From the Archives: What Happens When I Try To Write Fiction

This is a fragment of a story I wrote several years ago. I was hanging out at my friend's Katie and Cara's apartment, and they stepped out to go to the store. I stayed behind, and wrote a story to pass the time. When they got back I read it to them. As I recall, Katie laughed, but Cara didn't really say much.

Rather than fry his bananas, he elected to give them to Goodwill where they would be of use. He was sad when the Goodwill truck came around and told him that they didn’t trade in foodstuffs.
“If you have any old furniture or clothing we could take that.” said the buxom truck driver.
“Well, I do have this chair I don’t really want.”
He invited her in, and they dined on tea and bananas until late in the evening when he tried to put the moves on her, but she declined.
“I feel kind of full, and might be sick,” she told him.
So they met the following evening, and this time they had sex before they ate, and he was pleased. She was kind of non-plussed, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she kept quiet about it.
After the sex they went to the park and bought some hotdogs, which they ate with sauerkraut, not because they liked it but because it was German. They then stumbled over to the local art museum to look at paintings and found it closed. So they sat down to chat.

“I don’t know how they expect to stay open if they are going to be closed on Mondays.”
“They don’t charge for admission really, it’s kind of a state-funded thing.”
“That is no excuse.”
‘”I blame the Republicans. They are always cutting funding for things.”
“My aunt is Republican.”
“Really?”
“Oh don’t worry, I’m not one. I’m an independent.”
“Most of the independents I know are too ill-informed, whether due to stupidity or laziness, to form an opinion about political issues.”
There was a long silence interrupted only by a small dog that ran by at full speed barking it’s head off.
“I wonder what his problem is.”
Following the dog a moment later was a man on a bicycle riding fast and screaming. They couldn’t make out much of what he said, but the word “allegorical” was clear. As the man crossed the street he was struck by a VW Bug. The man flew high into the air, and pieces of his bicycle flew all over the street. Katie got out of the car and started to apologize, but the man took off running after the dog. He called something back. It was also hard to make out, but the word “allegorical” was still clear. He mispronounced it the same way he had the first time.
She looked at him, and he shrugged.
“He mispronounces allegorical.”
“Yeah.”
“The other day I was at work, and there was a man buying hot cereal, and he told me that I reminded him of his cousin. Jonathan. That was his cousin’s name.”
“That’s so great.”
He walked her home, not knowing he would never see her again. The next day she stowed away aboard a whaling vessel headed up the Mississippi toward the Great Lakes where, the Captain maintained, a large population of clever whales had been hiding for many years.