My previous post described a 10-Step Writing Warm-up Exercise. The following story emerged from this very exercise.
The premise is this: as a warm-up for your writing session, remove any book from your shelf, close your eyes, open the book at random and put your finger down on the page.
Then open your eyes and see where your finger landed.
The sentence becomes the opening line of your story. Type this sentence, and then just keep on typing! As fast as you can, and without thinking.
Write for 15 minutes.
This will warm you up, prime the creative pump, and get your mind in gear for jumping back into the novel, or into your latest short story, article, etc..
For me, I used my Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook for this exercise. I’m not sure why I selected that book; perhaps I wanted to begin with a name. Nonetheless, I opened it, closed my eyes, put my finger down, and landed on “Gosheven”, which is a Native American Sioux name for a male which means “Leaper.”
The next thing I knew, Gosheven had crossed the street and gone into a coffee shop.
Fifteen minutes later, my timer began beeping at me. My warm-up had gotten positively hot, so I shut off the timer and continued writing. A few hours later, I had “The Leap.”
That’s one of the greatest aspects of writing: you simply never know what’s coming around the corner.
THE LEAP
Gosheven, the leaper, crossed the street and entered the coffee shop.
Inside, the neo-trendy coffee shop junkies were all sucking down coffee drinks with convoluted names which were, an aromatic hour later in the bathroom, still just coffee.
Gosheven, the leaper, sat down in a really big chair and suddenly felt five years old. The stupid chair, which was almost as stupid as he felt when saying the idiotic words he had to say if he wished to order the aforementioned coffee drinks, was far too large. No one needed a chair that big. It was red and used to be fuzzy. Except for the brown spot on the wrinkly, flaccid cushion which had been turned over more times than could be counted.
He crossed his legs, hoping to wield the sophisticated I-come-here-all-the-time look sported by the turtle-necked, bespectacled sippers all around him.
He was unsure how he appeared, if he had pulled it off, but he felt rather gay. Not gay happy; gay homosexual. Which was okay in certain scenarios; he had been places other than monster truck shows such as Sunday afternoon volleyball games where he had been assumed gay. Gay homosexual; not gay happy.
Yet what did it really matter when it came to strangers’ perceptions?
That said, said gayishness should have been fine in the overly-big damn chair. After all, he was the leaper. But, no. It wasn’t working.
So, Gosheven, the leaper, got up. Forget the big dumb chair.
How about one of those barstools which sat, naturally, at the bar and which encouraged—nay, forced—him to look at the wall which was actually a window (or was it a window which was actually a wall?) and onto the sidewalk and at the passersby and then onto the street and at the drivers-by.
This pretty much sucked also; even worn velvet flaccidity was preferable to hard, slippery wood and indefatigable window draftiness.
And to top it off, there was a back-turned isolation when it came to the barstools, for he assumed the identity of a kind of dunce, perhaps the coffee-drinking general of an entire confederacy of dunces whose fate was to sit alone and isolated and stare out into the throngs as if positioned in a museum display case.
Said isolation should have been fine.
After all, he was the leaper.
But no, it still wasn’t working.
Gosheven found in a corner a normal chair and a clear view of the cozy myriad of sippers. Were he in the CIA this would be the best seat in the house.
Were he in the CIA he’d probably be armed.
Packing.
Was that what the bug-eyed glasses guys with those things in their ears said? Packing?
Sure, what the hell—packing. Like James Bond, for real. Small guns seemed sophisticated. English accents, too.
He sipped his coffee and tried to remember the words he’d been forced to say to get it. He licked the whipped cream from the place where his moustache would have been if he hadn’t shaved every morning for the past thirteen days.
That it took him an unlucky number of days to culminate any semi-manly facial hair was reason enough to just plain avoid the activity of growing it. Far easier and less un-lucky to risk the nicks.
All he needed now was the companionship of a hot woman.
Which was to say a sexy and desirable woman (not a woman who was perspiring or who lived near the equator).
The door opened and an invisible autumn wind catapulted dozens of little white napkins off tables and laps and onto the sticky, caffeinated chess board-patterned floor.
At the same time, Gosheven, ever the leaper, very nearly fell right out of his chair.
For borne on the morose wind was melancholy beauty personified. A woman who could only be the Queen of the Equator. Adjectivally speaking, hot was beyond insufficiency. He made a mental note to invent a new word which meant hotter than hot.
She would be its definition.
She could be his definition; she could define him. She could refine him.
Own him completely.
He would steal for her, kill for her, die for her, do the backstroke in a volcano for her, maybe even try sushi for her.
Her name would be his new favorite word; it would be better than tomfoolery, which was suddenly his old new favorite word.
The heels of her shoes clicked femininely on the chessboard floor as she traversed the playing field.
Her name was Grace. No, her name was Graceful, for she sailed ballerina-like across the black and white squares.
Check mate.
Game, set, and match.
A match made in heaven with Graceful.
He swam in the elegance of her not-too-bony wrists, drank of the litheness of her kissable nape, flowed through the waterfall of her precious eye-matching hair, wandered through the delicately budding garden of her brown-eyed soul, and drowned in the black tar sea of her complete unattainableness.
The Equatorial Queen could not be real.
She was ink on paper, a twelve-year-old boy’s first stroke book.
She was Miss Whatever-is-bigger-than-the-Universe.
She was the ultimate triumph of DNA.
She was that which forced the painter to throw down his brush and pallet, crushed with the devastation of her insurmountability.
She was impossible.
Hotter than hot and as gracile as spun gold.
A savannah cat casual in the shade.
Pure female.
Pure.
Purr.
She was everything.
She was God’s wet dream.
Gosheven, the leaper, would take the leap.
He would go talk to her.
He would mosey on over for a whipped-cream topper and strike up the conversational band.
He would convince her, no, entice her to make love not war.
He would be her knight in shining khakis.
He would make her laugh. He would show her he loved animals and children. He would exaggerate his appetite for raw fish.
He would remember to avoid self-deprecation before insulting himself.
He would open doors for her. He would fail to realize he had whipped cream on the tip of his nose for her.
He would lasso the moon, the stars, even the continuum of space-time itself.
All for her.
And he would be with her, in her, all night, every night. She would bite her lip. He would watch her bite her lip.
When they were done and sweaty and needed nothing in that moment, she would gaze at him, forget everything and everyone and every place for him.
And maybe, just maybe, she would even smile for him.
He was Gosheven. He was the leaper.
Everyone knew it.
Soon she would know it.
She would scream it. She would rake her pleasure-passion nails across his back and proclaim the supremacy of his sex until the dogs barked and the neighbor pounded and the cops knocked.
She would apologize to the nice officers while wearing only a bed sheet.
The nice officers would nod and try not to notice her nakedness and the disheveled hair sweat-soaked to her brow.
The nice officers would adjust their leather-creaking gunbelts and yearn for the enigmatic perfection of her bare feet, the utter cuteness of her toes.
They would tip their hats goodbye and then wipe desire from their brows.
They would never know that in their absence she made good use of an ice cube and single-handedly redefined sensuality for all mankind.
She was Graceful.
As to be valiant is to stand, Gosheven, being the leaper and everything, got up.
He waited for his wrinkle-resistant denouement pants to settle like opera curtains and he then set sail towards perfection.
His imagination swirled. What would he say?
Should he talk about piercing some part of his body and invite her to watch?
Perhaps a discussion of paleontology, focusing on the Cenozoic era, for lack of a more a propos era?
No. She would see right through such a contrivance; she would be forced to think him contriving.
Surely being seen as contriving would be less than flattering.
He wanted to be flattering.
Would he, should he, flatter her? Tell her she was smart? Tell her she was beautiful, should she happen to don smart eyeglasses?
Tell her he wanted to watch over her when she was asleep, to kiss her in her dreams and protect her forever?
The neo-trendy din of the turtle-necked sippers faded to nothing as he approached.
She said something he couldn’t hear and the pseudo-hippie behind the counter forgot his anti-establishment mentality long enough to laugh. He tried not to stare as he fumbled to make change.
She waited patiently for the coins she rightly deserved.
The pseudo-hippie just grinned. His coworker, who looked like she hated and missed her father, set a cup and saucer on the counter. Both cup and saucer were orange.
The cup was chipped.
The goddess saw the chip. She said nothing.
Gosheven was angered and humbled, angered at them and humbled by her, angered at their insolence and humbled by her unruffledness.
She took the orange saucer and chipped orange cup.
She went to the really big chair. She melted into it yet remained elegant. For him it had been a big dumb chair; for her it was a throne.
She crossed her legs and her leonine dress parted and all eyes saw the supple leather of the boots as they caressed her legs, teasing the flesh just below the knee.
He wondered if the boots had zippers.
He wondered if her dress had a zipper.
His pants had a zipper.
Yet the commonality of zippers did not seem an acceptable conversation starter.
The weather? Perhaps.
The quality of the neo-trendy coffee and the abundance of whipped cream? Yeah, maybe.
But zippers? Stupid.
What about buttons? His pants, shirt, and coat all utilized buttons. Surely some facet of her ensemble relied upon buttons. The utility of buttons was readily apparent; surely that put it squarely in the category of small talk.
Small talk would lead to big talk.
And big talk often led to first kisses and expensive weddings and happily-ever-afters.
He scanned the room. Things had almost returned to normal. The distraction of the entrance of the goddess would soon be ancient history and she would soon be a fixture of the urban coffee house landscape. Yet even then there would be an incessant swarm of furtive glances toward her, hopeful male adorations and catty female despisings.
The Graceful Goddess sipped her coffee drink. No one had ever sipped more perfectly.
Gosheven took a step toward her. A small step for a man, a pathetic leap for mankind.
She looked up.
Their eyes met.
She smiled. The same smile she used to hide her frown.
Gosheven, the leaper, went to the john.
He nearly dove into a stall and slammed the door. He collapsed onto the toilet. His khaki pants squeaked on the black plastic seat.
What was he going to do now?
She would hardly swoon at the remote adorations of a bathroom-ridden suitor. He didn’t even have to go.
This was beyond cowardly.
This was chickenshittery at its finest.
If he didn’t get his skinny ass out there, the most perfect creature to ever walk the earth would marry some dumb former high school glory days quarterback, get knocked-up, mindlessly bake bland casseroles and drive uninspired vehicles, cut her hair too short, and cry at the reunion.
Gosheven would plot to literally bump into her there, pretend to have been voted Most Likely to Be a Klutz. That was good; she would laugh. Forget her frown and laugh.
After they were both lonely drunk on punch he would take her out back and have sex with her up against a dirty school bus.
Someone would see them and he’d get wiped out in the divorce by his own zombie of a wife.
His two-point-five kids would mope around his downtown bachelor pad on Thursday evenings and every other weekend. They would pretend not to detest the booze-stink and would take the proffered greenbacks from him and do their duty by pretending that a couple of bucks made their hatred and confusion and love less wretched.
He would lie in bed at night and hate his life and practice masturbating with his left hand because she held the chipped orange cup with her left hand.
Surely death would be preferable to vibrant coffee shop memories and the black hole despair of missed opportunity. Surely.
Gosheven leaped to his feet. He would take a chance.
He was the Leaper.
And everyone knew it.
He had leaped from the neighbor’s roof into the neighbor’s swimming pool.
He had leaped from the out-thrust crop of granite into the rushing green river below.
He had leaped from the mundane safety of his hometown into the apathetic outstretched arms and disconsolate drollery of the Big City. Here he had thrived for twenty-two months until this day when he landed square on his butt in a coffee shop men’s room, surrounded by the arcane calligraphic musings of closet graffiti artists bent on world-wide recognition.
He burst from the stall and ran out the door.
The coffee house din seemed less dinny. Like post-thunderstorm or pre-earthquake. Like minutes ago, when he was in the CIA, before her coronation. He observed no furtive glances, no adorations, no despisings.
The orange cup sat on the orange saucer next to the really big chair.
Sanguine lipstick stained red the dry porcelain chip. Its mystery was captivating. Her lips. The essence of captivation.
She was gone.
The resolute perfection that was to be his life died like a stubby cigarette dropped into a cup of cold coffee and forgotten. There was no sound. No fury. He signified nothing. No one seemed to notice.