Fiction

Last week I stumbled upon some writing I did for a creative fiction class in college, and I used something called The Writer's Block to spark short stories.  The Writer's Block is a small, fat (literally block shaped) book that is full of prompts and spark words.   I like the spark words best, and I thought about going through and doing them in order.  I want to get back into writing fiction, but it seems like I never do it unless I'm accountable to something.  So after three months of neglecting this blog, I figured I could at least post my work here.  Works posted are all fiction, and while they may draw from some life experiences, I generally stay away from autobiographical fiction.  Learned THAT lesson the hard way.  So...

Spark Word: Diet
I hate you on a diet.

This means I hate you for at least two weeks every six weeks or so.  You are gorgeous and slender, but you vacillate between thinking that you are and it’s due to your vigilant dieting, and that you aren’t and you need your vigilant dieting to get to where you want to be.

Never mind that I am actually fat.  And I am actually okay with it.  I’m not sure if you keep me around because you live vicariously through me or because I am your worst nightmare and I keep you on your aforementioned vigilant diet.  It’s telling, of our relationship, that it doesn’t occur to me that you keep me around, and that I keep you around, because we actually like each other.

Every month or so, you alight on some new cure-all diet, and you tell me about it while I eat a cupcake.  I am the stereotypical fat chick, except without the self-hate, and you are the stereotypical skinny chick, except...well, you are the stereotypical skinny chick.

No matter what the diet, the way you act is always the same.  Every conversation, ever day, is about food.  Specifically, whatever food is Forbidden, and whatever specific food is Good.  This month you are a vegan, though you could give a shit about animals.  You alternately talk about how to make every meal taste like there is dairy and meat, and about how dairy and meat are awful and clogging our colons and wrecking our complexions and making us dull and sluggish.  But this fermented wheat tastes JUST like Salisbury steak (never mind that you would not ever eat regular Salisbury steak, because ew) and soy milk is just like regular milk as long as there is plenty of (amaranth!) cereal and (raw!) sugar.  Mostly, though, you look for loopholes (did you know that Oreos are vegan? you ask me one day, as you shove two in your mouth and spray a fine mist of cookie dust).

And then the diet is over and I can stand you, and you go back to eating normally until you aren’t, and then I hate you again.