Citrus City Nights

life in your 20s isn't that bad after all..

Everyday life had begun to change from how it used to be last August. Security had cracked down on certain sections of campus and deemed it an unauthorized zone and anyone caught would face dire consequences. The worst that could happen would being expelled. Plenty of our friends and roommates from our dormitories had been expelled in the month of January alone. It wasn't until now that I noticed the lines for dinner had less cutters. Which made room for us to cut the other students.

Usual Fridays was the day everyone who had a job would get paid, and almost everyone would go out to do drugs or drink. As long as no students came back intoxicated or with contraband, it technically wasn't breaking the rules. Besides the day being for the partygoers and stoners, we had our own exclusive club. We'd usually go out, steal a bottle of liquor from a grocery store and drink and hang out until 10:00 pm; the time the school required students be back.

Town Hall Meetings are sort of like how it sounds, the entire staff and student body gather to have a meeting about new rules and regulations, and occasionally search and seizure of contraband in the dorms. The center director would assume that the Town Halls were something of an airy event, but our group never took it seriously. We weren't stupid enough  to keep pipes or bottles in our dorms, as other students in other cliques would, especially since we usually knew about searches and K9 units days or sometimes weeks before it happened.

Usual days at Town Halls would ensure that students didn't break rules, but for our club it was to make sure we wouldn't get too comfortable. We were an odd group. Before Luis and Diana had gotten on restriction, which is essentially like probation for showing up on campus too drunk to even walk, it would usually be 7 of us. Myself, Marcos, Norma, Kim, Justin, Diana, and Luis. Just us and nothing to do. We would always go to the mall, then get drunk enough to wander and take buses and trains and walk through avenues and boulevards, but we always joked that we went to Citrus City.

Citrus City was an inside joke. To us, it was a night of partying and recklessness that we would seldom repeat. It involved sneaking into a strangers backyard and stealing his oranges or grapefruits from his tree, and vandalizing random houses and cars in drunken fits of laughter while running from police sirens. That was Citrus City for us. When Luis and Diana had gotten too drunk to walk back to campus one night, the school  gave them an accountability contract instead of expelling them. Since then our nights out as a group has been rare. I usually play pool in the rec room, or having my head in my new writing projects.

I turn 21 in April. Me and Justin talked about how great it would be to have another person be 21 in our group other than Marcos. I don't see why it would matter much, since you don't need an I.D to steal alcohol...

Reviews

[nah]

Reading through some of your other stuff I think I'm grasping a sort of stylish 'grittiness' in most of your work. I like it--it's direct, plain, and simple (in a good way) kinda like a book I read a while ago by Sherman Alexie: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. There's definitely a style in your writing and I think, with a bit more flexing, you can really make it shine.

Two things I'm consistently noticing: minor grammar issues and a sort of passive narrative. In this work especially I'm noticing that you're doing a lot of telling, not showing. Would the story work better if it was a play-by-play of the night rather than a retelling?

As it stands now, I enjoy your stuff! You have a definite style in what and how you write. The one bit of criticism I'd give you (because grammar and spelling should come naturally) is maybe try to show more. Don't tell us about the night out--show it to us. I'm excited to see how you handle a different perspective like that.

Good luck and thanks for sharing this!

[Christopher Zayn]

thanks for the review, even if it was on one of my least memorable works. My intention with this piece wasn't to necessarily show, but to tell purposefully. That being said it isn't in the format that I would have done if I was really showing effort. Anyway, I'm currently writing a draft of one of my most ambitious writings and I'm really nervous because I'm going to be adding in actual dialogue and the format of an actual short story with a plot. I would like to mail it to you (the rough draft) to see what you think of the actual plot (no dialogue or corrections yet) before I revise it and submit it, hopefully it'll be the best writing I've ever done.