Monday, March 14, 2011

Let's play a game

Which of these passages were written by an author hailed as the voice of his generation, and which are just stuff my friends wrote on the Internet?

A.) Him: he's so...he's so manly. Like, throwing his Dickies messenger bag in the back of his truck and starting up the truck with a cig hanging from his mouth, and then idling while saying good bye, his leg tucked into the door frame, with his 1940's matinee idol socks and, for lack of a better word, saddle shoes, his foot held just so- a kind of sprung nonchalance.

or

B.) "Anyhow, this rich broad, this real Sylvia type" (Elvissa calls rich women with good haircuts and good clothes Sylvias) "comes out from the spa building going mince mince mince with her little shoey-wooeys and her Lagerfeld dress, right up to this guy in front of me. She purrrrs something I miss and then puts a little gold bracelet around this guy's wrist which he offers up to her (body language) with about as much enthusiasm as though he were waiting for her to vaccinate it. She gives the hand a kiss, says 'Be ready for nine o'clock' and then toddles off."

***

A.) I will attempt to do justice to this photo: taken in 1983, when Tomtom was about 2 or so, it's him, his dad and a huge white rabbit on a deck or table of somekind- Tommie is propped up on his forearms and hands kissing the bunny, his AWESOME 1980's "racing" parka falling over half his face, but the other half that we can see is 100 percent focused on kissing that bunny! His father, puffy late 1970's do, slight mustache and all is holding the bunny still. It's typical upstate NY Easter weather, which means it's about 12 degrees out and overcast, and the muted, yellow-orange palette of photos from the era warm the scene up. Something about Tommy's innocent, pudgy face kills me. I can see his character- giving, open, loving, and yet forceful and a bit eager, all in this photo. His father's face-- at first I thought he was concentrating on Tommy with the same amount of concentration Tommy was giving the bun, but then I saw it: he's just focused on holding the bunny still. He left Tommy and his mother shortly after that.

or

B.) "One night Mom came out onto the patio in a pink sundress and carrying a glass pitcher of lemonade. Dad swept her into his arms and they danced to the samba music with Mom still holding the pitcher. She was squealing but loving it. I think she was enjoying that little bit of danger the threat of broken glass added to the dancing. And there were crickets cricking and the transformer humming on the power lines behind the garages, and I had my suddenly young parents all to myself — them and this faint music that sounded like heaven — faraway, clear, and impossible to contact — coming from this faceless place where it was always summer and where beautiful people were always dancing and where it was impossible to call by telephone, even if you wanted to."

***

A.) "I mean, it's just so DIRE! It all sounds so damn serious in print. Men never do that shit. I mean, nothing, nothing induces more stomach- churning dread than the sight of an email with the headline "please read" from your soon -to- be- ex in your inbox. The Declaration of Independance? Thomas Jefferson's wife wrote that shit, you know it! Breaking up with the King of England...a man would never do that by letter! You just know she wrote that for him...'George, we have to talk'. I mean, that's a break up letter if I ever saw one."

or

B.) "Suddenly I was into this tres deeply. Well, if I'm going to quit anyway, might as well get a thing or two off my chest.
" 'I beg your pardon,' says Martin, the wind taken out of his sails.
" 'Or for that matter, do you really think we enjoy hearing about your brand new million-dollar home when we can barely afford to eat Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our own grimy little shoe boxes and we're pushing thirty? A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You'd last about ten minutes if you were my age these days, Martin. And I have to endure pinheads like you rusting above me for the rest of my life always grabbing the best piece of cake first and then putting a barbed-wire fence around the rest. You really make me sick."

2 comments:

naomi said...

I had a good laugh over this. I really do sound like a cut rate Tom Wolfe sometimes, eh? Hee hee hee.

Jessica K said...

Cut-rate Douglas Coupland! Better?