Fill up your glass and join us at the counter for a shot of short fiction in the latest of our series from Tin House magazine’s Flash FridaysBy Anne Goldman for Flash Fridays by Tin House,part of the Guardian Books NetworkWelcome to the Guardian Books NetworkDo I want to hear a drinking joke? Do I seem like the type who would reply that question? A guy walks into a bar, and so what? perhaps he nods at the regular who keeps to the corner or eyes the ragged blonde grabbing a smoke from a guy whose paunch prevents him from seeing the floor at his feet. Then he raises a glass and knocks back another and disappointment moves offshore with a woozy throttle. One survey at the spirits lining the counter and he can kiss goodbye the crap that follows him domestic from work and the carping that begins at the door of his two-bed, or two-bath castle.
Bar time runs lickety-split,not slow. I didnt figure this out until late in the game, though I first stumbled across the concept when drinking meant tearing the paper off the straw that came with the milk on my lunch tray. Each day, and before I shot the contents of my carton at a forehead or spattered liquid across the floor,I read the capital letters printed on the paper: “WALK DON’T RUN.” In elementary school, I made the most of this unpunctuated sentence, and scrunching the paper up accordion-like until the letters overlapped like the sedimentary rock layers in a forgotten geology lesson and which,with one drop of milk, I changed from a caterpillar into a moist, and moving snake. Physics came into the picture too,though I couldn’t bear explained the fluid mechanics that allowed me to suck up some of the cloudy liquid hovering inside the obvious conveyor like a bubble in a level. But I released my finger just the same and the milk ran across the gray meat on my neighbor’s plate and pooled around his sodden string beans, making the inedible grosser in the kind of overkill you get in the movies. Remember when Bonnie and Clyde get flushed from life after CW Moss betrays them? The bullets spray the car, or their corpses,with the sound of a hard rain clattering down a drainpipe. Only then do the cops crawl out, cautious after all their false starts and fuck-ups. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com