quick response to regina

[wytchcroft]

"She was born in a handbag!"
The radio howls and somewhere in the tinnitus inducing white noise is a human voice.
"Oh left on a doorstep," transistor treble, "what she lacks is a back up..." in the small motel bedroom.

"Is this Bowie?" the man asks, turning the volume randomly up and down and filling the cramped space with washes of static.
"Yeah, think so." She nods.

"I never understand that fuckin' guy," the man says and he makes it sound like a concrete truth, some sort of useful equation.

She leans back against the damp hardboard and asks, "how come?"

The man looks back from the radio, frowning. "Well, 'born in a handbag - what the hell? You can't - a handbag? That's just..."
"It's from a play, I think." She flicks her hair then, nervous of revealing what she knows.
"Must be a dumb play too."

For a moment they consider this as the broken sounding music crackles on.

She breaks the non-silence first.
"I was born in a sweater y'know?" she says.

"Huh?"

"Yeah, place just like this actually," a smile that is only for herself really as her eyes wander over the thin gray walls.
The Princess Motel, she'd liked the name at least. "I guess the song would've been different...." she says.

Summer of love, 1967 and her mom working the vacation.

Twenty years ago today... or so.

She listens for a moment again before picking up the threads of her story.
"Mom always said - 'that damn sweater, it got you made, brought you into the world'."

"Huh? Get outta here!" The man shakes his head.

She laughs, sounding like a tooth glass rolling across a bedside table.

"No, it's true, really true y'know - she always blamed the sweater, some guy liked it... nine months later she's wrapping me in it, no towel in the joint apparently."

She was covered in orange fuzz, took an age to get off, the fibres from the sweater like a second skin.
"You looked like an orang-utan" her mother had told her, many times.

"Must've been a helluva sweater."

"Yeah..." she runs a hand through the lengths of her hair, unfashionable hippy hair or so it's been said. Well, 1967...
1987 now and looks like everyone got hit by a bulldozer and sprayed with hairspray fixative.
She doesn't much care for the fashions, doesn't much care for the times, nor the music come to that.
"Not exactly his best song is it," she notes, waving a finger.

"I never understand that fuckin' guy," the man repeats, returning to his dial switching.

"Yeah..." She watches his back for a moment; the way the black vest he's wearing stays perfectly still even as his skin stretches and his shoulder muscles flex.

This place smells of sex, she thinks, and it reassures her somehow.

"I guess you're right," she says.

......................................................................

i'm not really here honest! this just popped out is all.

Comments

[betsycontent.livejournal.com]

wonderful, um, "quick" response to regina's great poem. you two make writing seem effortless, and always a joy to read.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

thanks!:))

[reginaclarejane.livejournal.com]

WOW! Now this is GREAT!
Thanks so much, n.!
I love the expansion of my poem into this wonderful narrative piece!
I love the whole story of the "sweater" being something handed down between mother and daughter, like a tradition... a not so good one, I guess...;)
And the guy- you got him perfectly...;)
I think you outdid yourself here, my friend!

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

and thank you, regina!:))

i'm glad you don't feel i did an injustice to your piece, and that you don't mind me riffing off from it - i often find it easier to respond than to reply, if that makes any sense, so thanks also for inspiring this:))

hope you're feeling better too?

[reginaclarejane.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes... head still a bit stuffy but my energy is back, thank goodness.

And, really, I am so flattered that you would take my lowly little poem and turn it into something so grand... brilliant, my friend.
:)