Title:
WANNA-BE’S
Author: Mark Connelly
Publisher: Mark Connelly Productions
Pages: 188
Genre: Literary Fiction/Humor/Satire
Author: Mark Connelly
Publisher: Mark Connelly Productions
Pages: 188
Genre: Literary Fiction/Humor/Satire
With his new girlfriend – a soccer
mom with a taste for bondage – urging him to “go condo,” failed screenwriter
Winfield Payton needs cash. Accepting a job offer from a college friend, he
becomes the lone white employee of a black S&L. As the firm’s token white,
he poses as a Mafioso to intimidate skittish investors and woos a wealthy
cougar to keep the firm afloat. Figure-skating between the worlds of white and
black, gay and straight, male and female, Jew and Gentile, Yuppie and militant,
Payton flies higher and higher until the inevitable crash. . .
For More Information
First Chapter
INSIGNIFICANT
OTHERS
Winfield Payton awoke to a mother’s voice. Not his mother—but someone’s mother. It was
the commanding yet compassionate voice mothers develop, stern but
apprehensive. It was a voice rarely
heard in Downer Estates, a brick apartment complex housing the usual collection
of upscale “singles” who live within Frisbee range of urban universities,
attend jazz concerts in the park, practice safe sex, drive alphabet cars (BMWs,
SUVs, VWs), cybersex on company laptops, faithfully recycle Perrier bottles,
and sip low-cal cappuccino in Starbucks while checking the fates of
their mutual funds.
It was a suburban voice, a beach voice, a picnic voice. The voice of a concerned mother directing her
brood. “Now, look, Brandy, I told you
before. Mommy will be home in just a
little while. You can have cereal. Where is Heather? OK, tell Heather to give you some raisin
bran. Take your vitamin. And don’t go near the pool until I get back.
Do you understand? Don’t go swimming until Mommy comes home.”
As yet Win had not opened his eyes; he was too
exhausted. Confronting daylight would be painful.
Feeling the sun warm his naked back, he buried his face in the pillows. For a moment he imagined he was at
Bradford Beach, snoozing while mommies and kiddies trooped over him, sprinkling
his blanket with sand and popsicle drippings.
But
no, he was in bed. His bed. His fingers felt the familiar smooth
lacquered headboard. The pillow bore the scent of Old Spice, his
cologne—mundane but reliable.
Home.
He turned his aching neck. This simple movement triggered intracranial alarms.
Now everything hurt. His head throbbed.
His neck tightened. His back ached. Streaks of raw flesh burned across his
chest and thighs.
Oh! His body bore the imprint of what his clouded
mind failed to recall. Opening an eye to the sun, he saw a gleaming bottle of
Absolut on the bedside table. The bottle
was nearly empty. Oh! A ceramic ashtray held the twisted remains of
weedy joints. Oh! Two broken poppers lay on the carpet. Oh!
Leaning over, he saw—amid the tangled debris of his clothes—three
lipstick-stained balls of Kleenex, each containing a spent condom. Oh!
Rolling
over, Win groaned, feeling like a crash victim.
The female voice in the other room called out to him. No longer the mommy voice, it was the
supportive, deferential, eager-to-please voice of a Sixties sitcom wife. Mary Tyler Moore exuding “Oh, Rob!”
compassion. “Do you want Motrin?” she asked, “I’m making coffee.” He heard the sounds of housewife bustling in
his bachelor kitchen.
“Motrin,” he croaked, like a
wounded GI begging for morphine. Motrin, hell. He needed intensive care. IV’s. Oxygen. And Band-Aids. Sitting up, blinking
in the sun-light, Win noted
the thin, blood-lined scratches and nicks across his chest and thighs. Steve McQueen tangled by barbed wire in The
Great Escape.
“Here, baby.”
The woman standing in the doorway bore no
relation to the voice flowing with flight attendant charm. Despite the black eye makeup, false
eyelashes, and hooker-red lipstick, she was clearly pretty. Her sensibly short
blonde hair was cutely, boyishly cut. It complemented the husband-bought Mother’s
Day earrings. No doubt she had been trying to look
like Debra Harry since fifth grade.
Below the chin she was
decidedly dissimilar. Her neck was
gripped by a two-inch leather choker studded with steel points. Metal chains
led to a leather corset which maximized her cleavage and girdled her waist with
tight belts and more chains. Handcuffs dangled over a thigh encased in torn
fishnet. Her wrists and ankles sported matching leather cuffs.
Instinctively, Win drew
back. Only her soft voice re-minded him
that he was not in mortal danger.
“Oh,
baby, look at those scratches. I’m so
sorry! I for-get about these
nails.” She wiggled the fingers of her
right hand, their dagger-like points flashing blood-red in the sun-light. Her left palm cupped three red caplets.
He took the pills, then,
reaching for a water glass accidentally gulped three and half ounces of
Absolut. God!
“Oh,
honey!”
Sitting
up, Win rubbed his eyes and brushed his unruly hair. The woman sat on the edge of the bed and
began un-buckling her cuffs, dropping them into a black leather shoulder bag.
“Mind
if I take a quick shower? I have to get
home to the kids.”
“Go
ahead, Barbie.” Barbie. Gratefully her name came back to him. She
disappeared into the guest bath. The architects of Downer Estates had
thoughtfully equipped each two-bedroom
apartment with two full baths. Single
tenants and their partners of choice could shower at the same time, going
through their customary after-sex hygienic rituals in private. Alone in the main bath, Win gargled with
Scope, doused his sore member with hydrogen peroxide, then drew a bath.
Sitting in the steaming water,
he felt his muscles un-wind. Since his thirty-seventh birthday, a loosening
morn-ing bath had become a necessity before he could take a shower and actually
wash. Rubbing his neck, Win heard water running in the next room. The grip of alcohol fading, the night’s
events played over in his mind.
Win had naively assumed that
one had to call an escort service, troll BDSM dating sites, or stalk FetLife
profiles to locate someone like Barbie Monreal. It seemed highly un-likely to
run into a woman with her tastes at a real estate seminar.
Normally, Win avoided
attractive professional women with wedding rings—unless he met them in a
singles bar. A real estate seminar held
in the student union of his own college was an improbable place to get lucky.
Money rather than lust was on his mind that afternoon. He accepted Barbie’s
Century 21 card gracefully enough and was pre-pared to move onto the next booth
when she suggested a rendezvous at Henri’s for drinks.
Barbie
Monreal reminded him of Doris Day in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. Attractive.
Cute. But too domesticated to
arouse any libidinous interests—until her third white wine spritzer, when,
suitably lubricated, she calmly announced her motives.
“Now that the kids are
older, and I have some time, I’d like to get back into psychodrama.”
“Acting?”
Win asked naively.
“In
a way,” she smiled, giving him a patronizing nod. “Role play.
Fantasy. I like the tension, the
intimacy. I like power. Both asserting
and receiving. Strength and sub-mission.
It’s like sexual I Ching.
Give. Take. Dominate. Submit. But nothing violent, you understand. I play it safe, sane, and consensual,” she
said as if repeating radio jingle.
“Nothing too perverse.”
“Nothing
too perverse?”
“Consider
it a hard massage. I like it both ways,
but nothing painful.”
“Nothing
painful,” Win repeated, recalling his dentist’s reassuring lie about the ease of root canal.
“Not
at all. I mostly like the costumes. It’s like adult Halloween.”
“Halloween?”
“Sure. Like playing dress up.
Gives you a chance to let your mind go, explore the dark side. It’s the
ultimate safe sex. You can’t even consider it cheating. Not really. I never do straight. Well, maybe oral,” she
added quietly, sounding like a dieter surrendering to a Weight Watcher
sundae.
“I
have the rest of the afternoon off,” she said, fixing her eyes on him with
Nancy Reagan admiration.
Thus
began the first of many encounters, most of which Win could only perform or
endure under the influence of alcohol.
Lying in the tub, Win rubbed
his temples, then forced himself out of the warm embryonic water to shower and,
more tentatively, shave.
Clad in a bathrobe, Barbie was
making his bed when he returned. She fluffed the pillows, smoothed the
comforter, then collected the accouterments of modern romance—body oil,
vibrator, adult DVDs, and five-inch spike heels.
“Honey, you really shouldn’t
drink so much.” She smiled, offering him
coffee.
He
nodded, taking burning gulps of Eight O’Clock French Roast.
As
Winfield dressed, he watched Barbie slip into white pantyhose, cream skirt,
white blouse, sensible heels, and gold Century 21 blazer.
“I’ve
got to buzz home to check on the kids,” she said, consulting her smart phone.
“I’ve got appointments the rest of the day.
Do you want to get together Thursday?
Around two?”
“Sure,”
Win agreed, feeling like a casual user sliding in-to addiction.
The July morning was cool. He
walked Barbie to her car. “You know, I
lived in New York right after college,” she said. “West Seventy-Second. I love
that town. Went to Hellfire once. Didn’t
like it.” She wrinkled her nose as if recalling a disappointing dessert at Le
Cirque.
Still
the neophyte, Win volunteered an apology, “I hope I didn’t hurt your wrist.”
“Oh, this?” She pulled back
her sleeve, revealing a circle of darkened flesh. “My bruises fade. I tell Jerry they come from aerobics.”
They
reached her car, a dark blue Volvo bearing a “Have You Hugged Your Kids Today?”
bumper sticker. She opened the trunk and
dropped in the black shoulder bag with a heavy thud.
Donning
sunglasses, she smiled at Win. “Until Thursday.
If something comes up, text me.”
Win
nodded, the fresh air reviving his headache.
“Look, Win,
I’ve just gotten to know you. I realize
I shouldn’t make any judgments or tell you how to live your life, but I am
beginning to care about you. As a
special friend.” She paused, grating the
steel tip of her heel against the curb.
“Win, I think you should seriously consider going condo.”
About the Author
Mark Connelly was born in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey. He received a BA in English from Carroll College in Wisconsin and an MA and PhD from the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His books include The Diminished Self:
Orwell and the Loss of Freedom, Orwell and Gissing, Deadly
Closets: The Fiction of Charles Jackson, and The IRA on
Film and Television. His fiction has appeared in The
Ledge, Indiana Review, Cream City Review, Milwaukee Magazine, and Home Planet
News. In 2014 he received an Editor’s Choice Award in The
Carve’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest; in 2015 he received Third Place in Red Savina Review’s
Albert Camus Prize for Short Fiction. His novella Fifteen Minutes received
the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in
2005.
Mark’s latest book is the literary fiction/humor/satire,
Wanna-be’s.
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