Saturday's Storyteller: "I never said I was a smart man."
by Belinda Roddie
I never said I was a smart man. I never said I knew how to make proper executive decisions. The life I left behind was gilded, and I was tired of gold and silver. Now I realize how little I learned when it came to fending for myself once I pulled the pearl-handled spoon out of my mouth.
I wanted pewter. I wanted tin and aluminum and just plain plastic. I surrounded myself with silicon to get it. And then I lost everything. The tower I was attempting to build was already a sloppy leaning mess of shrapnel. It collapsed like paper. I couldn't construct anything of my own without holding my father's withering, white hand. A hand that had reached rigor mortis fifteen years ago.
I found my boyfriend in the dirty loins of a city that treated its denizens like tramps. He wore flannel, and he could have been carrying a bindle on a stick. I brought him back to the apartment I could barely pay for and nursed him back to health with ramen and tap water. He said he had been kicked out of his husband's house. He didn't want to give me specifics yet.
"Never let it be said," he told me, "that I am a smart man."
I grinned. "That makes two of us," I said.
This week's prompt was provided by Arden Roddie.
I never said I was a smart man. I never said I knew how to make proper executive decisions. The life I left behind was gilded, and I was tired of gold and silver. Now I realize how little I learned when it came to fending for myself once I pulled the pearl-handled spoon out of my mouth.
I wanted pewter. I wanted tin and aluminum and just plain plastic. I surrounded myself with silicon to get it. And then I lost everything. The tower I was attempting to build was already a sloppy leaning mess of shrapnel. It collapsed like paper. I couldn't construct anything of my own without holding my father's withering, white hand. A hand that had reached rigor mortis fifteen years ago.
I found my boyfriend in the dirty loins of a city that treated its denizens like tramps. He wore flannel, and he could have been carrying a bindle on a stick. I brought him back to the apartment I could barely pay for and nursed him back to health with ramen and tap water. He said he had been kicked out of his husband's house. He didn't want to give me specifics yet.
"Never let it be said," he told me, "that I am a smart man."
I grinned. "That makes two of us," I said.
This week's prompt was provided by Arden Roddie.
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