Parental Advice Versus the advertising industry

A short piece written in 2011.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Advice. The combination of advertisements and vice. The persuasion of vice on the platforms of advertisements. Blond, full-lipped women felating glass bottles of fizzy brown sugar water. A smooth skin-chiseled man with Greek statue muscles grips a hamburger between perfect fingers. Ketchup, mustard, relish and a slice of tomato fall onto his chest after a monstrous bite. His hand swiping a golden starch-stick to wipe up the burger ejaculate.

“Son, what you need is a good woman. I don’t necessarily mean a good looking woman, because you can be attracted to a lot of women. By a good woman, I mean a woman you can talk to. A woman that you can be around after you’ve gotten over your urges. The truth is they all have vaginas, so what you really want to look for is what’s on the inside. Because after a while you won’t be young any more, you’ll get older and you’ll hopefully grow a little wiser, which means you’ll have more depth and when you get to that point, looks won’t be the most important thing anymore, especially if you’re with a really good woman. The type of woman you get along with, you can talk to, laugh with, tease, fight with. The type of woman who is her own person and who isn’t concerned with the way she looks before being concerned with the way she feels. That’s the kind of woman you want son. They all have vaginas so don’t get distracted by that. Look for a woman you can talk to.”

Advice. The warning label on a pack of cigarettes is no substitute for experience. The unwritten hacking, scratchy-throated, black-lunged history of the losers destined to repeat itself. Maybe a gap in generations but bloody sputum just the same because the apple doesn’t rot far from the tree.

Woman, Cellar, Cutting

A short story incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Her razor blade was still on the nightstand, dried brown with blood. There was water running, the shower, she must have turned it on to hide any sound. What sound, I didn’t know, but then again suicide is often uncharted territory if done correctly.

I put her clothes from the hospital in the hamper and sat on the bed. What were all those forms I needed to fill out? What were those phone numbers I had to call? Why did I put her clothes in the hamper?

I stood up, compelled by the only instinct, I knew. I headed down to the cellar and grabbed the first bottle of wine on the rack, not bothering to read the label. I suppose it wasn’t instinct, simply learned behavior.

I pulled off the label, twisted into the cork and popped it open. Red wine. Whiskey would be better but I was able to hide my learned behavior behind a hobby of wine collecting. Maybe that was one of the reasons that compelled her to leave. One of many, I guessed.

I went back to the room. No glass, just the bottle. I laid in bed. I need to fix that baseboard it’s loose. She had pointed it out. I never got around to it. Probably never would. Perhaps that was one of the last remaining forms of communication between us. A shared responsibility for the house. Without that, what was the house?

I turned and saw the razor blade still poised on the edge of the night stand. I imagined it had just been used and looked down to see the crowns of blood on the floor below it. What had that felt like? Sitting here, hiding from me, wanting to escape, not just this home but everything. There wasn’t a single place she would have rather gone, could have gone other than to that unknown place that hovers like a stick behind us. Or maybe in her case, like a carrot dangling in front of us.

A deep emptiness seemed to push all else out of my stomach. A pit so vast I couldn’t drink fast enough to fill it. The emptiness forced tears out of my eyes and shaking so violent I double over, gripping my pillow. It pulled my face in all directions, contorting my mouth into ugly cries. There was a deep hole and would not be filled again. Never.

What did it feel like to sit here, shower running and cut into the veins of the wrist? To cut so deeply that the blood rushed out like a crack in a dam. What sort of emptiness was that? Or was it exactly like my own. An agonizing look into nothingness.

I grabbed at the razor blade, spilling my wine. What sort of emptiness did she feel? That woman, that once called herself mine. My woman. A woman. What did it feel like?

Flame, Famous, Shy

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

She went on to do great things. Invited to universities she had never attended to give graduation speeches. Invited to television talk shows so her admirers could see she was really like everyone else but in the most glamorous way. Her name was leant to movies, books and T.V. shows as a way to further promote them. She made trips to congress to speak bout issues in which she was passionate. She was loved and adored. Her personal life, however, did not exist.

Her name meant many things to those who followed her but to herself it had lost all meaning. her quiet demeanor was misattributed as humbleness and her few choices of words marked as the attribute of a great speaker, rather than to her shyness.

Long after her body existed, she would live on in the memories of the collective conscience. They would make meme’s of her on social media platforms that generations after would look at and attribute new meaning.

And, of course, she was heralded as a great voice for women all over the world. Though she never directly spoke of women’s rights, her image was used as an example to all women.

To this, she had her doubts. Am I a tool for another’s agenda? Do I belong here for my ideas? Or will I always be a female body with ideas, doomed never to be separated from my anatomy.

These questions would arise in her mind but to them she also rebutted, as long as my ideas are sound they will rise above all superficialities, in time.

She got older and wiser, the political climate changed and issues came, went and came back again. Her image came and went with them.

Now as she neared the end of her life, with only a handful of years to walk this earth, she noticed the same things.

“Here is an example of a woman who has risen above it all to achieve great things, despite.”

“This woman has to rub it in everyone’s faces that she is a woman, just focus on the ideas, lady.”

She had heard the same criticisms all her life, on both sides, calling her woman. They were not wrong but they were miles away from the truth.

As she spent her final days in a house of a quiet neighborhood in some lazy suburb, she would look out the window and watch the world go by, still with that same flame, passion and will. To all of you, she thought, that say I am more than a woman or just a woman, I only ever wished to live as I am.