Maryanne: sweet somethings.

There’s nothing scarier than blank space, Maryanne thought. The freedom is offered was unbearable almost suffocating. Everything can go wrong with blank space. Everything can go perfectly with blank space. It was the not knowing what could happen, and the all encompassing finiteness of possibilities.

She just wasn’t used to it. Her life was the opposite of blank space. In fact it was a lot like one of those crazy paintings, what is that artist’s name again? Pollock, she said out loud, smiling at herself with oozing pride.
It was the third of the month which, to most, merely means it’s two days after the first of the month. Probably the day that the rent check goes through and a third of your paycheck goes to shit. To Maryanne it meant that it was her official scotch tasting day. Scotch was banned in her town because of some stupid event years ago involving Molotov cocktails, prostitutes, and a church. It was all so unclear, and this upset Maryanne because she didn’t like limitations caused by other people’s stupidities. In fact, before the ban Maryanne had never even tried scotch. Macallan was merely a charming Scottish last name. But once she got word of the stupid ban she went straight to a town just two miles north and tried her very first scotch. “I’ll haaaavvvve the second best Scotch you have.” The bartender quizzically looked at her, “on a tight budget I see.” “Nope! I just don’t want to be disappointed when I try the best and don’t like it.” “Umm…okay! Would you like it in a shot glass?” “Shot. Definitely a shot glass. Please. Did I say that at first? I meant to. Anyway, how about that scotch?” The shot glass appeared suddenly and she stood in a showdown with scotch. I’ll either love you or hate you, $20 shot. And with that thought the liquor was sliding down her throat burning it and making the stubbly hair on her shaven arm stand on end. She loved it. She loved the burn, the chills, and the way it made her eyeballs want to secrete fluids.

After looking at the blank space for a while Maryanne decided it would be less scary if she had her scotch tasting first. She went to her cupboard and opened up a whole new bottle of Laphroaig 10 Year Islay Malt, poured a three finger drink into her crystal tumbler; as she brought the glass to her mouth she sneezed right into it. Deeming the drink useless she poured its contents in into Ben, her new fern. “Drink up, Ben…this is your lucky day.” On her second try Maryanne sipped ever so slowly as she realized this scotch whiskey might change her life. The oaky taste made her feel like she was taking a bite out of the forest. She smiled as she poured just a smidge more. She walked to her living room, sat down on a herd of dust bunnies and stared at the blank space--a concrete urban looking wall rife with nothingness. Pollock she said to herself. Perfect.

Rusty lay next to her riding out the buzz he acquired from Ben's alcoholic soil.

She smiled as she envisioned chaos staring right back at her.

Maryanne revisited: Just Enough for a Blink.

Maryanne's toes pointed straight up to the ceiling above her, back slightly arched and if there was a connect-the-dot line between her slopey nose and the skylight above her it would be absolutely straight...no bend whatsoever. Her eyes, a certain green that made everyone think of frogs when they looked at them, were bloodshot and tearing as she timed the seconds she could count the stars (without blinking) out of her skylight. At about two and a half minutes, record time for this star counting veteran, her obscenely large phone buzzed like a defective vibrator—on-off-on-off. She ignored the first set of rings expecting a voicemail, but it only encouraged them to call again. Maryanne blinked. Too teared up to see who was calling, she blindly answered. It was no one. Or rather it was someone, but she pretended it was no one. She answered speaking some twisted form of Mandarin.
“Maryanne, is that you?” But she’d only respond in jibberish with the occasional "hello" in Mandarin...
“Hello? Is this…Maryanne I think you’re cutting out. If this is you, I need to tell you that I’m back in town and I’d like to see you, Rusty too if you want. I’ll even…well, I’ll even hang out at your apartment. Just this time…well, nevermind, just call me back.” A tear rolled down her cheek from burning blind eyes, and she hung up the phone. She lay back down and Rusty came around the corner having just awoken from his slumber he was ready for some attention. He licked her face as she lay there gazing…restarting her star counting.
He licked her forehead, but this would not distract her enough to blink. Bored to pieces he spitefully licked her nose.
Cheerios.
Stale Cheerios.
She smiled. Counted star number 50 and blinked.
“Perhaps tomorrow it’ll be clearer.”


(Credit to Devin Lai for this gem!)

The Maryanne Experience

Below is my attempt at fiction. Maryanne is a reoccurring character that I soon hope comes to life through this blog. It's just a fun experiment for me to try out something I've never done before. Some people jump out of planes, I attempt fiction writing.

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Upon entering Maryanne's apartment, I noticed a peculiar stench but said nothing of the matter. I hoped that maybe it was the Indian food she had had last night, which she was raving about all night tonight. I was hoping it was something that elegant. Indian food.

But it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t.

After locking the door behind us, she quickly scampered away saying something to me, I still can’t quite make out; it sounded like, “make yourself at home, please excuse the clutter.” But I still can’t quite confirm that, and that’s okay. I tried looking for a comfortable spot to plant myself on her fantastic minimalist couch, dark gray, stained with what looked like coffee (and hopefully not sporadic anal secretions of a dog I had also heard about all night). I found the spot, right on the arm of the couch, next to the mutilated stuffed animal that appeared to be drenched in puppy slobber.

Still stationary, I looked around her apartment, wondering how a girl, at such a high caliber, can live in such a bourgeois apartment and treat it like it would all be demolished tomorrow. Items of clothing were strewn on the floor like land mines, or stepping stones to her bedroom. Folded papers acted as coasters for the congregation of cups on her coffee table. Stacks of books piled up like Jenga towers, with pages ripped out and highlighted that were sprinkled throughout the living room like large pieces of confetti. Her walls were covered with expensive looking photography of Berlin and Croatia (I recognized these, because I had been there, too; something else we had discussed tonight), and while, yes, everything was rightfully framed, the frames were beyond crooked. So crooked that I thought, perhaps it was intentional.

“I’m sorry, Ian, I’ll be just a second, these boots are impossible to take off!” I heard a loud thud, but I didn’t respond. I was too busy being entranced by her chaos. “Rusty, please stop humping your bed. My dog will be coming out soon, I hope you don’t mind, he’s quite friendly.”

“I should be fine. If not, I’ll just throw him over the balcony.”
“Well, that would be unfortunate.”
“Then he should probably behave shouldn’t he?”
“Touche, sir.” And like that our exchange ended, and I could hear Rusty’s dog tags rapidly slapping against each other. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.
“Rusty, I said stop with the humping!”

Parched as I was, I contemplated avoiding any contact with her dishes. In fact, I kind of assumed she wasn’t the “wash the dishes” type. I stayed put, but only for a short moment, until that stench was severely inhibiting me ability to breathe. I followed my nose into the kitchen.

What I found was unmistakably the most disgusting pile of god knows what just hanging out on the floor. Plugging my nose, I got closer to this mass of mish mash in order to assess and examine what this was exactly. In the tan colored pile I noticed a gloppy mass of cotton, stained in red tones. I bit; I wanted to know more…so I grabbed a cocktail straw from the jar that sat atop her counter.

Poke. Poke. Poke.

The mass moved with a little bit of pressure. As it rolled over I noticed a string coming out of this pill shaped cotton. Blood red. Cotton. String. It made sense now. Rusty then debuted himself, prancing into the kitchen with his chest held high, staring at me so as to say, “yah, that’s right, I ate that, and tried to digest it, and didn’t think it was good enough for me so I returned it to its rightful owner. AND WHAT!?” Rusty had vomited kibblethe entire contents of Maryanne’s bathroom trashcan along with his kibble.
I looked at Rusty, disgusted, peeved, disappointed. Rusty proceeded to lick my calves, probably salty from all the dancing I had done that night.

Then I processed…
Rusty’s period tongue licked my calves.

It was that time of the month for Maryanne.

…Maryanne would not be seeing me again.