Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 30.1: May 9th, 2010
"Caramel Kisses" is an unfinished novel I began to write back in 2009 and stopped working on in 2010. The two main characters - Adriana Maguire Reynard and Emma Burking - would ultimately be revised for my later completed novella, "The Liffey Is Half-Asleep," in 2011. Several elements of "Liffey" can be found in their original forms in "Caramel Kisses," such as the characters' names, the haiku scene, and Adriana's penchant for writing.
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Sixteen
by Belinda Roddie
A success.
A sold out house, a small space, but full nonetheless. The front row was packed. The second row was packed. The whole place swelled with breath and sound, each shadow and silhouette darkening the walls. Hands held single-page programs, whispers subsided as fingers clasped other fingers, teeth hissed out syllables into another’s ear canal. I couldn’t help sensing it all, feeling it all, knowing it all, by God, this place was alive, it was one human body, one being. I wished that I had a pen and a pad of paper on my person.
My muscles contracted and I moved jerkily in my seat, shuffled like a card in a large deck. You squeezed my hand, brought me back to fluid motion, to fluid reality. Relax, it told me, relax. Get ready because it’s going to start at any time and you want to be ready for it, you want to ready for it all. And don’t move around too much or else you’ll shake up poor Anthony, his chair’s wobbly enough and you’re taking up most of his armrest.
I didn’t have to worry. The show was a success. An incredible success. A phenomenal success. Everything just simply fell together. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were set. Words became the foundation of a building, a solid constructional entity. Matched. Resonant. Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect.
The audience loved it.
I was lost in my own story. My chest grew tight, my lips quivered, and I could barely breathe. I could feel my stomach constrict from laughing and my temples pound at the sight and sound of conflict, rancid like overly seasoned meat and hostile. Some audience members were hissing through their clenched teeth. It couldn’t be at me, I thought, was it at me? Could they really and truly be angry with me? And if so, why? Was the play that bad? Or was the play that good? And if it was that good, they couldn’t be angry with me, they had to be angry at the characters, the villain, the irrationality, oh God how could I be so into my work and yet so outside of it? I must be dying!
But no. The scenes passed. Characters died and were swept away by stage crew and creaking rotating scenery. Bright video shook up colors and spat them out at me, and I was entranced and repelled. I was the watcher and the writer. My insides were being squeezed and pulled apart, and my brain was splitting in half, and I must have been becoming two different people. I was enjoying this, I was hating this, I was enthralled and I was bored and I was critical and I was praising this work of art this piece of shit could be better could be worse oh God was this is how it was going to be through the final scene, too?
And then, it settled. My stomach settled. My eyes stopped burning in my skull. I simmered like I had been lifted off a boiler, my shoulders sinking limply into the chair. I saw the lights dim, silhouettes overtaking me. And suddenly I was thrust into the light and the flurry of a hundred or so crazed fingers danced around heated palms and I was shaken by whistling and whooping as if I have stepped into the limelight.
A success, I thought. A success. The cast bowed because they knew the same thing that I did. Hudd leapt from his chair and shrieked and clapped like a little boy because he knew the same thing that I did. They all knew. And I knew that Emma’s lips were pressed against my cheek but I couldn’t feel the warmth. I could only see, hear the reaction and the uproar, the swelling of energy all pulsing like blood through veins to a central heart. My heart. Their blood. It all coursed toward my creative success in a never-ending warm, red stream. Warmer than I had ever imagined.
This is what it had to be like to be a playwright.
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Sixteen
by Belinda Roddie
A success.
A sold out house, a small space, but full nonetheless. The front row was packed. The second row was packed. The whole place swelled with breath and sound, each shadow and silhouette darkening the walls. Hands held single-page programs, whispers subsided as fingers clasped other fingers, teeth hissed out syllables into another’s ear canal. I couldn’t help sensing it all, feeling it all, knowing it all, by God, this place was alive, it was one human body, one being. I wished that I had a pen and a pad of paper on my person.
My muscles contracted and I moved jerkily in my seat, shuffled like a card in a large deck. You squeezed my hand, brought me back to fluid motion, to fluid reality. Relax, it told me, relax. Get ready because it’s going to start at any time and you want to be ready for it, you want to ready for it all. And don’t move around too much or else you’ll shake up poor Anthony, his chair’s wobbly enough and you’re taking up most of his armrest.
I didn’t have to worry. The show was a success. An incredible success. A phenomenal success. Everything just simply fell together. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were set. Words became the foundation of a building, a solid constructional entity. Matched. Resonant. Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect.
The audience loved it.
I was lost in my own story. My chest grew tight, my lips quivered, and I could barely breathe. I could feel my stomach constrict from laughing and my temples pound at the sight and sound of conflict, rancid like overly seasoned meat and hostile. Some audience members were hissing through their clenched teeth. It couldn’t be at me, I thought, was it at me? Could they really and truly be angry with me? And if so, why? Was the play that bad? Or was the play that good? And if it was that good, they couldn’t be angry with me, they had to be angry at the characters, the villain, the irrationality, oh God how could I be so into my work and yet so outside of it? I must be dying!
But no. The scenes passed. Characters died and were swept away by stage crew and creaking rotating scenery. Bright video shook up colors and spat them out at me, and I was entranced and repelled. I was the watcher and the writer. My insides were being squeezed and pulled apart, and my brain was splitting in half, and I must have been becoming two different people. I was enjoying this, I was hating this, I was enthralled and I was bored and I was critical and I was praising this work of art this piece of shit could be better could be worse oh God was this is how it was going to be through the final scene, too?
And then, it settled. My stomach settled. My eyes stopped burning in my skull. I simmered like I had been lifted off a boiler, my shoulders sinking limply into the chair. I saw the lights dim, silhouettes overtaking me. And suddenly I was thrust into the light and the flurry of a hundred or so crazed fingers danced around heated palms and I was shaken by whistling and whooping as if I have stepped into the limelight.
A success, I thought. A success. The cast bowed because they knew the same thing that I did. Hudd leapt from his chair and shrieked and clapped like a little boy because he knew the same thing that I did. They all knew. And I knew that Emma’s lips were pressed against my cheek but I couldn’t feel the warmth. I could only see, hear the reaction and the uproar, the swelling of energy all pulsing like blood through veins to a central heart. My heart. Their blood. It all coursed toward my creative success in a never-ending warm, red stream. Warmer than I had ever imagined.
This is what it had to be like to be a playwright.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since May 9th, 2010.
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