The following is fiction, what I like to call an ADR Fic Bit.
It was when he was halfway through his sub-par Pad Thai that Mo first thought of adultery. Not adultery in general, but as it pertained to him and his wife Tally. They’d been married five years now. They had two small kids who were plenty cute, and brought him bursts of joy. But still. The thought that his life would be limp and rather blah like the noodles he ate now because he had nothing better to do made him silently recoil.
His wife was not onto him. She picked at her basil shrimp, oblivious to his mind’s naughty detour. She sipped her wine slowly. Mo concluded that it would turn him on to see her drink it with urgency. But she never did. She always had one glass of the same Chardonnay, measured out. 4 oz. 100 calories.
The thing that screwed with him is that he couldn’t come up with another woman for even a fictional frolic. The barista at Starbucks was jolly, but nothing more than that. The women in his law office were asexual at best, swimming in a sad sea of beige twin sets, withering and washed out. There was that one woman at the boutique where he bought his wife that orange scarf once. She was certainly hot. But the fact that he was there with instructions from his wife scribbled on a small pink notecard made him feel positively dickless.
He looked down. His pad thai was missing. He looked over and his wife was cradling the tin, pulling long noodles from it, slurping them down. She had sauce on her face, a thin soy mustache. She smiled.
Suddenly, she was beautiful.
Pour me another, she said waving her glass at him, as if she knew.
And as he stood to head for the fridge, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a while. He poured far more than 4 oz.
They’d share it.
Love. More fic bits please, ADR!
I enjoyed this and I am intrigued by the idea of messy being sexy. I like that your character is male, too. I hope you continue to explore these “sexier” topics in little fictional bits. Question: Do you feel more freedom to examine more things, and take more risks, when writing fiction?
Thanks. And the answer is yes. I do feel more freedom in fiction writing. When writing fiction, I feel like anything is game – things I wouldn’t write about in my non-fictional writing, things I know little about. There is something really fun (and challenging) for me about trying to get in a character’s head, particularly a character who is nothing like me. For instance, here. I do not pretend to know how men think, or married men think. But it is cool to try to guess. Why do men stray? What about the landscape of adulthood and family and responsibility breeds malaise and infidelity? Are we attracted to perfection in our mates or to the little imperfections and excesses we all perhaps toil to “fix” in ourselves?
I would say the only “true” aspect in this piece is the bit about control. I have become a much more controlled person recently in many areas of my life – i.e. not drinking, waking up at 5am to write, etc, etc and at the end of the day, part of me, tiny but there, worries that in becoming this edited version of myself, I am becoming less appealing somehow? Or maybe the opposite is true? Just really interesting to consider, I think.
Anyway, I could go on and on, but thanks for asking! I love answering questions like this.
I really like this piece – the way it ends is not what I expected.
yes please. pour me another!
Very nicely done! Keep going! Don’t stop.
This was a wonderful post! Thanks so much for writing it!