Genesis of a Contented Housewife

Sylvia sat in a hardback folding chair with her face towards the bright sun, enjoying the warm spring afternoon. She was generally at peace with the world as she had just enjoyed a delightful lunch and had had the opportunity to renew her friendship with an old and dear friend. She was feeling mellow, aided by three glasses of a gold medal-winning California Chardonnay.

GRANNY

BY JOANNEBARBARELLA

Annia’s Story

Before the written word, people shared stores by way of oral tradition. Sometimes these were fairy tales, or morality plays, but sometimes actual history was shared by one person telling another, passing the story down through time until some bright person finally writes it down. Many of those stories have sadly been lost, so it’s not impossible something like the tale I’m about to share really happened.

You young ones want to hear about Annia do you?

I’ll tell you but you have to promise to pass it on.

Promise?

On his release, Joe's mother interrogates him over lunch. No secret is safe from her.

This has to be one of the fastest pieces I've written so far, the whole process, writing, editing, proofing took less than 90 minutes.

**********

They came from outer space!
They wanted our women!
Well, almost…

She was living in her parents' house. Not earning nearly enough money. She sometimes felt that the pronoun was undeserved, she hadn't done enough to earn it. Hormones for a year and her appearance basically hadn't changed. People in stories always changed extremely. Transformed beyond recognition. They got desirable female figures, dyed their hair blonde, wore makeup and dresses. Even the nonfiction stories the press seemed to pick up, the people they seemed to be interested in, were like that. Look at these before and after pictures, it's amazing how much the person changed.

When Theodor Geisel wrote the Cat in the Hat he was already a well-established children’s author. Several of his books had been made into animated cartoons.

His publisher asked him to do what he could to reduce the literacy problem in the United States by writing a book that could be used as a reading primer. He was given a list of 225 words (There’s dispute on the actual number.) and told to make a story out of those words.

I didn’t learn to read by reading The Cat in the Hat. It didn’t come out until 1957 when I was nine and probably on to The Bobbsey Twins. I do remember reading The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins in the first grade, and being enthralled.

I can’t even estimate the number of hours I’ve spent with my children and grandchildren on my lap reading his wonderful “Dr. Seuss” books. In his honor, I made a list of the words used in The Cat in the Hat and devised a TG poem using only those words.

The sun would not shine.
I was too sad to play.
So we sat in the house
On that sad, sad, bad day.

“Watch you doing up there, Amy?” Steve looks up at Amy way up at the top of her mainmast in a bosun's chair.

Amy looks down towards Steve as he stood near her sailboat. She had just finished installing a new light bulb and a radio antenna on her mainmast.

“Replacing a light bulb and installing a new radio antenna.” Amy was glad she got started early on the repairs.

“You’re a better person then I am.” Steve had a fear of heights.

“I love my boat.” Amy starts lowering herself back down to the deck.

Parker looks at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her closet door. She couldn’t believe her parents had accepted that she had wanted to be a girl since she was little. True, she has to see a counselor about how she feels. But she didn’t mind.

The counselor she has been seeing wants to see how she looked as a girl today. Her friend Tony was coming to pick her up to take her. He stood by her when she came to him about how she was.

“Parker, Tony is here to pick you up.” Mary sticks her head into her daughter’s bedroom.

”My New Year Resolution is to the win the school beauty pageant this year!”

That came at the end of several days of not so subtle pressure on me. Not to participate in the pageant but to “man up” and be more assertive and competitive. My family is very competitive. No matter what, they always competed. Sports, academics, work … you name it. My big brother was the school quarterback, my big sister was the girls’ athletics team leader. Since they were twins and seniors they also competed to be the valedictorian. That fight was vicious.

Tom, Dick and I, Harry had been best friends since primary school. How we had been teased for our names over the years. We stuck together through middle and high school. We hung out together. Got into trouble together. Somehow Tom always managed to extricate himself and I managed to shield Dick from the worst consequences. In high school we usually triple dated. We also stood together against the bullies. We were unfortunate in that we were considered to be “cute” in a girly way. Unfortunately that also invited some unwanted attention from the gay community. We weren’t. Gay that is.

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A Little Crossdressing Fantasy Tale
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It was an ordinary Saturday lunchtime for Edward, he was having lunch at a restaurant with his female friend Lisa. He was a young 24 and she a young 25, their relative closeness in age a result of both meeting at first year of Uni.

Their conversation was halted somewhat when Lisa spotted two of her friends, Sarah who was a juvenile 18, and Ellie a more mature 22 year old.

"Hey you two!" The two came over to the table where Ed and Lisa were sat.

"Hi Lisa, Hi Ed" the two chimed.

This story was originally published on 2/27/2004 on Classic Big Closet.

Harlequin

By Tyrone Slothrop

Chapter 1: Breathlessly, She Awaited Her Lover

I watched as Raoul's shadow darkened the moonlit wall of my boudoir. I could smell the scent of the man, his primal essence entering my spirit as I hoped he would stay long enough to enter me for real.

How should you respond when you “lose” someone in your family? Should you stop talking to them and just don’t acknowledge their existence, well that’s what I did now I just feel like an utter dickhead.

I know from the look of you that you stole my share of the freckles, but whether that old saw that says every time a ginger steals a soul they earn a freckle is right or not, I know you didn’t steal my soul because it was always yours.

The ripping snarl of a jaguar in full hunt shredded the concealment of darkness.

Below me the three men paused for a moment, their erections beginning to wilt from fear.

“What the fuck was that?” One of them half-yelled as he tried to pull his pants back up.

“That was the sound of your doom!”

I can’t help it, as I see them begin to scramble for escape I laugh, a sound of shattering glass.
“I warned you, all of you…”

By now the three men are scrambling past me and I let them go… sport for later…

Lindsey, or Lyle to his friends and acquaintances, was recently retired and was celebrating his 61st birthday with lunch with two long term friends. It was a fairly low key lunch at a rustic old café in the nearby mountains with a couple of long term friends. Several others of his childhood friends and their spouses, due to work and other commitments, could not attend but had sent gifts and well wishes with Jack and Bill.

Fine.

What do you mean ‘Fine’? Do you mean it looks good or not?

Fine .

Grr Fine what sort of a response is that?

Fine.

You don’t like it do you?

It’s fine so do what you have to do. Just don’t involve me.

What’s wrong with you tonight?

Nothing.

It was the look on her face that affected me the most. Was it disappointment? Was it disgust? She didn't look angry, just shocked as she slammed the door and ran down the stairs.

It was my own bloody fault. I had let her down, just like I had let everyone down all my life. If only I'd locked the door. I always locked the door. It must have been the excitement.

Life’s Little Ironies

Krisha looks at her reflection in the mirror. She was standing before it in the nude and couldn’t believe the slight bulge she had. Her belly was slightly bulging, and her areoles were the size of saucer plates and dark brown. She placed her hand down on her stomach and couldn’t believe she was three months pregnant.

Moog Story

by Miss K

Moog walked into the bar to meet his old friend Carlos. They'd for some time now been meeting on the odd occasion to discuss things - nothing world-shaking, though they would probably admit that deep inside they both wished to leave something of note to the world. They were still young. There was time.

Number 4 Park Avenue
A Short Story and a Speculation
By Maryanne Peters

I was called in to Number 4 Park Avenue to look at what they had found - to assess it for an intrinsic value. It seemed strange that somebody who worked in wardrobe in various theaters on Broadway should be called into a construction site, but that just piqued my curiosity. I have a taste for the strange, and I was also a renowned expert of turn of the century garments, which is what won me the invitation.

These days, Halloween has been taken over by the horror industry but when I was young you went out ‘guising’ which meant being in disguise. One year I was a footballer in my favourite team’s strip. Another year, I was a Mexican wearing a poncho my mum had picked up on holiday with a sombrero and a fake moustache made from some soot from the chimney.

Devyn’s Favor

What a night that was! Devyn was thirteen years old and living in a sparsely inhabited suburban area with his parents and his sister. He had four good friends who lived in the area. Kieran and Caitlin, fraternal twin sisters, lived a short distance down the street from him. Madeline lived fifty yards further down the street at the corner of a road that went up a steep hill for a few hundred yards. Tina lived at the top of that same steep road on the same side of the street as Madeline. Tina could actually see Madeline's bedroom window -- and vice versa. They were too far away to really see each other, but sometimes they would sit at their windows while they chatted on their cell phones.

It was Tina's birthday and she invited the four of them over to her house for a sleepover party. Tina was fond of getting dressed up and each year she used her birthday party -- among other things -- as an excuse to get dressed up. This party would be no different -- or would it?

Alexandra’s Leaving

This was triggered by Leonard Cohen’s song. There are overtones of The Beatles’ She’s leaving home’.

Another AP-500. Well, first a whole bunch of AP-500 ‘starters’ for other people …. Then I write a couple of follow-ons myself. Now another few ‘500-worders’ to come.

This story is a fan sequel to Erin Halfelven's "Valentines 'R' Blue," so I would suggest reading that story first.

Copyright (c) 2019 Sophie Jones.

Still in denial about the fact that he's really a girl on the inside, young college student Chris keeps searching for the right girl who will straighten him out and put all of his "girlish nonsense" to rest once and for all. And when he meets fellow college student Sarah, he begins to believe she is his salvation. Yet despite his best efforts to hook up with her, bad luck keeps inexplicably plaguing Chris. But when he finally meets the unlikely woman who straightens him out (but not in the way he expected), he finally gets an explanation for the bad luck that's been following him around.
 
 

Never too Old

A Vignette

By Maryanne Peters

The Helper
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I had not realized how far the house was from the main road until the taxi finally drew up beside it. It was a large house with a veranda on all sides, even larger facing the sea. Mr Golbenkian was waiting for me near the front door. He was seated in his electric wheelchair. I had not met him before then, but his warm brown eyes were as friendly as his voice on the phone.

Another boring day at work was over. Marty Chapman was bored. He’d been bored for years. He worked in a warehouse as a palette truck driver. He’d been there for more than 10 years. The only thing he had to look forward to was seeing Ellie, his only daughter at home in the evening.

His whole life revolved around her. Since his wife and her mother had traded them in for a Spanish Waiter some 8 years earlier, they’d been in it together.