so our knees touched. I could smell the salsa on her breath.
During horror flicks she’d squeeze her plush bear Jimothy. She’d hold him up when the eerie music signaled a killer or kitten to spring from the bushes. She’d flinch and bang her head on post cards of castles and cathedrals in Edinburgh, Dublin and Cardiff that were taped to the wall. Sometimes Jimothy wasn’t enough so she’d clutch my shoulder. Her fingernails would dig in.
I’d snicker at the cheesy effects or clichés or at the truly scary moments when I didn’t want her to know how desperate my lungs were to breathe again.
The movies were online and we could only watch seventy-two minutes before the website made us wait half an hour.
“Why they gotta do that?” she asked.
“Probably bandwidth restrictions.”
“What’s bandwidth?”
“Something technical,” I said. “Hard to explain.”
During the break she gave me a tour of her room. Seated next to me she’d wave her arm like Vana White and present each spectacle. “Trash bin’s under the desk. That’s also where I study. Over there’s the bathroom. Gotta potty? Do it now. And you’re sitting on my bed.”
“Awful tour. Give me some history.”
“Okay, you’re sitting on my bed and I haven’t had sex in it yet.”
I got up and looked at the photos on her desk. The frames sat on wrinkled and grease-stained syllabi for classes. When I picked a frame up, a diet coke can rolled down the desk and clattered on the crumbed carpet. “Your boyfriend?” I asked.
“That’s my dog.” She snatched the picture from me. “That’s my boo. And that’s Mommy. She looks like me, doesn’t she?”
We were on our fourth movie when we heard her flatmates stumble into the kitchen and slam the fridge. One yelled to the other, “Wer muh crisp-puh?” And the other shouted, “Dunno!”
I got up for the toilet. I had been holding it all night. There was hair in the sink. The floor was still wet from her last shower.
Her room was small, and with the toilet separated only by a plastic door, well, I was kind of shy. I let out my stream slowly, careful not to aim at the water. I drained my bladder as silently as possible and five minutes later I was done. I washed my hands using her raspberry soap that scented the bathroom. I walked out taking a big whiff of my hands.
“I could hear you, ya know.”
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