Accent-Heavy

 Barry was a good man with a beautiful girlfriend. His girlfriend had a thick Southern accent and he could listen to her talk all day long. Even when she was yelling at him, he would sit and listen, a grin spread across his face. "What are you smiling at?" she'd ask. "I just love the way you talk," he would respond. And she would get angry because she thought he wasn't listening. Later, she would return and kiss him and say, "You're adorable. But annoying." And then they would make love. 

 His girlfriend, whose name is Jill, by the way, worked early in the morning and went to school at nights so Barry was usually left to his own devices. He had started a stamp collection and then got bored of it when he asked himself, "What's the point of this?" He then took up guns. He had collected around twenty before Jill expressed her hatred for firearms and told him his collection had become too much for her to keep quiet about. 

 Lately, he would play around with the radio his grandfather left him in his will. Until then, the radio had sat down in the basement collecting dust and, much to Barry's surprise, it still worked. He loved to turn the knob to a radio station, listen to five minutes of it and then turn it. He thought this was a good way to see what the rest of the world was up to. 

 The first one was a country music station and he flipped passed it. "We'll make that one exception," he said. The next one was talk radio and he listened to the angry host talk about racism and how it was starting to affect grade school children. "Even if grade school kids said something racist," Barry thought, "they wouldn't know what it meant." Barry was a firm believer that some things were clearly taken too far. He wanted to call in but got nervous thinking no one would agree with him. Instead, he changed the station. 

 Not being interested in anything that he was coming across he was about to give up but then stumbled upon a French radio broadcast. He stared at the radio for a second as if it was a completely foreign object. He couldn't understand how a French broadcast was being pumped into his basement. He had never listened to one before. 

 The woman speaking had the most beautiful voice. He couldn't understand a single word she was saying but he imagined she was talking about a long lost love. Someone she lost in one war or the other. She said,"Une jeune femme a été retrouvé mort aujourd'hui à Dijon ..." and he wanted to kiss her mouth. He ended up listening to the woman talk until he had fallen asleep.

 He dreamed of going to France and meeting her. She told him he looked exactly like her first love and he told her she looked like no one he had ever seen before. They spent the day sitting by an unknown body of water outside of the city, not speaking at all but communicating with their feelings. As she was about to kiss him, he woke up. 

 He began not wanting to sleep in his bed anymore. He wanted this woman to lullabye him to sleep. It became a complete obsession. His girlfriend would beg him to spend more time with her. "Stop listening to that damn radio," she said. "You have no idea what they're even talking about." 

 "They're speaking of beautiful things," he would whisper into the radio as if the woman could hear him. 

 This carried on for two weeks. Him just laying on his basement floor, listening to this woman at night and talking about her endlessly in the day. He became annoyed with his girlfriend's accent. She would yell at him for never being present anymore and he would yell back. No smile to be found. It startled her the first time it had happened. That night, they didn't make love. She laid in his cold bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the French woman's voice being piped through the vents. 

 Eventually, Jill moved out. She couldn't take it anymore and her heart completely broke when Barry casually waved her off and just went back down to the basement. "You're giving up on something real. Something good. For a, for a f****n' radio." She wasn't one for cursing and it surprised her when she had said it. She stormed out the door and never came back. 

 That night, Barry lied on the ground, eyes closed, and masturbated to the woman speaking in her French accent, "Le viol est de plus en plus important ici, à Dijon. Comment Poucons-nous arreter ce travail? Que devons-nous faire? Nous devons prendre position et à se battre. Non plus nous permettre d'être intimidé." He could live like this forever. As long as no one told him what the woman was actually saying. 

Reviews

[jenniewren (J.W. Bouwma..]

goddamn!!!! this is a powerhouse. you speak it so gently i hardly realised the suckerpunch it lying in wait for me at the end. it feels like a john waters story, only with less flashy trannies, and more norman rockwell surreality...

[Tim M]

Wow, powerful, especially when I found out what the French was (don't worry, I won't spoil it here). I liked the image of Barry being consumed by things throughout, and ultimately blindly sinking into fantasy in the end, though it was a completely false fantasy when looked at objectively. I love the naive hope he has for the French woman, building an entire desire from a simple voice from a speaker. Great job.

[Pen Draggin']

Loved it! I really dig using languages as a catalyst. I like the things you write.

[Brittany]

Now, I'm left wondering what the French woman was saying. Probably an advertisement... Anyways, I really like this one. Kind of feels like that age-old saying, "ignorance is bliss". Wanting to live in a fantasy world rather than accepting reality. I have a feeling the main character lives in a world of complication, that things can't just 'be'. He would rather sabotage a sure thing so he can pursue the unknown.

[Carrie Lynn]

"She told him he looked exactly like her first love and he told her she looked like no one he had ever seen before."
--Love that line. And the character of the girlfriend, although I doubted that a southern girl would be that surprised to swear. ;)