Horse Fisting v2.0 Now with more fist than ever before - this one's for ghola (3566 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.83 on 36 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Fungah (View user info) at 2007-01-22 14:20:35 EST
sigh
"You're just playing at drugs" I said. We were cradled between a chain-link fence and an abandoned factory. The snow was melting, and crystalline chunks of dirtied ice littered the parking lot.
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"You don't really know what they're about. You don't know what high is."
"Are you going to smoke any more of this or not?" He asked.
"No" I said.
"Fine."
We stood in silence beside the factory. I could hear cars passing in the distance. They almost seemed to roar, like the wind, or drawn out claps of thunder.
"It's done" He said. He was wearing a black toque and a brown jacket. He looked like a chameleon, trying to blend in with the ground.
"Where do you want to go?" I asked. He shrugged. We started walking. I was stoned.
We turned onto King street. The passing of the cars was incessant, never-ending. Every step was a chore. It felt like I was ripping my feet out of the cement with every step.
"I'm hungry" I said.
"Me too" he responded. We walked for six blocks, bent against the wind. The sun was out, and birds chirped briefly between the roar of the passing cars. The birdsong was always short lived, orgasmic and brief. We went into a restaurant, away from the cars and out of the wind that had felt so pregnant with warmth and the promise of summer. The air of the restaurant was stale and recycled. Opening the door and stepping into the lobby was stepping through a vacuum and into a world of vinyl decadence, grease-fried ecstasy. We stuffed ourselves and left the restaurant, just walking, silent.
We wound back up at our apartment and he went upstairs while I stayed outside and smoked. He didn't like it when I smoked in the apartment, he said it stank. I loved the smell of stale smoke, but the taste always got to me. It was like sucking in hot ash and molten metal that seeped in through the lungs to the brain, and settled around the ear canal.
I threw away my cigarette and walked up the three flights of stairs to the apartment. He was on our couch, watching television. The couch was battered and broken, decorated with floral patterns. I threw my coat on the chair beside the door and sat down beside him. I leaned back into the worn padding and closed my eyes, listening to the television. The voices were cacophonous at first, and then began to drift, drift into nothingness and-
He was poking me and it was dark out. Our lamp was on, the shades were drawn, I was wrapped in a blanket.
"What did you mean, when you said I didn't know what drugs were? It's bothering me"
"I don't want to talk about it" I said, closing my eyes and pulling the blanket against myself.
"Please, I want to know"
"Really?"
"Yes"
"I mean what I said. It's all a game to you."
"I don't know what that means"
"Have you ever seen anyone die?"
"No"
"I watched my dad choke on his own vomit. He was passed out against the cupboard, his eyes were closed and he was snoring, and then he just started to choke. I didn't know what to do. My mother was fucking someone in the other room."
"You told me your parents died in a car crash."
"I lied."
We sat in silence.
"How did you know your mother was fucking someone?"
"I could hear them. I could hear her moaning. I heard the bedspring squeaking. I didn't know what to make of it at the time. I stood there at the door of the kitchen and I watched my father choke to death, holding onto a ratty blanket, wearing a set of one piece hand-me-down Mickey mouse pyjamas with my thumb in my mouth, and I watched my father die."
"That's awful."
"Sure"
"I don't see what it has to do with smoking pot."
"Because Derek. They bought their fucking tickets and they took the ride. I'm going to bed."
I walked out of the room and went to bed. Derek stayed in the living room, slept on the couch.
When I got up in the morning Derek was on the couch, dead. His face was covered in thin sprays of vomit. There was an empty bottle of wild turkey beside him, and an empty, capsized container of sleeping pills on the hardwood floor, polished and gleaming thin rays of dusty sunshine. I stood in the doorway to the living room for an hour, listening to the sounds of chirping birds, and the excited rushing of cars passing by our apartment on the freeway.
User Reviews
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2007-01-24 04:35:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2007-01-23 09:01:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-01-22 22:23:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish this was 5 times longer.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 19:35:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I was going for the Hemmingway minimalist thing with this.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 19:31:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
They're two ghey menz.
Submitted by Cyrus (user info) at 2007-01-22 19:28:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
OK - I guess I got myself into this - so here goes. The story was cruising along OK, and at a certain pace, with some fairly decent descriptive elements like:
"We walked for six blocks, bent against the wind. The sun was out, and birds chirped briefly between the roar of the passing cars. The birdsong was always short lived, orgasmic and brief. We went into a restaurant, away from the cars and out of the wind that had felt so pregnant with warmth and the promise of summer. The air of the restaurant was stale and recycled...."
Then suddenly we get: "I watched my dad choke on his own vomit. He was passed out against the cupboard, his eyes were closed and he was snoring, and then he just started to choke. I didn't know what to do. My mother was fucking someone in the other room."
It had kind of an overkill feel to it, not enough character development yet to throw this bomb down and make us actually care about it, the character I mean. Like you were reaching for affect too soon. It felt artificial,and a little cliche. How many ghetto kids lives are so bad they actually watch dad choke to death on his own puke in one room while listening to their mom bang somebody else in the next? Sure, it could happen, but it's a bit much. I'd toss the part about mom in the next room and stick with just dad choking. This is a story about alcohol, drugs, addiction, and surviving thru learning life's hard lessons. Stay focused.
Near the end of the story, you abruptly decide to name one of your characters. It might have been easier to keep the dialogue straight and identify with the two if you'd named them earlier on. Also, it bugs me (for reasons I can't explain) that I can't tell if these are two men, or a man and a woman. At the beginning I thought the dialogue sounded like two men talking, but by the end I decided it was a man and a woman. If you did that on purpose, for affect, or to deliberately keep the reader a bit off-balance, you're a more sophisticated writer than I thought and I should shut up.
The dialogue at the end is very confusing. As I finally decided, reading & re-reading it, the protagonist, the character telling the story about his parents, calls the other character Derek and then walks out of the room to go to bed. So that it's the second character, Derek, that's dead in the morning. This makes the protagonist (the one the shitty life story) the survivor and the one that's learned from his or her mistakes or past life with ma & pa, and thus the one that was advising the second character that he or she didn't know about drugs (what they were playing with). Which makes a good story and ending, but it's presented in such a muddy way I practically had to diagram the conversation to figure it out.
Overall, it has a tossed off feel which just means that if you would have a worked on it a bit and polished it up some, it would have been much better. It's obvious you have writing potential. I can't write myself, and only occasionaly post about my actual life experiences, like rugby or my ongoing guerilla warfare with all the f'ing varmints in my back yard. I swear those little bastards are getting organized.
So anyway, like I say I've never really done this kind of critique before, and I'm still trying to figure out what about this piece made me want to try. All I can think of is, I think you have some ability, but need work, and could benefit from feedbacknad maybe a real writing group. Maybe somebody that can actually write, Like McCallum, could weigh in and give you some real feedback.
Wait a minute, what the hell could I be thinking, this is Ubersite...
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 18:42:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by ICO (user info) at 2007-01-22 17:49:22 (#)
Ranking: 2
Is that a Thompson-specific reference, or is that 'buy the ticket, take the ride' not solely affiliated with that old fucker? I love his books, but perhaps I relate everything involving drugs to him. Surprisingly depressing bed-time read (over here, anyway), especially considering the title.
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Definitely is.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-01-22 17:55:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I dug this.
But dude, be careful - Cyrus will totally rule you...
Submitted by ICO (user info) at 2007-01-22 17:49:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Is that a Thompson-specific reference, or is that 'buy the ticket, take the ride' not solely affiliated with that old fucker? I love his books, but perhaps I relate everything involving drugs to him. Surprisingly depressing bed-time read (over here, anyway), especially considering the title.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 16:36:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:52:33 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:49:12 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:30:15 (#)
Ranking: 0
i'm just not sure what ghola-like is.
it's emo shit isn't it? come on, you can tell me.
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long descriptive passages. much detail to surroundings. dialog is never about direct conflict. there is always one male and one female character. stories have no point what so ever.
I may not be able to fully describe a 'ghola' story, but I know it when i see it
---
Hint: it usually involves a cat, or cats.
----
oh, and she wears a ponytail, too.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 16:11:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Cyrus (user info) at 2007-01-22 16:09:25 (#)
Ranking: 1
You know, for some reason, for a moment, I was tempted to do something I've never done before here on Uber, and that's give this an actual serious literary critique. Maybe because it has both potential and major flaws. But then I decided that probably wasn't what you were looking for, and that you probably weren't really being serious here since the title and image are goofy, and the title, the story, and the image didn't have anything to do with each other.
I don't what I was thinking.
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actually I'd enjoy a serious literary critique, there's kernels of truth in the shells of insanity I shit out onto this website, just don't take the strange title and picture too seriously.
Submitted by Cyrus (user info) at 2007-01-22 16:09:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
You know, for some reason, for a moment, I was tempted to do something I've never done before here on Uber, and that's give this an actual serious literary critique. Maybe because it has both potential and major flaws. But then I decided that probably wasn't what you were looking for, and that you probably weren't really being serious here since the title and image are goofy, and the title, the story, and the image didn't have anything to do with each other.
I don't what I was thinking.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 15:56:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2007-01-22 15:27:19 (#)
Ranking: 2
Forever we shall remember you as the best
Uberuser of all time ever, due to this post which made
Cilfone himself shit his pants and stuff like that
Kinda makes me cry when I ponder how awesome you are
Yes, always this post shall be on Bored At Work, cemented
On that dump of links, thousands flocking toward your post
Undying love for you, +2.
--------
I don't think I ever got B@W.....
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2007-01-22 15:27:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Forever we shall remember you as the best
Uberuser of all time ever, due to this post which made
Cilfone himself shit his pants and stuff like that
Kinda makes me cry when I ponder how awesome you are
Yes, always this post shall be on Bored At Work, cemented
On that dump of links, thousands flocking toward your post
Undying love for you, +2.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2007-01-22 15:26:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Funny enough, weirdly.
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2007-01-22 15:01:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
x being the number of smiley faces used in a dialog
y being the number of LOLs used
z being the number of times you use an exclamation point (ones included)
x times y divided by z = the number of cats you will own in later life.
http://www.myspace.com/markday
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:56:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
you're all sons of bitches.
there was an alter once that posted something under "ghola"
i always wondered who it was.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:52:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:49:12 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:30:15 (#)
Ranking: 0
i'm just not sure what ghola-like is.
it's emo shit isn't it? come on, you can tell me.
-------
long descriptive passages. much detail to surroundings. dialog is never about direct conflict. there is always one male and one female character. stories have no point what so ever.
I may not be able to fully describe a 'ghola' story, but I know it when i see it
---
Hint: it usually involves a cat, or cats.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:49:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:30:15 (#)
Ranking: 0
i'm just not sure what ghola-like is.
it's emo shit isn't it? come on, you can tell me.
-------
long descriptive passages. much detail to surroundings. dialog is never about direct conflict. there is always one male and one female character. stories have no point what so ever.
I may not be able to fully describe a 'ghola' story, but I know it when i see it
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:47:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
oops
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:42:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
yeah. i only post my homework these days.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:40:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:36:46 (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh, by the way, I really liked this post.
I wish you'd quit shitting around and write more. Sometimes it's just like you give up.
I still remember all your gnome stories.
---------
I'd forgotten about those.
It's hard to care too deeply about shit these days, school eats up most of my free time, and the site's changed, I've changed, yadda yadda apathy yadda.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:36:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ghola's dead ;( http://www.ubersite.com/m/97940
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:36:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh, by the way, I really liked this post.
I wish you'd quit shitting around and write more. Sometimes it's just like you give up.
I still remember all your gnome stories.
Submitted by DCWoody (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:32:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:32:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Heartfelt yeah, I don't know if I'd go so far as calling it emo though.
Submitted by homer42 (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:31:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Not sure about that title though.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:30:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'll just use my handy 'Little G Template' and enter in a few words here and there to fill it in.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:30:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
i'm just not sure what ghola-like is.
it's emo shit isn't it? come on, you can tell me.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:28:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:00 (#)
Ranking: 2
heh - lets have a 'write like Ghola' Contest, that would be interesting.
===
Agreed, it would be.
This is Gholaesque.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:28:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:27:01 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:59 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:00 (#)
Ranking: 2
heh - lets have a 'write like Ghola' Contest, that would be interesting.
---
like ghola?
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yes, write a story with your style - the most 'ghola-like' wins.
What, do you think it is beyond other people's capability??
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I think it could be interesting. There's probably enough people here to write some interesting pieces.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:27:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:59 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:00 (#)
Ranking: 2
heh - lets have a 'write like Ghola' Contest, that would be interesting.
---
like ghola?
-----
yes, write a story with your style - the most 'ghola-like' wins.
What, do you think it is beyond other people's capability??
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:25:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
beats me
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:00 (#)
Ranking: 2
heh - lets have a 'write like Ghola' Contest, that would be interesting.
---
like ghola?
Submitted by ubetidid (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 14:23:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
heh - lets have a 'write like Ghola' Contest, that would be interesting.