the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

So, having such a jones for virtual locations (the Six Sentence Café and Bistro and the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge) and serial stories, we couldn’t resist Tom’s comment on last week’s Six Sentence Story. If you’ve ever gone over to his site, The Mansionic Perspective, Tom has this gift for characters, original plot and names (of characters). Don’t laugh! If you’re thinking, ‘What?! Names are just names!’ you clearly haven’t spent much time creating original characters.  You should. He has.

Anyway, so last week at the Six Sentence Story, I mentioned a new dancer at Lou’s club (the aforementioned ‘Bottom of the Sea…’) by the name of Rue DeNite. Here’s that Six. Go down through the Comments and you can read our exchange in the Comments. That will provide the backstory of the following story.

Long Story Short: Tom wrote this Post.

I wrote the Post below.

(Hey! Vote ‘Hell yeah!  and you may have further adventures to read in future Sixes and such)

‘Shit!’

A familiar sound-that-wasn’t-really-sound, followed by the sound of breaking plate-glass demanded Rue DeNite’s attention like a live codfish on the altar of a Catholic High Mass.

A quick glance at the table opposite the bank of security monitors added a slightly twisted, totally evil grin, the perfect accessory to one of her favorite dance outfits. Pausing at the vinyl-tufted door, Rue heard the sound of her mother’s voice, ‘You’ll always look taller if you pay attention to your posture. All the better to make the most of the one gift that God gave you: Surprise and Innocent eyes.’

The transformation of fear into desire, as familiar and trusted friend as any, prior to meeting Lou Ceasare, the dancer stepped into The Filigree Room of the Casino-on-Brickell-Street.

~~~~~

“Well, just for the sake of argument,” watching for the expected tell from her co-conspirator-to-be, Rue stepped down out of her white heels and, hooking both the index and middle finger of her left hand, extended them to the costumed man. A slight hitch in her upper chest masked by her bustier was the only hint at her urge to smile as he stepped closer. He squared his shoulders as she turned and walked to the chrome-on-mirror bar, his reflection absorbing something that looked like pleasurable guilt.

“Suppose you do tie me up,” adding an adjustment to her fishnet stockings, the stripper/PhD candidate, watched the pupils of the Apostrophe’s eyes flare like a black hole encountering a gas nebula. Repressing the ache of disappoint at the willingness of a  man she once considered a potential friend, to betray her, Rue decided to double-cross herself.

Blinking with practiced naiveté, Rue DeNite pushed a Manhattan across the bar, the doubling of image immune to the irony and smiled, “Here’s to duplicity.”

 

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, ruled by a single… rule? To use the prompt word and keep it to six sentences in length.

To get you back into the story, here’s where we left off : Previously on…

This week’s prompt word:

CONSEQUENCES

Walking away from the last booth on the right, I left Lou growling into a burner phone, “If you’re done with the bullshit excuses, I’m gonna tell you once, not twice, once, what you’re gonna do…”

Stopping at the hostess station just inside the entrance, I decided to watch Diane Tierney do what she was exceptionally good at, i.e. managing customers, specifically, a table of loud and somewhat rowdy Shriners engaged in the age-old contest of ‘who can get the dancer’s attention’; the clear front runner: an overweight hardware store owner twirling the tassel of his fez in perfect sync with those worn by the dancer on stage, Rue DeNite.

Diane, bending slightly from the waist, the better to dominate the seated men, smiled as she spoke to the group and their response was, of course, that of boys locked in the grip of Stage 2 pubescence, daring each other to risk the consequences of defiance; sixth grade boys on bicycles in front of a schoolyard full of eighth grade girls were to Michael Rennie accepting an Oscar as the over-stimulated businessmen were to the hostess of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge.

Backing away from the now docile conventioneers, Diane turned only a second before colliding with me. For a high-school-moment we stood face-to-face; the pupils of her eyes, already a deep blue, became bottomless; her arms softened from rigid defensiveness, hands rising into suggestive, yet not totally committed welcome and her shoulders moved back and slightly downward.

I resigned myself to living on as much oxygen currently in my lungs for as long as necessary.

*

*

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

It is hosted by Denise. And this week, we’re having ourselfs a ‘Poetry Slam’.

While the format is as it has always been, i.e. stories involving the prompt word and being no more (or no less) six sentences in length; this week Denise is inviting all to incorporate or otherwise include a poem. Freeform, iamwhatIam pentameter, limerick or shout-at-the-audience-with-conviction, whatever style moves you, the stage is yours. The venue is the Six Sentence Café & Bistro; the lights are low, the beverages are plentiful and spirit unconditional.  (New Readers? the bar is along the right-hand wall as you enter, most everything else is to your right. Being a converted textile mill, the ceilings are high, the floor is scarred wood and the stage is all of two steps up, set along the interior wall facing a whole bunch of round-top tables with spindle-wood chairs.)

The Prompt Word

SECOND

The tall, thin man stepped into the cigarette-hazy column of light and stared at the darkened room. The audience, night plankton glowing behind cigarettes, splotches of life waiting for some evolutionary lightning bolt to galvanize them into a higher form of life.  Plucking the microphone, he turned away, like an Adam 2.0, his chromium apple to be consumed in private; away from hand-me-down spouses and jealous gods, he ate of it.

“Bah WAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Our lives begin on the exhale… surprise protest at the unexpected slap from a dry giant, torn from the sea world of peace and contemplation, held aloft by the heels in cruel parody of the weightless posture in the quietdark sea where everything was provided and nothing denied;

Spitting our lungs clear, the sounds around us mask the silent, but compelling inhale, and so begins our love affair with couplets, dyads of life to be more concise;

Breathing in and breathing out, inhale and exhale; this fundamental rhythm, the most benign tyranny, both a chain that binds the spirit to the earth and wings pulling upwards, pretending heaven is in reach, demanding without words we accept it’s rough measuring more of our capacity to endure;

We grow if we are lucky, are healthy if blessed, the inhales and exhales as natural as each breath

Like the rest of nature, our breathing responds to the demands of the world, in storms and in drought, our respiration adjusts, no more ambitious a goal than ‘one more inhale-exhale’;

Man and Woman, confront demands on this rhythm of life, we are, but as Godlets, (as we were informed, by that in-My-image thing), we adjust our breathing to the world as we experience it, not merely and automatically as it is experienced;

• as children we breathe without thinking, in sync with our surroundings, the most fundamental barometer of the environment: demands and lessons, reinforcement and persuasion, temptation and punishment, an orchestra of one lead by a multitude of conductors,
• as the child learns music, the first and simplest of songs scored for the small ensemble of family, then, like Diana Ross we desire recognition and dream of contrarian scores for impromptu groups of other-not-family; each new rhythm of breath develops as fast as we can meet new people and take on new roles
• as solitary lifeforms we refuse to be surprised, or, to be more honest, we deny like fig leafs before a neutered angel, our need to find another to manifest our couplet song; our breathing strives to match another and sometimes it does/sometimes it tries/other times we fail in earnest simpatico,
• the stutter of first tears, a most compelling of breaths, the embracing of laughter the most treacherous of invitations, the matching of love, at first the surest of bets despite our insistence on how synchronous our breathing might be, in and out…up and down… finally, for one, alone with a consolation prize of temporary Godhood as a new breath is introduced to the world;

they say that life is a number of inhales and exhales, that breathing is the definition of life itself

that is almost true

there are two times when this irreducible pairing, that dyad formed when coming into the world, is violated: when we’re born and again when we die;

our death is marked by an inhalation,

by inhaling, we claim membership in the world, however, when over-taken by mortality, we have no need for the downbeat of the exhale, the rhythm of breathing the last, the other half of the rhythm of life is left for the living to appreciate, the departed no longer needing the comfort nor the confirmation from the world around them”

The tall, thin man replaced the microphone on it’s chrome spire, looked out over the crowd and after a second, smiled toward the private alcove, to the far left,

“There once was a man from the Vineyard

Who thought his mind would Life’s path make clear

The closer he got, the more grew the fear

On the fringes he remained, unwilling to let down his guard.”

 

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Hey, you doin’ anything tonight …and tomorrow?

There is a special edition of the Six Sentence Story going on, the doors, (to introduce the primary metaphor), open at 6:00 pm EDT this evening.

All are invited to participate to whatever degree gives you pleasure. Read the Sixes. Write and link a Six (to be read and enjoyed). Tell a friend (or an enemy, depending on your feelings about online prompt-writing that includes a pre-existing location in the virtual world).

That location, in your Six is not mandatory, but fun, is the Six Sentence Café & Bistro. The ‘special’ is that we’re invited to what, for all intents and purposes, is a Poetry Slam.

The Proprietors* (and Tom) will more than likely stop in.

Come on… if you’re still reading, the likelihood of ‘Sorry, I already have plans’ holds about as much water as … well, as something that doesn’t. (See??!! If any part of you thought, ‘Nah, those people do this a lot, too much pressure given their obvious wordage skills’.)

If you want to get ahead of the crush, head over to Tom‘s. Most of the Proprietors (Chris, Ford, Mimi, Denise and Nick) and Keith are hanging out over there today, (in the words of Jules Winfield, ‘Getting into character’)… pretty sure I saw Frank and Miz Avry drive up