WRITING AMY 


The beginning was inevitable. Amy sat down at her desk to write. She
had a groovy leather chair and sometimes she sat in it naked, most often
when she was a little drunk. She could trust the chair. Not like some
people. Some people were rats, they fucked with her life, as only rats
can fuck with a twenty eight year old life. She liked to tell herself
that, even though it wasn't true. Life is just a bowl of cherries for
a twenty eight year old and she was only blaming the rats because they
were men. Amy knew how to have a really manic hangover. It was one of
the things she did well, that and PMS. She smoked too, but nobody's
perfect.

 So, Amy was at her desk, writing - writing poetry because she thought
that was all she could do, she had no idea how to write a short story.
Nothing seemed to happen to her that she couldn't cover in a poem.
Sometimes when she was out drinking with her friends, not all of whom
were rats, she had ideas for poems and they swam around in her head,
like ideas do. Life has its compensations and sometimes Amy maybe got
laid. She was twenty eight years old, after all, and it was at these
times she thought that life was the bowl of cherries she'd heard about.
This was one of those times. This has to be one of those stories because
this is one of those times when Amy is sitting naked in her leather
chair sipping cold beer from a glass in the middle of the day. Sometimes
a poem is not enough.

Amy sat naked in her groovy leather chair writing poems about vege-
tables she had known. It was as though the rats didn't exist. She was
alone with her thoughts, at her desk, sitting in her groovy leather
chair. She could feel the chair, warm as blood, soft as lips, and as
smooth as the insides of her thighs. She watched as a bead of moisture
started to roll down the side of her glass. When it was half way down
she picked up the glass with her thumb and middle finger and raised it
so it was about so far from her face. Then she gently pushed with her
naked toes gripping the carpet. The chair rolled back. Amy sank into the
leather, her legs stretched out, the glass exactly centred as the drop-
let grew minutely, becoming heavier, and at last it stopped, quivering
and flashing light. It was warm in the room and Amy could hardly bear
the waiting. She closed her eyes, leaned back a little. Her hand trem-
bled. It was enough to break the tension. She didn't see the tiny globe
leap from the glass, but she felt it burst, just below her navel. She
couldn't tell where it disappeared to, her skin was so hot, but she
didn't mind. She wrote a poem about it in the end.