The Retrospective Writings

Chapter 3 I don’t tell my brother about my date but leave the restaurant right on time to go home and get changed. On the way to the hotel where Eric is staying, something feels off. My brother’s words have more of an impact than I could have expected and begin to weigh down on me heavily. He had never completely cleared up what he was trying to get at, but I get the idea that his thoughts went deeper than his words. Now, this feeling in my gut can either be the clams I’d eaten or just intuition talking, with both telling me to turn around and go back home. What I really want is Bill, not this Eric character, but Bill and I were incomplete. There is a crack in our foundation that threatens to crumble what we have built if I push too hard and too fast. I need to solidify our base, and for that, I suppose people like Eric come in handy. I’ll do anything to make myself feel complete. I arrive on time, nervous yet eager to get it over with. I wear the same outfit on all of my fi

Chapter 2 It hadn’t started as anything major—the dates. Some call it prostitution, hooking, fishing, whatever, but I reserve those names for the ones who are actually working the streets; I’m just a professional dater. Yes, most the dates entail sex, but to me, it’s just a part of the experience. People have needs and I’m happy to provide them for a fee in order to get what I ultimately want. It’s a win-win for all persons involved. It all began three months ago, with Bill actually as my first date. My brother is correct in saying that I fall in love easy, but with Bill, I know it’s different. I fell in love with his kind heart at the start, and his generosity is just extra sweetener on the already over-iced cake. I am still unsure on how he really feels about me, but with each encounter it feels as if we are getting more and more comfortable with each other, even sharing and exchanging our personal lives and information. Every ounce of me wants to tell him how I feel, but

Robin Red Chapter 1 All things become ugly over time. I remember how my mother always whispered that phrase to me in her times of anger. It was her attempt of condoning for the chaos of certain events—to her seemingly oblivious child—at the time. I always felt that, in a sense, she found it as a way of dealing with her emotions surrounding my father’s drinking and his own transformation into the ugly abyss that became his life. It’s like she was talking to herself through me, as if by convincing me, she could alter time and change her current horrible place in the situation. But it wasn’t only my father who proved the ugliness to her, it was the entire world. Even change itself took on the same characteristics as her ugly targets. Nothing could escape her judgmental eye of and for the inevitable. Work, our home, relatives, even my own brother, all would someday succumb to Father Time, be overtaken by fate, and morph to the worst capable outcome. Everything and everyone,