A Meta Story

He sat down

… sits down?

Should the narrative be written in the present tense? I never really know whether in fact if I should be so immediate in my narrative, so vital. I something gets lost in the present tense, that it fails to carry the necessary weight, isn’t anchored into history so it isn’t quite lore yet.

And yet, the past tense has its own baggage which I don’t like either. The –ed suffix like shriveling petal on a flower, the browning leaf suggesting that the story is dead. In the end, I always choose the past, feel more comfortable in the thudding d’s than the hissing s’s.

He sat down at the round table…

Round? Circular? Café table? Too easy. There’s no bait in it. It’s an ordinary act, lacking anything to draw the reader in.

How about…

He sits in the stranger’s lap rather than in the available chair next to the café table.

Wordy. A lot said. But a little more interesting. Who is this stranger in whose lap our mysterious male sits.

I am sitting here at a café table wondering why I could not be as bold. Probably a mistake, I tell myself as I write the words on the paper. It is not normal to sit in a stranger’s lap at a café table. At best, it would lead to an uncomfortable situation, in the worst case scenario, it might lead to a night or two in jail.

Yet, here one of two characters already mentioned in this one line of narrative, the most defined one, has in fact done that which I, and probably you, would never do, and sit in a stranger’s lap. But then again, in our modern age, when social courtesies have been replaced brutal, honest acts, perhaps sitting in a stranger’s lap isn’t so bold.

I mean, at a strip club scantily clad women sit in strange men’s laps repeatedly ever night of the week, get paid for it, and no one seems to mind. So, we really can’t say sitting in a stranger’s lap is all that odd or interesting.

Start again.

He found footing on a part of the café chair the old man straddled, pushed up, lifting himself off the ground, deftly moving his free leg up and over the old man’s should, so that when he came to a rest, he had found position on top of the old man with his feet folded underneath the old man’s arms to help him maintain balance. The old man grunted and bent down, as if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his back.

More interesting, no longer a lap but an old man’s shoulders. It is an odd sight, of course. But we have little context if any. Where are we? I can imagine this scene in a pool where swimmers partake in a game of chicken, two sets of warriors, the lighter on the heavier, the man on bottom gripping tight the legs of the rider, the rider’s arms out in front ready grapple like a wrestler his opponent, to push him off into the water. But then why the café chair? Why indeed?

Try again.

They were old men, of a different time, age worn into their faces, machismo etched into the roughly hewn voices, wearing short sleeved, and button-up shirts. They spoke in an older language, a language which emphasized the art of speaking, and its playfulness, rolling the r’s, adding playful little suffixes on the ends of words, a jocular match of belittling each other and to find place at the top of the group. They were men stripped of all masculine motivations, no women, no sports, no cars, no money, no business. Just men, sitting around a set of café tables, sipping on coffee cups and sharing stories of things that happened to them that week.

Okay. It has a nice rhythm to it. The images are nice. There is bit a hint of conflict. A tiny bit. And no setting, save for a café table.

Okay. Then how about…

Around them, other café customers find seats, a young married couple with two children, a young boy carrying in his hands a toy he took off one of the shelves of the bookstore attached, and an even younger girl, one thumb in her mouth, the other hooked around the plush arm of an elephant. They have come to supplicate before their mother, pleading for yet another possession to add to the ever growing mound of neglected possessions at home.

There are college students, some inexperience to the ways of the world, others older, too experienced and burned out on what they had spent half their life doing, trading news of other students not present, avoiding the opened used text books in front of them. They seek refuge here were they mistakenly believe that they can find focus. They only find distraction.

The old men ignore them all. They are permissive. They permit the world to turn about them. Coffee is sold in the café only because they allow it. And the parents and children sit and ease the soreness in their feet from a full day of shopping only because the old men allow it. It is their world; they have conquered it like Odysseus before them. They are Odysseus’s crew having journeyed the world only to end up here in a Barnes and Noble café.

A Latin beauty cascades into the café area, on long thin legs, and a pair of heeled shoes. She wears a dress which reminds one of a parrot, a kind of lime green and lemon yellow, with hints of red and orange woven in. It shows off her knees which are smooth even at the edges and in the valleys, and it reveals an ample but not over-sized bust.

At first, one old man notices her, and then another, until they all turn their heads, these men of Odysseus, who with sword and shield have conquered armies, but fall prey to one delicate creature. She slays them all when she saunters past without so much of a look, stops at the cashier counter where she places an order for the sweetest drink on the menu.

I like it. I might build upon the image though, the old and the young, the male and the female, the strength and the weakness. Which is which? Maybe turn everything on its head. You kind of have started that idea in the last paragraph. Follow it through.

She senses there stares coursing around her form, and she turns to look at them, the army of men, who under her mother-like stare turn into young boys, diverting their eyes to the ground, to the cups of coffee on the table, to their laps. She has conquered them, and they cower under her power. The scent of victory is not the stench of sweat but the sweet of aroma of fragrant flowers. Although she doesn’t realize it, the sides of her mouth turn-up ever so slightly in a malicious smirk.

Nice. But what are you going to do with it? Who is the hero of your story? The villain? Are there any heroes and villains? Maybe there are no heroes and villains. Maybe there is no conflict. Just an image leading to a question and time to think.