So, hey, the last bunch of posts have been quite nerdy, haven't they? All about movies I've seen and bands I like. I realize that no one really expects any different, because this is only read by people who talk to me and know that my life is not that interesting. But still: I posted a list of Criterion DVD covers I liked, and critiqued Pitchfork reviewers. These could be described as new lows. But that's my life, sad to say. So now I grace you with my fiction. This was something I wrote a few days ago, at night when I thought I was going to be sleeping, but no, I don't do that. I guess it turned out all snapshot fiction style, in that there's no plot. And the characters don't have names. Which isn't necessarily snapshot fiction. Maybe this makes the story more shallow. Maybe that's the point or something.

Just realized that I could do literary criticism maybe, but only for my own writing. That's not really a skill. If any of you can do the literary criticism for other people's work, feel free to do so. Anyway, without further ado:

Rubberband Summer: a love story

Her bones were like a guitar line underneath a skin of tape hiss and feedback, or so that was his metaphor. She looked the way he wanted to look. Not the female aspect, the jagged angular aspect.
He was skinny and that was fine. He didn’t want to have a six-pack, he wanted his skin to be able to be sucked in so his ribs stuck out. He wanted to look bony. He dressed in tight undershirts tucked into loose-fitting cargo pants. He had maybe three pairs of pants, and his shirts were packaged in prewrapped sets of three, sometimes shoplifted.
As dusk fell he pulled out a champagne bottle from his pants’ largest pocket. They drank it in a field that was only a thicket of trees from some business complex parking lot.
They were exactly what the other wanted to be, and they worked perfectly as a couple because they were viewed as a unit that shared the best qualities. She wanted to seem like she was an enemy of the rest of society, when in reality, she would be embraced by society as there was nothing particularly objectionable about her. He wanted to seem attractive. Together they were both those things, they were the kids of the future, both barely legal and perfect in every way.
They had nothing to say to anyone so they spent all their time together, bouncing like pinballs off of everything, saying the obnoxious shit solely for the other’s benefit. It was their last summer to be young and stupid and everything felt like it was on fire. Two months ago they’d graduated from high school, one month from now they’d be on separate coasts. They acted sad that their relationship would end but really, what they had was a moment in time, destined to end as soon as life ticked on.
So a bottle of champagne, lifted in a toast to newly-quit summer jobs. He used to pump gas, for they lived in one of only two states in the nation where self-service was not an option. She still worked at a movie theater.
They got drunk as they talked about nothing, that is to say, the grass. The drunker they became, the more nothing dominated the conversation.
They didn’t have sex that night, as they had that afternoon, on the bed belonging to the parents of one of their friends. Instead they fell asleep in the grass, holding each other ever tighter as dewdrops began to form all over their skin before the sun came up.

That's all. Oh, and that's copyright 2004 Brian Nicholson. don't even try to steal it. Well, you could steal the plot, as it was maybe cliched. But don't steal the good lines. You know the ones I'm talking about. There are like three. The first line and the last two paragraphs. The rest is kind of bullshit. The dude has my shallowness. Write what you know and all that. So if the only thing that feels authentic is that, there's a very specific reason for that. That being that it's the only thing that I didn't bullshit out of other people's work. I'll leave you to play "name the influences" as me doing so would really ratchet up this post's nerdiness level.

I like the idea of someone reading the story, liking it, then reading my thoughts and I convince them it's actually crap because they didn't like it that much to begin with. I can actually see that happening by me naming the good bits. If the highlights aren't highlighted, you just remember the story in terms of the highlights and think of it as being consistent. But, no, not really consistent at all.

No one's going to give me any criticism on this, now that I think about it. I wrote a love story. No one's going to even admit they read it. Did you read it? If so, you're gay. Or female. And if you're female, you probably had problems with the shallowness of the characters. Oh wait, everyone has problems with that, because it kind of shitties up the story.

No one ever talks about the blog, actually. Which is funny, because a lot of it is written so I don't have to bring it up in conversation. Or at least that was the original intent.

Oh and since this post really did become quite nerdy, I'll end by saying that my problem with Advisory Committee is really just that my mp3s are very low quality, and that Cold Cold Water, when heard on a decent stereo, kicks ass.

Sometimes I write these entries to have strong ending sentences. This time I just rambled on. No one reads these like essays anyway, so I'm sure the strong endings are neglected. Especially what with their being other entries, directly below it, that you need to check to make sure you haven't missed anything.

I'll steal an ending from the band Beulah, because song lyrics are nerdy, like me:

I'll fight, if you want me to fight.