Potpourri

by Susan Cameron

I'm not sure if these were ideas for longer works that I never finished, or if they were intended to be short short stories. Either way, I'm about to inflict them on you... :)

Funkytown

The disco smelled like Brut aftershave, cigarette smoke, and the inside of a car after you've been making out in it for an hour. The guy dancing in front of me snapped his hips once, twice, then spun around on the tips of his platform shoes, satin bellbottoms flapping around his heels. He completed the turn, looked at me and grinned. He had a fake tooth in the front, and it glowed in the blacklight. I stared at it every time he opened his mouth. I was fascinated by the damn thing blinking at me, like it was sending Morse code from the deck of a destroyer: "I want to get your pants off. I want to get your pants off."

I had already checked out his pants, of course. He had apparently been sewn into his purple satin pants before coming here tonight. The bulge down his left thigh would have been impressive if I hadn't seen a guy brought into the emergency room of the hospital where I worked wearing the same kind of pants, with the same kind of bulge. He'd broken his leg falling off his platform shoes while dancing, and when we cut the pants off him so we could set the break, we discovered the sausage he'd taped to his inner thigh.

This guy? There would be only one way to find out, but did I want to?



Nude Beach

"No way in hell," she said.

"Aw, come on, honey! It'll be great!"

"No."

"But you hate having tan lines. It'll feel great, you'll get some sun, you'll look great..."

"No. Way."

"But everybody else will be naked too! It's not like we'll be the only ones. Everybody kind of blends in."

"I'm not blending. I don't blend."

"But wouldn't it be great to do it at least once? At one with nature. Back to Eden."

"Bullshit. Adam and Eve slapped fig leaves on as soon as they could. And Eve's ass was nowhere as big as mine."

"You have a gorgeous ass! You just need to get a little sun on it," he said. "So it'll match your legs. Right now, it's so white it glows in the dark like the moon."

"You're saying my ass is as big as the moon?"

"No! No! It's beautiful! I love it! I love your ass, I love moonlight..."

"You son of a bitch!"

"No! Honey! It'll be fun!"

"Really? As much fun as we're having now?"


Fourth of July

My brother, his buddies and I had been celebrating our nation's independence all day with our pals Jim Beam and Jack Daniels, and we were now in the fistfight portion of the program.

"Gordie Howe!" screamed my brother Bob as he swung his fist at his best friend Paul. Paul was too drunk to duck, but that was OK since Bob missed him by a good foot-and-a-half.

"Wayne Gretsky!" Paul threw a roundhouse punch that a blind man could see coming, but he still got close enough to knock off Bob's Red Wings cap. Bob tackled Paul, and the rest of us pried them apart without too much trouble.

"You guys can't handle liquor worth a damn," Ronnie said, looking thoughtful. "We'd better switch to beer."

"Shots fired! Shots fired, man!"

We all hit the deck and scrambled for cover, and the sky lit up. I rolled over onto my back and woozily realized the fireworks had started: exploding glitter redder than blood, gigantic white bursts like my grandmother's peonies, crayon colors of green, blue and gold sparkling and crackling. Their brilliance seared my retinas, but I lay there smiling and couldn't look away.

copyright 2011, Susan Cameron