I Need A Hurricane (491 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 14 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by AlwaysAnEagle (View user info) at 2008-07-19 23:17:05 EDT
The first boy she ever slept with is married, and that is strange.
She's sitting on the couch where The Incident occured, when her parents were out of town and there was no one left but the neighbor to spy on her and report her imagined indiscretions. Letterman is on at 11:30 and when Letterman came on let me tell you that boy's beat up junker was still in the driveway yes indeed it was. The cover lie involved a history book, which was bullshit even if omniscient parents weren't involved, which of course they were. It hurt, briefly, and she soldiered through like everyone does, because only insignificant strawdamsels from romance novels stop the proceedings to agonize over physical pain, like the men wouldn't dole out a thousand times the injury as these relationships decayed awkwardly and were cast off into the shells of other imperfect unions.
That summer when she was away, he told her he'd been watching a TV judge who shared her name just because it was the next best thing to actually filling the space she left behind.
In a strange way she's clung to the picture in the yearbook. In high school she was incapable of worrying what most people thought, and that was how she managed to date a boy who would be immoralized wearing Spirit Week streamers around his head and holding a guitar pick in his hand, looking like the quirkfest he was and grinning absently into the camera. She pointed out this picture dozens of times, saying "so you see that the situation was weird" and never mentioning the way romantic movies sprang to mind when he'd sat next to her on the bus to New York and told her "I asked for first chair because I wanted to sit next to you," even though she could never hit that solo in The Blue and the Grey, even at graduation. He watched her sing "I Hope You Dance" in all its cliche glory that day, knowing that under her robe there was a back and white dress she agonized over despite being 18 and the master of her universe. She would look back to that picture in the yearbook and laugh and laugh, letting out all the cackling that was missing from their prom pictures, where he looked stiff and Frankensteinian. She danced her class dance with the boy from her Western Civ class, with whom she talked about baseball and radio and a limited, high school life with, and who had seen the fall of the Golden Dome and now lived in the neon paradise of Japan. He picked her feet off the ground and spun her and her $35 dress around and around until she couldn't be bothered with the boy who one day would be engaged to someone she'd never met.
It's not regret in play here, not nostalgia or wistfulness, but rather a strange feeling that people from high school actually had managed to grow. These days she runs into them in the Solomon Pond Mall, working and shopping at the same stores they frequented in high school, laden with babies and wedding bands and bags from Linens 'N' Things. Her ring always wins and they never know her fiance, even though he was there all along. They never seem to change or grow or wonder if there is more life out there, but this boy, this man, this husband, he has grown and changed and found life and it appears to be far beyond the small life that his family who did not want to buy the prom pictures had etched out.
Four hours ago she went to dinner with her own fiance and now she sits here marvelling at how people can grow.
It shouldn't suprise her, and had it been one of her adult friends it would have been less shocking, but here is this boy that she left not even halfway to being a man getting married. In the same week, he invited her to a Zombie Walk on the Boston Promenade, just as he would have years ago. It is immensely strange and immensely common to find these strange, one-of-a-kind people happening upon those who accept them wholesale.
Before she left for her parents', her fiance warned her that there may be thunderstorms. It matters less now, since the dogs are old and can't hear so well, but the windows are open, so she logs it away and drives the 15 minutes to her parents' ready to batten the hatches. When the rain comes, she sings instead of attending the painted, sticky windows she rushed to close in her youth. First, Mindy Smith, a side effect of some strange, happenstance kind of website she came upon in college, shifting between "Come To Jesus" and "Hurricane", the eternal gentleman who introduced her to these songs having long since drifted away.
She follows it with "River in Judea" even though she's not in high school and she's lost tough with Kwame who sang the same piece with the soul it deserved.
Finally, standing up and off the couch where she abandoned her virginity, she finishes with the "Nessun Dorma", bellowing the last lines in full throat and without regard for the neighbors who fight constantly.
"Vincero.....vincerrrrrrroooooooooo"
"I will win, I WILL WIN."
The rain pounds on the roof and the neighbors turn off their lights against her high C, and she walks upstairs while the couch stays down below.
User Reviews
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2008-07-20 16:41:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this. The first time I read it, I wasn't sure the title worked with the rest of the post, but I read it again, and it absolutely fits. So, good writing, and stuff.
Please stop wishing for hurricanes, my house is about five feet above sea level, and I don't want to swim.
Submitted by PayMeLater (user info) at 2008-07-20 15:00:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is a well written, thoughtful post about the human condition, with no post-apocalyptic scenario and no twist ending designed to shock the reader.
What the fuck is your problem?
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2008-07-20 14:16:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2008-07-20 14:11:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I have the same feeling of shock when I find that one of those immature, pimply-faced kids became anything other than the paper-tossing freaks I remember them for. Probably because to me they're always going to be kids...just like I'll always be a kid to myself as well.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2008-07-20 14:01:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Poots (user info) at 2008-07-20 13:18:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Before I go insane...
I'm really fucking sorry but I had to do that. I've scrolled past that post 20 times and that song pops up in my mind each time.
Submitted by Replen (user info) at 2008-07-20 13:01:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-07-20 12:27:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
strange, quirky, really good.
Submitted by Banjo (user info) at 2008-07-20 12:11:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Really like this and don't understand why more people haven't rated it.
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2008-07-20 12:05:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by HateMudkips (user info) at 2008-07-20 00:06:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good read
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2008-07-20 12:03:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Made me smile but deserves more.
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2008-07-20 00:33:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Needs more rape.
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2008-07-20 00:19:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by HateMudkips (user info) at 2008-07-20 00:06:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good read