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.

Ladder, Boat, Housewife

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

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

She came out of the water dripping. A scene of a movie during a time when movies objectified women. Could have been last Summer’s blockbuster. I digress. She paused at the aluminum ladder dipping into the water from the dock. She pulled herself up a rung to get her mouth and nose out of reach of the wake washing over her. A speed boat passed a few meters away, probably not seeing her. I’m sure it wouldn’t have passed so fast had she been standing on the dock, her full person visible.

After a few minutes she came the rest of the way out of the water and grabbed her towel resting next to a coil of rope. Drying her hair, she laid out the towel and sat down. Another boat passed, this one slowing its engine to a low growl when passing the dock. The men in the vessel, a cigarette boat, hooted, whistled and hollered at her. She laughed to herself, not out of flattery but because her 31 years of life had taught her a new law of nature, when she appeared, men gawked.

Now she was a housewife. Married to a man who had at one time had dreams. He had since achieved them but still rarely came home. He cheated. She wasn’t stupid. But she still knew, at one time, there love was true. She hadn’t sacrificed most of her 20’s waiting for him to finish medical school, then residency, then research, trials and awards. His ambition seemed to know no bounds and his cock didn’t either.

She stood up, grabbed her towel and walked up the dock toward their lake house. She passed through the tennis courts, pool, fountains and eventually made it to the open french doors leading into the back of the kitchen. Her bare feet slapped against the polished concrete floors, wet from the grass leading back to the house. She stopped at the fridge to grab a beer. Propping the cap against the counter and tilting the bottle at an angle, she slammed down her right hand, sending the cap spinning somewhere around the marble counters and tink-tink tinking down onto the concrete.

She had all the things her mother and father, church, school, friends and acquaintances told her she would want. But she didn’t. They told her she could live to a ripe old age, keep her looks up to her sixties and never want for anything. She would have rather lived 3-5 short years with a convict, running from the law, staying in cheap hotels with single digits in their names than to sit in luxuries lap, just waiting for something to move.

She took the winding staircase one step at a time into the master bedroom. She stepped into the shower and rinsed off. Another day to kill. Too much time and no life.

Terrify, Characteristic, Throat

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

She danced on the burning edge of a match. Flames lapping at her legs. Her skirt twisting with the into the reds and oranges. A little spot of white in the center of destruction.

She danced and opened up her throat to scream. Her hair tangled in the flames being pulled by the stars. Fingers moving like tentacles, waving and sticking to her body as she swayed with the wind.

I held up a hand to shield the match from the violence of the wind. The fire would eat, but it would have to taste the wood of the match all the way into my fingers before it sent up its smoke.

The fuel of the green lungs all over the world fueled the dance between my fingers. Those forests of lungs all in a singular breath from the Amazon to the Black Forest, creating a hollow breath through the tunnel of the world.

I watched her dance and ignored the insatiable appetite of the flames biting into my finger tips. An emptiness hit me, a tunnel opening up inside my chest, terror. Then the flame spit up its victory smoke and I was left with the memory of her dance.

My blistered fingers fumbled for another glimpse at the woman who danced on the burning edge of the match.

Until my fingers black and nerve endings shriveled, I would strike, and shield, and watch the women dancing in the flames.

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.