My Cardboard Balcony

I Bought A Beer by Belinda Roddie I bought a beer for Jessica that night and watched quietly as she chugged it down, the froth on her lip like a mustache. Right as she finished, she burped and dug around in her purse for a breath mint. Then she said, "I feel antsy. Join me for the next dance." I took her hand. Her face was flush and red, but as she moved, the patrons were entranced by the strange choreography we made together. Then she bought a shot for me, and I fired it back like a booze grenade. When we kissed, I could taste the ecstasy like licorice on her tongue. My mouth ached against hers, dwelling on my new mistake.

No update on the OneWord website today. Again. What can ya do?

Verboten In The Fifties by Belinda Roddie Here's how the scene is set: You arrive in your pink Mustang, wearing your father's leather jacket, your hair slicked up so high that it's almost touching Heaven. I'll sashay down from my room in my knee-length skirt, craving milkshakes and banana splits that I'll only share with you. We'll tell everyone that Bobby from math class gave me the hickeys, or that Sherman from biology got crazy with me in the drive-thru. Just make sure that you wipe off all the lipstick from your shirt when I'm done with you, and I'll be sure not to dig my nails into the backseat cushions of your car after I've pounced on you like a fan trying to attack Elvis at one of his concerts. If they find out, we'll be institutionalized, I guarantee it. I'm not interested in wearing a white gown in a white room, and I don't think we want lobotomies or to succumb to electroshock therapy. Maybe one day, we...

Three thieves broke into the Lancaster Inn around two o'clock in the morning - only to be chased out of the vicinity by a furious fifty-three-year-old woman brandishing a broken vacuum cleaner like an overgrown club. I would know; I witnessed the whole thing from the lobby, after I had fetched a bucket of ice so my wife and I could enjoy a bottle of champagne. By the time the police arrived, they found the burglars hiding in the parking lot, of all places, as if enormous trucks and vans could block them from everyone else's view.

A Toast To The Troublemakers by Belinda Roddie Sometimes, she can't decide: Is she an alcoholic homosexual, or a homosexual alcoholic? Both are pretty equal elements of her life, sharing the same living space, drinking the same wine, kissing the same girls after getting liquored up just perfectly after six o'clock in the evening. They tell her she needs to get help, and she knows it; she knows it every morning when she wakes up with someone new. She knows it when the pancakes and the waffles at the local diner don't taste as good as they used to, and they won't serve her mimosas anymore. She knows it from the bewildered expression on her latest lover's face, one that wonders how in the holy Hell she's still not sober. How she never seems to be sober. Or maybe she is, but there's really no difference anymore. And she'd love to cut the booze intake, let's be real, but as soon as the honey wheat stops flowing and the Cabernet gets ...

No update on the OneWord website today. Oh, well!

Doing The Dirty Work by Belinda Roddie I couldn't afford a funeral for my jackass of an eighty-year-old father, so I shoplifted a shovel and buried him behind my brother's house. Then I went back to my own yard and used the same shovel to dig as big of a hole as possible to jump down into so I could be away from the weight of the sky for a while. When you came to see me, and you found me curled up at the bottom of a self-made pit, giggling as if I were an impish child gone half-mad, you cried when I had really wanted you to laugh instead. You scrubbed all the dirt off me yourself, kissing me on all the tender spots rubbed raw by both the sponges and your erratic, dancing fingers. At least you didn't leave unwanted tattoos on my skin like sweet Daddy's belt buckle did on weekdays after two glasses of whiskey, neat. We grabbed take-out once I was squeaky clean, and over burgers and onion rings, you asked me how I had managed to walk out of a hard...