Photo by Naeim Jafari
Creative Nonfiction
I see you lounging against a biscuit-colored shale rock in your gabardine, three-button pants ($69.95). You wear a slight frown, as if pondering the answer to a difficult riddle (why is the writing like an albatross?). Your face, butternut brown, tips slightly to the imagined sun against a perfect baby blue, cloudless sky. Everything about the picture is perfect, your etched profile, your wind-tossed, longish hair, the short-sleeved, 100% cotton shirt with three buttons undone to reveal the deep cleft of your clavicle. I imagine perhaps besides the beach, you love dogs and surfing, you drink, but not too much, you like a rough kiss once in a while, you perhaps take yourself too seriously, but that I can overlook. You have the unreal perfection of the illustrated covers of the romance novels my Aunt JoAnne read and I discovered in her closet the summer before eighth grade (what could I have been doing rummaging around in her closet in the first place? Looking for just these books, the fat paperbacks with covers set always in what I considered the olden days, back then, never a cover of a woman in a pair of wool knit trousers and cashmere matching cardigan in ballet flats--I see you too, page 68. Perhaps you and 56 whisper to each other when the catalogue is closed and shoved into my book bag, forever separated by a mere ten pages).
I read those novels with the pirates, the captains of ships, the Lord of the Manor, always the brooding type, and his conquest, because we always had to be captured, cajoled, jerked out of our impertinence by their arms a bit, wrestled into giving in to their bubbling, overwhelming desire on a bed of soft autumn leaves or a down comforter mattress in the Captain's chambers deep in the belly of the ship. Yes, I thought. Yes, this is what I love is like--I need a man named Raphe or Geronimo, a noble savage to half-rape me into ecstasy, and submission, while still learning a little something himself about humility. A slap would likely be required. At that age, you never think about afterwards--in the books, there is no afterwards, just the next chapter with the awkward after-sex lack of conversation and stickiness left out, it leaps right to the next day, with the conquered and joyful maiden whistling and swinging a bucket down a dirt path, her hair be-ribboned like the thin-young girl on page 103 with the khaki shorts and V-neck T-shirt.
Back at school, I looked around at my male classmates in their ill-fitting corduroy jeans, Metallica t-shirts, graffitied sneakers, and couldn't imagine standing on the deck of a sailboat with any of them (page 33) or riding a stallion across the great meadows of Ireland (from She Takes a Village). But nor did I see them in the high school boys loitering outside of the parking lot next to their parents cars, cracking jokes and getting each other into headlocks. Where were these mythological creatures? Sometimes, sitting staring at Steve Bencusky's perfect neck in Mrs. Gustafason's social studies class, I could almost convince myself that Steve had another side--and, since he was on the swim team, it wasn't that big of a stretch, he did the daily discipline to make morning practice every day, but we never talked, me being of the invisible tribe in middle school, with a flat-chested body and big glasses that made me appear to be squinting. Which is why I still turn to you, page 56. Or page 78, the safari spread. Or page 54, man straddling the bicycle built for two, a wide smile, teeth straight and frankly dangerous looking, as he careens down what appears to be a treacherous path, shirtless, but with a white-billed cap tossed across his blond curls to keep the sun off his Roman nose. On the back of the bike, we have a straw picnic basket with the top of a champagne bottle peeking its head out, and perhaps the hint of strawberries. On the bike behind him with her feet carelessly off the pedals as if she has lost control totally, is the girl from page 56, and it surprises me to see her there, though I am pleased that they have found one another at last and don't have to carry on waiting and wondering when the other will arrive.
The Author
Aimee LaBrie’s first short story, “Tina, The Tiny Girl,” was published by her first grade teacher, Miss Carol. In the years following, Aimee continued to write, earning her MFA in fiction from Penn State and her MLA from the University of Pennsylvania. Her stories have appeared in Minnesota Review, Iron Horse Literary Journal, StoryQuarterly, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, Beloit Fiction, Permafrost, and others. In 2007, her short story collection, Wonderful Girl, was awarded the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction and published by the University of North Texas Press. Her short fiction has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. In 2012, she won first place in in Zoetrope’s All-Story Fiction contest. Aimee teaches creative writing for Rutgers Writers House. She lives in Princeton, with her yoga teacher husband, quiet stepson, and two noisy, apartment-sized dogs, Chaplin and Millie.
Aimee LaBrie, Princeton, NJ
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