Anarchy in the Province of Love, Part One (mature content)...and a preamble.
Aug 30 '04
The Bottom Line Copyright 2004 David MacDonald
Part One: http://www.epinions.com/content_4073889924
Part Two: http://www.epinions.com/content_4073955460
Part Three: http://www.epinions.com/content_4074020996
Part Four: http://www.epinions.com/content_4074086532
Part Five: http://www.epinions.com/content_4074414212
Part Six: http://www.epinions.com/content_4074479748
Part Seven, Conclusion: http://www.epinions.com/content_4074545284
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What you are about to read is a sequel to a story I wrote a couple of years ago called The Video Store Girl. ( http://www.epinions.com/content_2919080068 ) That story had to do with a girl named Pamela, who works, obviously, at the video store. One of the customers has the nerve to ask her out on a date -- and she accepts. This turns into a relationship, albeit one fraught with problems, since the two of them really don’t have a lot in common. The two manage to survive with a bit of an affair intact by the end, however.
“Anarchy in the Province of Love” is technically a sequel, although it is not neccessary that you need to read the original story in order to understand anything here. This time, three women are the main characters -- all of them work at the same video store, and all have their own romantic/erotic issues. The other major difffernece between the first story and the second is that this story is longer -- much longer!
I must warn you that this story is quite raw. I suppose the actual sexual content isn’t any more extreme or excessive than any of the other naughty stories I’ve posted, but the language and subjects are slightly more explicit. Even so, this story turns out to have sadness, dubious choices, desperation, lonlieness -- stuff that probably won’t turn too many readers on, no matter how raw things get. Even when my primary motivation for writing these raunchy tales is for something far less sophisticated than great literature, the results are something a little more complicated -- and melancholy, as is typical for me.
I hope that, in any case, the three female characters will come across with some level of realism and understanding. A few people tell me (just to flatter me, I assume) that I create decent female characters -- I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope you can get something out of them. I’m feeling a little iffy about how people will react to Bronwyn, who is protrayed as notoriously promiscuous, and with a habit of watching adult movies. Perhaps this character will get people talking.......?
I’m rarely ever impressed with my own writing skills, especially my fiction (although, ironically, I care more about my fiction than I do my film reviews). I often think my sentences embarrassingly clunky, and my ideas not fully fleshed out. At the same time, however, I’ve got a huge problem with patience -- after picking at this story since March, I just want to get rid of it! This goes for all of the other lengthy stories I’ve written -- I wish I had more patience to just work on something like this for years without feeling the urge to wrap it up more quickly. Then maybe I wouldn’t think my work so clunky.
And, okay, my title’s stupid. But I could have just called it “Untitled”. And how inventive would that have been?
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Anarchy in the Province of Love
Copyright 2004 David MacDonald
~”Everyone Does It, At Least Once in a While”~
Transaction Denied.
The debit machine silently revealed its dislike for the plastic debit card Laura swiped within the slit.
“It’s still not going through, sir.”, she said, with false confusion.
“That is so strange.”, the customer said, disbelieving. “I know that I have money in that account. I... I’m sure I just hit the password wrong, okay?”
“Sure... we’ll try it one more time.”, Laura smiled, hoping that she would not have to wait much longer to cater to this one person. She repeated her action of moments before, sliding the card, reentering the dollar amount.
Bronwyn stood a few feet away, leaning back against the wooden counter, observing this situation. Behind her was a stack of videos and DVD’s, all returned to the store within the last few hours. She had been tediously working away at scanning the product, and returning them to availability status, but she soon discovered that witnessing the precision that modern technology brought was more entertaining.
So both women stood by patiently to see what would happen when the customer cautiously reentered his numeric password on the keypad.
Transaction Denied.
Bronwyn grinned tactlessly.
“I... I guess there’s something wrong here.”, Laura said, tripping on her words. “I don’t suppose you’ve got cash?”
“shit!”, the customer hissed to himself, apparently unaware of his profanity as he returned his glance to Laura’s gently bland face. “I’m sure I’ve got five dollars for you......”
He peered into the womb of his wallet, scissoring a ten dollar bill with his fore and middle finger. Ten dollars. Why was he so eager to use plastic, then?
“A ten?”, Laura spoke in standard cashier-speak, as she punched the total in the register and placed the paper money inside the cash box. “And five and one cent makes 5.01....”, Laura spoke as she gave back the change.
“Thanks......”
Bronwyn smirked at the scenario. “Hopefully you’ll be able to get that debit card thing worked out.....”, she commented, giving a too-flippant smile.
“Yea....”, he rasped, as he took his video and walked toward the exit, “.... I suppose I’ll have to take an extra trip to the bank now....”
“Come again!”, Laura spoke politely, turning away from his direction before he disappeared from the other side of the glass doors. She turned to see Bronwyn returning to her stack of videos.
“So, Laura,”, Bronwyn derided, “How many transactions denied was that today?”
“Oh, that’s the only one, I believe.”, Laura said, “but I think it’s funny when people use their plastic so much they don’t realize that they are really spending actual money. They profess shock when on that fateful day, they are forbidden to use the card.....”
“.... they run out of money...”, Bronwyn agreed.
“Imagine if Daniel was here.”, Laura laughed, referring to Video Choice’s owner. “He’d be walking up to us, hobbling on his broken foot, only to grumble that these customers waste all their time with these stupid cards!”
“Geez, even if he were just kidding, you could never tell. His voice is just a natural grumble......”, Bronwyn said. “It’s even worse after he broke his foot. Ya almost can’t tell when he’s angry ... or when he’s just being sarcastic.....”
“Well,”, came a voice from the other side of the counter. “He was definitely grumbling when he made a comment about all of the crap on the floor this morning.” Pamela carried the dustpan and all its evidence of her boss’s complaint.
“Maybe we should just start a new business, Pam.”, Bronwyn jibed. “We’ll have someone at the front door cleaning all of the customers as they pace around the carpet... then they won’t be leaving behind strands of hair and popcorn all over the place!”
Pamela discarded the trash into the compost bin. “Anyway, guys, I think I’ll retire for the afternoon.... I’m sure you can manage without me.”
“Oh, I see!”, Bronwyn jibed, sarcastically. “Leaving us behind to do all the hard work, huh?”
“I’ve been here since nine AM!”, Pamela smiled. “I’m sure that’s long enough.” The way the schedule was drawn up recently, Pamela had little choice but to arrive first thing in the morning. She seemed to be chosen to work, so the others could sleep in.
“But you’re still coming with us tonight?”, Bronwyn asked. “You’re not going to make up any excuses are ya?”
“n... no... why would I?”, Pamela wondered, her voice dropping into a defensive verbal stance.
“Well, I know that you don’t often do the obligatory Thursday night bar excursion thing...”, Bronwyn sneered. “.. you’ll probably tell me that you’re washing your hair tonight now.”
“Oh, no.”, she smiled. “I haven’t forgotten -- it’s your birthday tomorrow and you want us all to go out.....” Even though Pamela would still have to be for work at 9 am tomorrow as well. She’d have to pack in a lot of work in four or five hours, before she went to her weekly rendezvous with these two friends at the cafe.......
“Well, that’s good!”, Bronwyn wailed. “It’s about time that you got wasted with the rest of us......”
Laura frowned, embarrassment burrowing inside the eyebrows. But the other two did not seem to notice.
“So what time do you want us to show up at your place, Pam?”, Bronwyn asked.
“Oh, maybe around eight.... oh it doesn’t matter. Just whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready all the time.”, she glances at the other two women. “So you better be prepared for me at any time......”
“Sure! I’ll have my doors locked securely as soon as I get home.”, Pamela smiled. “Just see you try to get in then!” She twists the silver doorknob of the storage closet, and reached for her spring jacket, and her purse.
“Anyway,”, Pamela said, closing the door again, “see you guys later.” She resumes her pacing to open the glass door and step into the outdoor air.
Bronwyn watched Pamela as she walked across the rubbled pavement of the parking lot. The edge of the pavement was still littered with broken chunks of ground, torn from its bearings during the unexpected impact of Hurricane Juan. Even now, months later, the hurricane’s effects were apparent, if you peered closely enough between the cracks of returned normalcy.
Pamela walked parallel to the row of broken pavement, and putting on her jacket between her and the chilly spring air. Her jacket covered the thin monochrome of the gray t-shirt that she and the other employees were required to wear to work.
“It’s kind of nice that they decided to get these shirts and all....”, Bronwyn said, ironically, while turning away from the large glass window, “but they’re not exactly ..... shall we say, colorful.”
“It’s just a t-shirt.”, Laura said, with a parted grin.
“Exactly.”, Bronwyn said. “That’s why we’re a local store and not a big multinational. Those guys can afford a nice shirt or a nice jacket, with tough fabric. We just get a five dollar t-shirt with a logo printed on it. You wanna bet that the boss just went down to Zeller’s one day and snatched up ten gray shirts?”
“Well, then go and work at Blockbuster, then!”, Laura laughed.
“Nah.”, Bronwyn scoffed. “They don’t have all the movies that I like anyway.......”
Bronwyn had returned to her scanning of the returned product, while Laura turned around into the direction of the papers on the desk. The papers were printouts of what was to arrive next Monday, for “official” release on Tuesday. Shelves would have to be rearranged, old videos would have to try and find space in the already overstuffed archive room, all to make room for the hyped new releases.
Her eye caught an unusual box leaning against Bronwyn’s purse, sitting inside the cabinet. Obviously, this was a video box, as it had the outlines of a Canadian ratings sticker on its side. But the box seemed larger than the typical video box. Peculiar.
But then Laura comprehended what she was looking at. The rating sticker was XXX. The photos were pornographic.
Her heart began to thump more vigorously. Her stomach began to curdle with the squeamish associations she had with the clinical texture of the images on the box. Even though she had seen so many similar video jackets while occasionally restocking the adult room, she still suffered ill feeling whenever she made contact with the secret, silently shameful bowels of the isolated adult room.
“Hey, do you wanna watch it whenever I’m done?”
Laura jumped, startled, at the sound of Bronwyn’s mocking voice behind her.
“Ah... n - no... no thanks, Bronwyn......”, Laura stuttered.
Laura turned around, to see the smirking drawn on Bronwyn’s lips. “You sure? You seemed awfully interested. Or were you just hoping to steal something from my purse.....”
Bronwyn’s tactlessness often became intimidating. “What’s... so appealing about that?”, Laura asked. “... about porn?”
“Why ask that question now?”, Bronwyn jibed. “You’ve been here for two years, you know we sell adult videos.”
“But... but this is you we’re talking about.”, Laura said. She spoke slowly, almost unsure as to the reasons Bronwyn herself would rent one of these things. “The people that walk into that room are a bunch of malfunctioning, ugly single males who have nothing else better to do with their time besides.......” She stops herself from stating the obvious. “Anyway, I can barely even look at those people once I know where they were......”
“Oh, come on!”, Bronwyn objected, grinning as she does so. “That’s a lie and you know it. Women, couples... they’ve all come here to rent porn at least once, you know.”
Laura cringed. “And how often do they come in? Most of the time, it is the creeps! “ She gave a more closer look to Bronwyn, who gave a rueful smile. “I mean… do you really want to fall to that level? Those things… make me ill.”
“All it is... is people fucking. And if they enjoy doing that.... I say more power to them!”
“Bronwyn....”, still embarrassed by the close proximity to the porno video, and it‘s association with a person she actually knows reasonably well. “But you don’t have to watch people do it.”, Laura confessed. “It’s so degrading......it’s so degrading to people.”
“No it isn’t.”, Bronwyn dismissed. “Everyone who has sex does this stuff. All that sucking, fucking, fingering, touching......”
Laura’s face cringes with each term Bronwyn rings out.
“..... all that stuff that you call degrading,”, Bronwyn continued, “is stuff that everyone does, at least once in a while. Even those people that star in romantic movies. Even me. And even you. So I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.......”
Laura squirmed, wanting to curl up somewhere and get away from the rawness that Bronwyn spoke. “There’s more to life than watching two people having sex.”, Laura believed. Her face tightens, trying to brush away the lurid thoughts that pumped into her mind once her eyes made that fatal mistake of glancing in the porn video’s general direction.
“I don’t watch porn all the time now!”, Bronwyn laughed. “I’m not that depraved! I just want to see the real thing sometimes. I don’t want to always feel that I’m being told a half-truth when I watch the interactions of two people. Most of the lovers we see live in this fantasy world. Everything is so nice and shiny -- no dirt, no rawness.......”
Laura listened, but she did not believe. “That’s what love is all about though. The nice stuff. Not just all the icky stuff of body parts and how they move. People that think only about the sex don’t really appreciate other people.
“Oh, they appreciate other people for one thing, at least!”, Bronwyn grinned. “Sometimes that’s all that matters.”
“But don’t you want someone to look into your eyes,”, Laura asked, “, to remember the colors and shades of your eyes. Someone to be there whenever you need them, when you need a shoulder to lean on......?”
Laura lets her sentence hang, as she regards Bronwyn’s face. “I know that I want someone like that.......”, Laura said.
“Sure! We all do!”, Bronwyn admitted with the slightest hint of frustration. “But not all of us are lucky, like you and Bruce! We haven’t all had relationships that lasted for three or so years. We can’t always take for granted that someone will always be around when we need them.”
Bronwyn tried to retain her composure; tried to justify her upcoming pronouncement.
“In lieu,”, she continued, “of deep and passionate romance, I’m going to have some fun. Give me a man who wants to fool around, and who can keep up with me, and I’ll be a happy woman for a weekend. That is something I know I can get..... much faster than I can get a three year relationship.”
Laura sighed. “Well..... I can see why you don’t work at Blockbuster, in any case. Where would you get your porn then?”
“Don’t make fun.”, Bronwyn replied sarcastically. “Blockbuster are nothing but a bunch of repressive Mormons! It was the Mormons that created Blockbuster, ya know…..”
Laura nods her head, unconvinced.
“… they were more interested in placating stuff American churchgoing folk.”, Bronwyn continued, “… that’s why they like to cut videos and ban certain movies, stuff like that. And they do the same thing up here… even though this is Canada, and we’re not like them! I mean, we have a sex shop in the middle of Charlottetown, for God’s sakes! How many small American towns can say that?”
“I’m not sure.”, Laura mused, clearly tired of this subject. “I’ve never visited a small American town…..”
“Neither have I.”, Bronwyn stated. “She exits the employee’s side of the counter, pacing toward the snacks on the other side.
“Oh well... maybe they’re in love down there, Bronwyn.”, Laura teased.
“Maybe they’ve got their priorities straight -- ever think of that?”
“Ha!” Bronwyn’s eyes glaze over, unsure of what to purchase. “Since when did we get cookies at this place?”
“The other day, I think. Like it matters. The cookies are still as obscenely expensive as the rest of the snacks. Why do you think I take bottled water to work instead of buying it here.” The bottled water in the fridge was almost two bucks. Yet you could get the same brand across the street in the corner store for half that price.
“Well, I’m good for it. I’ll try the cookies.” She takes the two large-sized chocolate chip cookies, wrapped in cellophane, and bound by the UPC sticker. “I doubt that they’ve got their priorities straight down there -- I doubt that there’s a higher percentage of people in committed relationships down there.”
“I’m not really serious.”, Laura scoffed, shaking her head. “Do you really want to keep talking about this?”
“It’s my birthday.”, she said, scanning the package of cookies, coding the buttons on the register to signify an employee purchase. “I like to be humored. And besides, I’m going to get laid tonight.”
Yet again, Laura was taken aback at the almost defiant bluntness of her speech. “Oh... Oh really?”
“Well..... Matthew’s suppose to show up tonight.”
“Matthew?”
“Yea. He knows your boyfriend.”
“Yes, I know who he is......”, she stated lowly.
“Well -- we’ve had a few... meetings.... and,”, about to eat the first cookie, “I’m sure that he’ll have a nice gift for me.....”
She bites into the cookie. Cookie dust and crumbs spring away from her mouth. She takes the assaulted cookie away from her mouth, and stares at it curiously.
“What?”, Laura asks.
“Don’t eat these cookies. They’re dryer than sandpaper.....”
Bronwyn pitched the remainder of the product in the garbage.
Part Two: http://www.epinions.com/content_4073955460
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Epinions.com ID:
DavidMac
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Member: David Macdonald
Location: Prince Edward Island
Reviews written: 612
Trusted by: 109 members
About Me:
Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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