Exquisite Corpse
September 15th, 2008
Jenny points out that it is past time for a new blog post, and she is, of course, right. But the inside of my head is not yielding pretty blog posts. And I muse on how the thread of comments gets away from me, here, until I have to strain to remember what the women coming and going, speaking of Michaelangelo could possibly have to do with Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her. Since I live to entertain, however, I offer up here, as an experiment, my best first line. The way an exquisite corpse works is everybody then adds on to the story looking only at the line above their own. Unmoderated comments means you’re on your honor because they get published as they get written.
Trying to flirt, Miranda Hobbes texted “I like my men like life itself, nasty brutish and short.” Unfortunately her iPhone corrected her text to “nasty British and short.”
September 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Demonstrating its inhumanity, her iPhone superfluously added “nasty” to the already fully descriptive phrase, “British and short.”
September 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Bertie, who knew himself to be an unpleasant, short-statured Englishman, found his interest piqued.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
“I am, therefore, or so it would seem,” he texted back, using perfect punctuation, “all which your heart desires”; “<3,” he added playfully, hoping she would recognize an e-heart when she saw one, rather than concluding that the sum total of his parts was equal to less than three.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
He then thrust himself, iPhone in hand, from his desk at the British Accountancy & Taxation Bureau and huffed his way out of the building to embark on what might be the most interesting afternoon of his life.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Can’t resist!! Here goes:
It all started with a lunch meeting with a certain Ms. P. They had first met years back, over a shared interest in salsa dancing.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
It was, in fact Ms. P who first introduced Bertie Aldridge-Rapp to Miranda Hobbes, taking pity for his genuinely depressed nature and hoping that a female companion might be exactly what he needed.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Thinking that their meeting needed none of the quaintness of an afternoon tea party she conspired to orchestrate an altogether different sort of rendezvous.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:11 am
[Um, am I going to be old enough to read this story??]
September 16th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
[One day, dear un, one day.]
September 16th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
[Kimba, please play!]
September 16th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
And remembering how much her oldest sister had enjoyed her first date, considered making arrangements for them to go shoot rats at the dump.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
[See, this is exactly what I was afraid of. I killed it. And somehow the fact that it’s called corpse already is of little comfort.]
September 18th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
[Kimba when I write something and get 0 comments I feel like I have to choose between telling myself I was so incoherent nobody could understand what I was saying and telling myself I was intimidatingly complete and there was nothing left for anyone else to say. Because I want to write again I go with the second. Trust me, you didn’t kill it.]