Diary of a Heretic

 Welcome to my online fiction. You've arrived as I'm rewriting a serialized work-in-progress, James Bond and the Girls of Woodstock. Links to those posts start in the sidebar on the right; just scroll down a  bit. Be prepared for more conflict; more epiphanies—and moral intrigue like never before. Look halfway down the sidebar for links to occasional Flash Fictions (stories in fewer than 500 words). Thanks and leave a comment, relevant or not! Click here for my feed.

Hell Hounds

 

 

From across the ocean Brooke enraptured him.

But when Matthew tried to tell her how much he loved her, an awful silence fell. She hung up without saying she loved him—or even good-bye.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

He didn’t have her lively intuition. Brooke wrote to him with such a lyrical passion. His replies, the best he could do? You give me new ways to think and feel. You fill me with joy.

After their spiritual, sexual union, on the phone, he had said the wrong words. His clumsiness insulted her.

“No comparison, Brooke.”

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Her sensual awareness was out of this world. Yet he couldn’t say that. It didn’t come close to their reality. And, it sounded stupid.

He loved hearing her scream his name but Matthew’s oafish claims there likewise provoked her. Often when Brooke shouted, he saw her trying to stop. Later, he would whisper that her cries thrilled him. And she would fume.

But her silence on the phone wasn’t fuming—it was serious.

When he swam at night, sometimes, murky concerns became clear. Underwater, he learned that Brooke’s silence indicated pain, not anger. What had he said that hurt her? He had to know.

The next morning during their Taekwondo session, Sung said, “Brooke’s teaching Rhee the forms.”

“Is she?”

Then apparently, Matthew’s fencing failed. Not one movement satisfied Sung.

“Leading with your heart has thrown you out of sync.”

Maybe. Matthew’s swordplay this morning felt exactly like yesterday’s. If anything, he had been advancing and retreating better than last week. But he stopped that thought and saluted the master, who answered it.

Putting away their equipment, Matthew said, “I couldn’t feel it, but perhaps in retrospect I’m beginning a new learning curve.”

“Yes,” said Sung. “Your rhythm will return when you’re ready for it. After that, fencing will always be easy.”

The men bowed to each other. “Your difficult start,” Sung said, “will prove auspicious.”

Matthew grinned. “You’re the master. Thank you.”

Once his trainer/master/controller was out of range, he sighed. Bond and Otto’s duel, which had been Brooke’s idea before Sung appropriated it, would last two to three minutes. They were practicing hours a day when routine digital production could tweak his rapier performance to perfection. More all the time, however, Harold and Sung stressed an illusion of authenticity. Because, as they frequently told everyone, Matthew naturally created that illusion. And their ongoing appreciation was vital now that his upfront payment had become public. (“Way over-scale for any name! But, come on, a TV star?”)

The community for “Readiness Is All” agreed that he looked ideal and even better than ideal in the dailies. He nailed it for the camera practically every time; was tireless; friendly to all, and yeah—exciting to watch. Nonetheless, he had gotten a huge piece of pie.

That evening Sung took him aside. “You must rest, Matthew. You are already superior in Taekwondo. No more five a.m. instruction. Try to sleep.”

This seemed uncanny. Five a.m. was when he needed to phone Brooke—without permission.

Before dawn he used a new mobile to call his compound in Woodstock, where it was nearly midnight. Only two phones connected to the landline: one in the kitchen; one in his bedroom. Only Brooke in the tower would hear his ring.

Except she didn’t answer. Matthew didn’t believe it and kept calling until Connie woke and ran downstairs. “Matthew, is everything all right?”

He apologized and vaguely explained.

“Brooke read two chapters to Ivy and Dex tonight. Let me find her.”

“That’s okay, Connie. Please tell her I called.”

Sinking into a chair, he felt doomed.

Fletcher would know. He spent more time with Brooke than not—time that was lost forever to Matthew.

“First, Bond, a tongue-lashing; second, I’m siccing hell-hounds on your trail.”

“I said something that hurt her, Fletch. But what? What’s wrong?”

“You have betrayed her. You have inflicted her with grievous injury.”

“Fletcher, I’m frantic and heart-sick. So there’s no need to exaggerate.”

“You nit-wit, you idiot! Oops, hold on.”

Matthew waited two seconds before yelling. “Stop jerking off, Fletcher. How did I hurt Brooke?”

“I am supremely entitled to jerk off. You broke her heart and if you do so again, I shall tattle to the media. ‘James Bond is a paedophile!’”

“Fletcher, just tell me what I did and then taunt me.”

 “Dredge your cesspool of memories. You had sex with that insipid girl.”

“Jesus, Fletcher, where did you get that? It was somebody’s idea of a very sick joke. I’d die if she knew.”

“Choose a coffin, Bond, because your angel heard the truth pouring from your own lips. It rippled through your voice.”

“No.” He choked on rising sorrow.

“Yes. While working on “Pious Lies,” our wunderkind has become frightfully adept at phraseology. That’s first. Second, in attempting to retaliate, she endured some sort of ghastly sexual ordeal with a blithering frat-brat who drugged her the next day.”

“Drugged her.”

“Brooke disappeared for thirty-six hours, Bond, wearing little but her own splendor. I was rabid with worry.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know but you’ve no right to wake her.”

“Fletcher, will she forgive me?”

“That poor child! Jimmy for a father and you for a lover.”

(to be continued)

 

Fletcher Rising

 

 He drank the minimum to maintain. At first, of course, maintaining at the theatre where he and Dickie had directed “Little Shop of Horrors” was nearly impossible. By the time the musicians had shown up, Dickie had contracted his first pneumonia.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

But two weeks ago, when Brooke gave him headphones, the music of Fletcher’s youth had turned him into a righteous punk. He still drank but to little effect.

In the meantime, while Brooke tried to revive the embalmed American tragedy, Fletcher woke to find the imaginary playhouse where he and Dickie traded lines from Noel Coward plays was gone—the echoing mausoleum had become a heap of cinders.

Sweeping up the psychic mess, he staggered. A jolt shot through a quarter century of nonexistence. For Dickie had said repeatedly—not his last words, but nearly, “Promise me, you won’t live in the past.”

How had Fletcher forgotten that? Sorrow forced him into oblivion and martinis kept him there.

Then as Friday night moved far into Saturday, Fletcher’s anxiety could not be calmed by gin or anything like it. His mind demanded clarity, because if he were reasonable, Brooke was fine.

Yes, yes, and yet—he paced and smoked, and found that slurping the usual only magnified his distress. The fog of alcohol dissipated his faith that the girl would incapacitate anyone in her path—one kick even without those stiletto heels.

At one a.m., he rang Sung in London. Because Sung, who hadn’t seen anything remarkable about Brooke at first, considered her kindness to his cousin Rhee the purest act of generosity in western civilization. What American girl gives up an hour every day to follow a maladjusted monk’s instructions issued through a Plexiglas wall?

After six rings—a message to leave a message. “Nothing urgent, Sung. Just hello.”

Sung and Bond were no doubt training already…What the hell had Bond said to Brooke Thursday evening?

All day Friday, she was restless and irritable. And after she left, Fletcher hurried upstairs where her laptop remained open to Ms. Kyle’s profile. Brooke must have some  kind of proof of an involvement between her boyfriend and the insipid twit. Otherwise, who could fathom Bond’s interest in such a silly, gawky woman?

Had Fletcher imagined Brooke’s lawless lover was capable of betraying her, he would have forbidden phone calls. Just see if he allowed another!

Although, either way he wanted Brooke to learn that so-called sexual fidelity was among society’s worst perverse fallacies. Most men occasionally behaved like dogs. For all he knew, women did too.

It had been Fletcher’s fondest fantasy that were she a seventeen-year-old he, the cocky imp would ride Manhattan like a merry-go-round—and then race home to Fletcher, eager to bestow upon him one delectation after another.

Tonight, however, he realized how wrong, how thoroughly untenable, his musings had been. The child he had known since her infancy, stripped down and stepped up to where anyone on earth would welcome her without question or documentation, now embodied an “eternal feminine.” One only a gay man could cherish, because living archetypes deserved devotion, not lust.

At three a.m., he fell briefly asleep before a plaintive song sounded from his mobile. He had pushed the wrong button. Last week Bond had sent Fletcher an MP3 meant for Brooke. Her errant lover’s rich, warm tenor bent a lamenting tune, as he played three guitar chords (not well).

There Is Lonely

A bit late, Bond, sorry.

 Fletcher turned on the light and pushed call-waiting, hoping to hear Brooke rushing; she was on her way.

But it was her father. “Where-zzz-are-ya?”

“Where are you, Jimmy?”

(About to pass out in Fletcher’s Woodstock driveway.) “Leave immediately or I’m sending the police!”

“Didcha tell Connie ’bout us or was it the she-devillin’ bitch?”

“Connie’s always known; I verified it.” Jimmy was fading but Fletcher yelled at him: He’d spend the money to help Jimmy—providing he went directly into rehab. The spoiled priest grunted and coughed. Connie had already told him that. Fletcher would accompany them if he wished. “Fuck off, ya whorin’ sodomite.”

Fletcher hung up. All he cared about was Brooke. And after he fretted and fussed and promised the heavens one thing after another, she was still missing by rehearsal time Saturday. Waiting too long, he had no choice but to don his Kangol and hope he could imitate Dickie’s graceful wit.

On stage, the mother in “Pious Lies,” whom Fletcher admired, hastened to explain she was completely off-book, but that she and Brooke opted to keep the words in hand until every phrase indicated she had known her husband’s secret all along. (“What wife doesn’t?” she and Brooke had agreed.)

Fletcher nodded. “You’re doing that so naturally, Annie, one forgets the challenge.”

As for the men whose vocal work remained comical, he suggested they focus elsewhere for now. Perfection was impossible while striving for it.

 Pleased with himself in the taxi home, he paused at the front door. Please let Brooke have returned, safe and happy. But no. He tried Sung again, no answer. And Bond? Wait until that criminal cur rang again—just wait!

Another sleepless night. Fletcher watched Douglas Sirk movies, saving those starring Rock Hudson until daylight. The doorbell rang at noon and Fletcher ran downstairs and swooped the nearly naked girl into the air. Putting her down, he turned away—God knows what showed on his face. Brooke had lost her keys. She sank onto the floor weeping. He lifted her to the couch and she wept through three wash clothes before noticing he was frantic she might be hurt.  

 “Just disgraced. I smoked super-weed with a guy I knew in high school. He swore it wasn’t dusted but afterwards I slept more than twenty-four hours.”

 

 

 

(click here for the next episode)

One Night Stand

 

The first time Brooke stepped from a taxi wearing a strapless mini-dress and towering high heels, the doorman had hurried over and issued her inside while a throng of equally underdressed young women stood shivering behind a velvet rope.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

Last week she had tried a nightclub where one wall was a live-TV screen. The music pounded inside her and Brooke’s whole body followed. Watching herself in high-def had inspired her to imitate dances she’d seen in videos. The mix ended and—whadda ya know? Her first lover, the senior from Boiceville, bobbed in her face.

Pivoting, Brooke had run away with no intention of returning. But, now of course, her intention had changed.

Only nine o’clock and people crowded the bar. Brooke stood in a corner and watched her loutish ex-lover guzzling beer. Hard to believe—but seven months ago, still in high school, she was still having sex with that jerk-off.

How infuriated Tara had been! When he insulted Brooke, Tara had called him out. Yet despite Brooke not even liking him, she had hopped into his car for silent sex all through May and part of June.

Not April, though: During spring break, he invited her to watch “Palimony” (as had Matthew once but didn’t—stop thinking about him!) The movie opened and the senior had dissed handsome Mr. King. Without a word, Brooke had walked thirteen miles home.

Then six weeks before graduation, the dumbass, who had never acknowledged her and hadn’t broken up with Miriam—Brooke asked her friends—pleaded with her in public. “Please, Brooke, I might never see you again.” His friends gathered behind him calling, “Please, Brooke, please.”

She hadn’t had sex with Matthew yet, just this idiot, and sorry, world, Brooke loved sex. Not Barbie dolls, not hair-bows, or cupcakes; not the frilly, silly nonsense of an idyllic girlhood (as defined by fathers, those ultimate girlhood-experts!) Brooke loved reckless abandon and multiple orgasms—that was her girlhood.

“Brooke! Hey, Brooke!” The senior from Boiceville (now a freshman at Pace) stumbled over. “You look incredible, Brooke. You’re so beautiful but—everybody says that.”

“No, most people say something else.”

“Not me, Brooke. I’ve always said you were beautiful.”

She let that go. They danced to a breakneck  mix until he screamed at her, “I gotta sit down.” And—this was a first—“I wanna talk to you.” He took her to Starbuck’s, slurring nonstop compliments.

“In school, people were scared of you, Brooke. You were, like, supernatural.”

“Were you scared?”

“Kind of, Brooke.”

“I’m done with high school,” she said. “I finished early.”

“I finished a year late. But my dad expects…You look as unreal as ever, Brooke.” (Sure, he was drunk, but for someone who had never said her name, now he couldn’t say it enough.)

“If I dress like this, nobody cards me.”

“Really, Brooke? I gotta show three IDs.”

She said, “You look grown up to me,” when really he looked fat. And, not for the first or twentieth time that night, she worried about getting through this. “Remember smoking pot in your car?”

“I’ve got the best ganga, Brooke, at my place downtown.”

The next morning, wearing his Van Halen T-shirt, her tiny dress draped on a chair, she wept into her hands. He tried to hold her but she pushed him away. He still said, “Don’t cry, Brooke. I care about you. I always have.”

“So you say, but I’ve gotta go.”

“Just a second.” He left the room.

She was buttoning her coat when he returned with a pipe packed tight. “Try this; it’s my roommate’s.”

She took the tiniest hit and asked, “What’s in it?”

“Nothing, Brooke. It’s optimum weed.”

She didn’t believe it. He had been lifting the pipe to his mouth but handed it back to her. “Try it again; you’ll see.”

Definitely laced, she thought; and after a few minutes, she fell back on his bed without waking up until Sunday.

(click here for the next episode)

Bond Girls

 On Friday, Fletcher asked Brooke to accompany him on his cigarette break. He removed his headphones and the tinny refrain leaked out, “You really got me girl. You got me so I can’t sleep at night…” Fletcher taunting her for keeping Matthew sleepless? Or a coincidence? She didn’t care.

And she wished she didn’t care that Matthew was fucking the new Bond girl. But she did care. Last night his voice on the phone sounded all wrong when he told her three times that she was his only lover—so wrong that what Brooke heard was the opposite.

(click here for the first episode; here for the previous one)

“Five minutes everyone,” Fletcher said, wrapping Dickie’s old aviator scarf around his neck. He set his Kangol on his head and held open the theater door. The stunted trees on 43rd Street shifted in the leaden air. Taking her arm, Fletcher said, “My dear, you’re uncanny at gathering the bits people drop as they try to hide something. But even in a play, the characters—and the audience—occasionally need an insignificant breath.”

“How do you know when you’re skulking around, plugged into your golden-olden hits cranked up full blast?”

He blew smoke rings in a series, one inside the other. “Mood swings, Brooke?”

“Lucky you and your testosterone.”

“Humph.” He stubbed out his Dunhill and—this always surprised her—bent down to pocket it. Fletcher never littered.

“Allow me,” Brooke said, but he wouldn’t think of it.

Back in rehearsal, she refrained from mentioning the characters’ speech patterns. But twice, the son in “Pious Lies” asked if he was getting the shaky bravado Brooke wanted. “It’s becoming uniquely yours.” If Brooke weren’t careful, she’d praise him as immoderately as she had Sasha, Matthew’s ex. You’re an original!

What an idiot she’d been. Sasha’s surprised agreement was probably her way of teasing Brooke. For a second she wondered again if she could have misinterpreted Matthew’s emphatic lie: You are my only lover. Yeah, right. He was fucking a Bond girl. And thanks to “the girl’s” aloofness, Matthew in England slept without dreaming. In retaliation, Brooke should sleep forever. Except the minute she didn’t exist, Matthew would have no reason on earth to stop fucking Bond girls. Girls so refined that his prowess, which flooded silly Brooke with ungodly pleasure, scarcely fluttered their eyelashes. In her own Matthew’s long, strong arms, Bond girls lay silent—sex without babble.

That evening in her bedroom, she searched IMDb and found twenty-six-year-old Kayla Ashton making her debut in “Readiness Is All” as Ms. Kyle, M’s assistant. Kyle was a pretty, round-face girl who boasted an extensive Barbie doll collection.

Barbie dolls? Really?

All right. If Matthew couldn’t resist Kyle that was his problem, not Brooke’s. Betcha his sexual attentions made those damn dolls scream and not the implacable girl who collected them.

Shit. Brooke hated feeling jealous. It was worse than being in love, which now felt exactly as billed—hopeless. Time to adjust her expectations and not succumb ever again to pettiness. Also, not lie and pretend she couldn’t be fucking happier for the plastic bride and groom topping Barbie’s wedding cake.

“God, Fletcher!” She shrieked and jumped. Without a cigarette or martini, he had been peering over her shoulder. “Nobody comes into my bedroom uninvited, not even Tara.”

“Had your door been closed, dear, I would have knocked. Last night you skipped your yoga class. And ordinarily by now, that stunt driver is teaching you to drive ninety miles per hour through traffic jams. I feared you had taken ill.”

“Fletcher, go get drunk and stop worrying about me.”

“Ah,” he tapped the screen, “are we investigating the new Bond girl? Tepid-looking thing.”

“But so polished, so detached. You better believe her daddy never smacks her big, round smiley-face.”

“You are so young, Brooke, you may not realize that the pose comes from a lackluster mentality.”

“Excuse me, Fletcher. My favorite DJ’s playing in Chelsea.”

“At your favorite club? That’s not Chelsea, Brooke. It’s the meatpacking district.”

No comment.

In the well-lit spacious bathroom, she applied dramatic eye makeup while Fletcher silently wondered why. Kyle was the daughter of an ignorant woman he had always disliked.

“Your nightclub, wherever it may be, doesn’t close before dawn.”

With an ironic smile, she straightened an abbreviated garment displaying her ideal feminine form to surreal advantage. Stepping into very high heels, she said, “If I don’t dress like this, they might card me.”

“I doubt that, child. You’re equally stunning with or without goose bumps. I was once a denizen at the same dance clubs. Therefore I know: even if you’re only dancing with the crowd, that crowd is promiscuous.”

“What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll get AIDS?”

Without looking at her, he stood and exited as quietly as he’d entered.

Shit and more shit! Not only was Brooke abominably excitable, she was vicious. Nimble in the highest heels, though, she ran downstairs where he was mixing a martini.

“I’m sorry, Sir Fletcher. What I said was mean and—”

“Apology accepted, beloved girl. It’s grotesque how sensitive I am. Dickie died years before you were born; in fact, well before even your boyfriend Mr. Bond was born.”

(click here for the next episode)