God, what a week. I guess we could sit down and talk about…so much. So, so much. But I’m tired, and today I’m taking the easy way out. I mean, it’s Friday. We’re still allowed to enjoy Fridays, right? So here, below, is the flash-fiction story I wrote in my friend Jimmy’s monthly Sunday-afternoon writing class a couple weeks back. If you remember the last one, here are the rules: You draw a face-down index card from each of four piles — a place, an animal, and I forget what the others are. Then you take about an hour to write anything you want incorporating the four words. Mine, this month, were Mumbai, monkey, yacht, zucchini. I’m not sure whether I like this one; I certainly took the easy way out with the ending, but the clock was ticking and I’d written myself into a corner.
What I find most interesting about writing fiction, more or less from scratch, is how it’s kinda like psychoanalysis, in that it often sinks a probe into your unconscious and pulls out something you might or might not want to see. Which is to say, I don’t think it’s an accident that I’d just concluded lifeguard training and my first image is a distressed swimmer.
So, no title, just stream-of-consciousness. Happy Friday, happy weekend and happy birthday, J.C. Burns, without whom this blog wouldn’t exist.
The helmsman spotted the swimmer first, far offshore and with no obvious signs of wreckage nearby. He sounded an alarm and immediately swung the wheel, putting the boat into a wide U-turn.
On the afterdeck, four women watched the champagne bucket rattle and slide a few inches before a crew member standing nearby stopped its progress and resettled it on a towel he produced from somewhere on his person. A graceful move to shame the smoothest magician, but at these prices what else do you expect.
“What’s going on?” the oldest one said, confused to be experiencing something she hadn’t pre-approved. “The captain assured me it was a straight shot to the next island.”
A mate, maybe the second or third or who knows, the twelfth, whatever, one of those guys with braid on his epaulets, materialized at her elbow, another magician move. It occurred to me I was drunk.
“We’ve spotted a man in distress,” the mate crooned in a British accent. “It’s maritime law and custom that we assist.”
“I suppose so,” the crone said. She supposed it was OK we wouldn’t let a man drown, as long as she wasn’t delayed arriving at whatever shopping destination we were visiting next. Crew members dropped a dinghy into the water and its little outboard coughed to life. We gathered at the rail to watch the rescue, the crewman throwing a line to the swimmer and pulling him aboard the dinghy.
Just a few minutes later, he was deposited on the afterdeck, shirtless in a pair of ratty-looking shorts. He shivered in wracking waves as more crew wrapped him in blankets and the first mate, who was the medical officer, tried to ask what had happened.
“Where did you come from?” the mate asked the man.
“M–m-m-m-m-m,” he said.
“Captain, I believe he’s trying to say ‘Mumbai,’” the old woman said, smiling. Her drinking companions, daughters or granddaughters – they had the same nose – snickered a little.
“Or maybe it’s ‘monkey,’” one offered, getting into the spirit. Ten minutes ago, they were four women on a chartered yacht. Now they had a story to tell back home, at the club.
The mate paid them no attention. He’d opened his bag and was taking out a blood pressure cuff. “Bring water,” he told another crew member. “And tell the galley we need a pot of hot tea, a.s.a.p.”
“What happened to your boat?” the mate asked as he wrapped the cuff around an arm as skinny as a zucchini. “Were you fishing? Did anyone else go in the water?” The swimmer still couldn’t answer, and seemed almost ready to fall asleep, his head lolling. How long had he been fighting to stay afloat?
I figured the best thing for me to do was keep my mouth shut, although I opened it wide enough to pour in a few swallows of Red Stripe. Unlimited alcohol was included in this charter and I meant to get my money’s worth.
The crew arrived with the water, and the mate gently propped the man up and got him to sip a little. The tea came in a Thermos, and he did the same. In a few more minutes, the man seemed to be more alert, and focused on the semicircle of people standing around him. What a sight we must have been, an assortment of clean-cut crew in crisp polo shirts, the mate in his gold braid, four women with matching noses – and it was only then it occurred to me they all had the same plastic surgeon, like the Jacksons – and me, with my three-day beard and flip-flops and Red Stripe. Hey, I’m no tech tycoon. I only had a share of this charter.
“M-m-m-my boat,” he finally was able to get out. “There was a whale. A few of them. Orcas!” He seemed to be coming back to himself.
“They…they…attacked my boat,” he gasped. “Capsized it. Like a toy in a bathtub.” We gaped in astonishment, and then, from below, came the sound of a muffled but significant collision. We all looked up, first at one another, and then, just off the starboard beam, at the black and white form surfacing, its blowhole exhaling a fine mist, and just before it dove again, it rolled to the side and showed the line of its mouth. I swear it was smiling.
Alan Stamm said on April 11, 2025 at 7:52 am
Works well, and not just for an hour of tick-tock creativity. Zucchini work-in is deftly done and Red Stripe is a nice touch.
As for the finale, sometimes the easy path satisfies.
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alex said on April 11, 2025 at 9:28 am
While we’re on the subject of reading fiction, there’s a body of evidence that brains deprived of it turn to mush. Some days I wonder if my own brain isn’t Exhibit A. Screen time has supplanted my old habits of reading for pleasure and I’m feeling absolutely discombobulated and worried that I’m slipping into dementia.
And while I generally don’t consider David Brooks all that astute, I’d say he’s onto something in today’s column (gifted):
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/education-smart-thinking-reading-tariffs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-04.9E1Q.YNIBg4Wu2GJl&smid=url-share
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jcburns said on April 11, 2025 at 9:54 am
Gosh, thanks. Someone got me a monkey, a zucchini, and David Brooks. It’ll take me a while to figure out what to do with them.
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ROY EDROSO said on April 11, 2025 at 10:09 am
“The tea came in a Thermos, and he did the same.” Gotta workshop that one. Orherwise great!
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Jeff Gill said on April 11, 2025 at 10:45 am
jc, thanks for keeping this site going, and maybe we should chip in for a pair of cymbals to complete the package. Either for the monkey, or Brooks.
Chapter two is explaining why the narrator is on this boat, which may be delightfully nefarious as to his purposes.
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nancy said on April 11, 2025 at 11:01 am
Alex, I feel ya. I have the same problem. A friend took the methadone approach — put a limiter on his phone, let his wife set a new password that she was free to withhold, etc. It worked for him. I think once the weather breaks for good, it’ll be easier.
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Julie Robinson said on April 11, 2025 at 1:15 pm
Happy Birthday, JC, and thanks for all you can do.
I can hear a sax wailing away as the narrator speaks, and hear breaks to sip the Red Stripe and pull on a ciggie. Maximum atmosphere achieved.
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Dexter Friend said on April 11, 2025 at 2:05 pm
The watercraft obviously had a head. Red Stripe? On the water? The head must be functional.
Zucchini arm, yeah, I know. As I lose weight probably due to Jardiance, my arms are atrophying. My goal of 208 pounds by December 31 is but 6 pounds away.
Mumbai? I sensed an earthquake phenomenon. Glad it was just smiling Orcas.
That old Conservative David Brooks has been killing with articles in The Atlantic.
Off topic: the chiropractor the VA sent me to told me that Turmeric + Magnesium would alleviate a degree of inflammation pain. By gawd, it works.
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Deborah said on April 11, 2025 at 4:53 pm
A friend told me that magnesium helps for sleep too. I’m going to try that. LB heard about Turmeric for inflammation and she said she thought it helped some.
Good story Nancy, that must be fun if you’re able to do it, I would not be good at it.
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Sherri said on April 11, 2025 at 5:14 pm
I take magnesium, can’t tell it does much. I tried turmeric, but it gave me the runs. I’m always looking for a good anti-inflammatory since I can’t take NSAIDs. The latest thing I’m trying are tart cherry gummies.
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David C said on April 11, 2025 at 6:09 pm
Have you found anything that works, Sherri. I can’t take NSAIDs either.
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Sherri said on April 11, 2025 at 6:29 pm
No, not really, David.
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Bitter Scribe said on April 11, 2025 at 8:21 pm
Nancy, I think what you wrote was brilliant.
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Sherri said on April 11, 2025 at 10:55 pm
I’m constantly torn, with this administration, between wanting to laugh at how goddamn stupid they are, and wanting to cry that people this goddamn stupid are running things.
On the cry side, we have Nancy’s favorite cabinet secretary, Croaky, who has fired all the lead experts at the CDC (that’s lead, the well known neurotoxin), while running his mouth about how fluoride is a neurotoxin (which, sure, at high enough doses, but not at all relevant to fluoridation water.)
So, it’s okay if we have lead in our water, but not okay if we have fluoride.
On the laugh side, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon spent an entire interview discussing “A one” in schools. Hey, I think it’s a good steak sauce, but I didn’t think it was high priority to get it in schools. Is it replacing ketchup, which Republicans call a vegetable?
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Mark P said on April 12, 2025 at 3:19 am
David Brooks: Kids these days are so stupid, not like when I was growing up.
And his exemplar is Donald Trump? The same Donald Trump who is 15 years older than Brooks?
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alex said on April 12, 2025 at 11:42 am
Someone shared this with me and it’s too good not to pass along. “Croaky” indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI4c_nZjS4A
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Dexter Friend said on April 12, 2025 at 2:04 pm
Oh…I also eat jarred cherries and drink the juice as I take the dose of pills. I guess it works? Nothing works like just one 20 mg tablet of Prednisone, however. Why can’t Mother Nature give us some plant derivative to ease arthritis pains? No research on this and if a breakthrough would be near, Musk would chainsaw it, that motherfucker. Yeah, when my little dose of Prednisone ran out, three days later the pain and stiffness was back. But the pills are helping at maybe a 20% factor.
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Deborah said on April 12, 2025 at 5:36 pm
I watched a couple of Krugman interviews today and boy were they interesting. I would encourage you to look into Krugman’s Substack, a lot of it is free but you do get more out of it if you subscribe.
The first one I listened to was about knowing when we’re in a recession as early in the cycle as possible so more can be done quickly, and in the conversation the woman being interviewed said she was pretty sure we were headed for a recession and what worried her was not the depth of it but the length of it. Even Trump is expecting a recession because he and his toadies keep saying we’re going to go through some pain but then it will be over and everything will be great. According to this woman that probably will not be the case, that the pain will go longer than we are being lead to believe.
The second was about political forecasting using data and that was fascinating too. That interviewee was a young guy who wrote for the Economist and then 538 when that still existed.
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Deborah said on April 12, 2025 at 5:39 pm
I was disappointed at the Tesla protest today, there were more cops than protestors and ALL the protestors were old. There were some people carrying signs around me having conversations with each other and they kept saying things that they got mixed up, even though they were obviously liberal. It was weird they had details of recent news stories dead wrong. I kept wanting to interrupt them and correct what they were saying but I kept silent because we were on the same side, and it seemed like I’d be coming off as petty. There was some old guy talking about how he was going to write another book about such and such, like we were all supposed to be impressed that he was an author (if he even really was) and the thing he was saying that he was going to write about was political but so obscure and unimportant in the grand scheme of things going on now (IMO). It was depressing because you hope that people understand the implications of what is happening and how their lives are being impacted or going to be impacted. That’s what is discouraging about how young people don’t seem too be involved, as if they don’t know how the economy and climate change etc are going to directly affect their lives in the not too distant future. If this movement to keep democracy doesn’t capture more younger people it’s going to be dead. Anyway, it was so discouraging we left after about an hour, my husband came later than me so he didn’t even stay an hour.
I don’t understand why there are soooo many cops hanging around. It could be because there are a lot of high end shops around the Tesla showroom (like Hermes, Prada and Dior and other high fashion places like that) in the neighborhood and they’re afraid that political unrest will keep their rich customers away so they want to flood the zone with cops so people will feel better. Which is so the opposite of the message to keep billionaires from controlling everything. The city of Chicago has a Democratic black mayor who probably has to straddle keeping lots of Chicago people happy, on the one hand people with money and power and on the other hand the poor minorities in the city.
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David C said on April 12, 2025 at 6:12 pm
If you had half of your stuff stolen, you won’t get much more than thoughts and prayers from cops. If you mildly inconvenience the wealthy and connected, it’s overtime all around.
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Jeff Gill said on April 12, 2025 at 6:53 pm
The Ten Commandments are starting in a few minutes on ABC… “Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!”
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Dexter Friend said on April 13, 2025 at 6:01 am
In 1986 I had my wallet lifted from my front pants pockets by a team of kids no more than 10 years old on the 35th Street El Platform, Chicago. One picked it, then they began passing it around. I started chasing and screaming and one threw down the wallet, gone was $108 in cash and my library card and a couple other cards and my Amtrak return ticket home, but my license and credit card were still inside. I finally saw two cops and filed a report…I thought they thought it was funny or odd I should report this robbery, that I should forget about it. Obviously, nobody gave a fuck. My insurance kicked back $100, but I had to buy another train ticket of course.
Since, I have had an antique steel plant hanger stolen off our porch, and a bicycle stolen in Detroit, even though it was chained with an industrial chain that I had heat-treated myself, with a heavy-duty industrial Yale lock. Right beside old Tiger Stadium, Plum Street. Detroit thieves can do anything.
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Heather said on April 14, 2025 at 8:30 am
Deborah, the cops are at Tesla because their function is to protect property, not people.
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basset said on April 14, 2025 at 10:14 am
Just back from a nice weekend in Bloomington… ate some tenderloins, brought my deceased brother’s bucket back to Nick’s and drank from it, met with old friends and saw Rick Wakeman solo at the (almost) new music theater out in Nashville. He’s 75 and looks like it, mentioned his health a few times and looked shaky sometimes but still played beautifully.
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