Chapter 17: Connection vs. Attachment (I’ll find a better title for this chapter soon)

With less than a week to research and write the article, Jane decided she’d better get busy experimenting, trying out a few of the connection techniques she had researched, putting them to the test, and observing how well they worked.
It’ll be fun! she told herself, though it didn’t all turn out that way.

She began by saying hello to various strangers she passed in the street on her way home and observing their reactions.

“Hi,” she said as she passed a man in his 30’s, maybe ten years older than her. “Nice jacket.”
The man stopped in his tracks, looked her up and down, then said hello back and asked for her number.
“Sorry,” Jane replied apologetically, feeling flustered but thinking fast on her feet. “It’s just that my boyfriend has the same jacket, and I couldn’t help but admire it.”
The man looked slightly deflated, but nodded and turned away.

Oops, she thought to herself. Some of these techniques work a little too well! I’d better dial back the research a notch.

She reached the portal of her apartment building with no further misadventures, and stopped at the mailboxes to see if anything interesting had arrived.

“Hi,” she said absentmindedly to another resident who was extracting a few envelopes and a stack of junk mail from his own box.

“Hello,” he replied cheerfully. He shuffled his stack of mail into his left hand, then held out his right toward her. “I’m Chase, by the way. I just moved in.”

Jane shook his hand and looked up at his friendly face. Their eyes locked, and suddenly…she couldn’t look away. It felt like he had turned on a tractor beam and would not release her. It took her a moment to gather her wits and make her mouth function again. “I’m Jane,” she sputtered. “I’m up in 3C.”

“2D,” Chase replied, still clutching her hand lightly.

Jane had taken self defense classes, and the moves to twist Chase’s arm behind his back and utterly disable him flashed through her mind, but she had never learned a defense against his tractor beam gaze.

Then, out of nowhere, it struck her. It hit her hard, right in the chest, somewhere near her heart. A sharp inner pain there made her gasp slightly, and she withdrew her hand abruptly and finally managed to look away from his piercing gaze.

“Gotta go,” she said lamely, slamming her mailbox shut and heading for the stairs. Usually, she took the elevator, but she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting for it to arrive. She only wanted to get away from Chase and figure out what just happened to her!

Had he slipped her some diabolical toxin through their handshake? Was she about to pass out, or curl up and die, or transform into some disgusting alien creature designed to join him on his quest to take over the world, starting with some random Chicago apartment building?

No, probably not, Jane reasoned, but the pain persisted and she made her graceless exit as fast as she could go.

The post 1-2-3 Connect appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.

I bought an ice cream sandwich from a vending machine during a break between classes on campus. After sitting down at a nearby table, I pulled a book from my backpack and opened it to finish up some homework before my next class.

“Mind if I sit?” a girl asked. The room was crowded, but I was the only one occupying this table.

“Help yourself,” I said, glancing up from my book.

That was my first look at Julie. She was beautiful, blonde, and had bright green eyes that danced with friendliness and life.

We chatted for a bit and somehow I mustered up the courage to ask for her number, then called her a few days later and took her on a motorcycle ride and a picnic up the canyon.

We stopped at a secluded picnic area near the river and sat down on a blanket in the shade. As we began getting acquainted, everything about her made her seem more and more like the perfect girl. She was intelligent, fun, charming, confident, thoughtful, and easily in the top 1% of beautiful girls I had ever seen, whether in the movies or real life.

But just as I began getting ideas about pursuing her romantically and seeing if it turned into something permanent, she began to hum a pleasant little tune under her breath, and birds in the nearby trees began to sing along. A pair of butterflies flitted by, hovering briefly over her head like a halo, suspended in a stray shaft of afternoon sunlight. I felt quite certain that a young deer raised its head to listen, hidden somewhere in the nearby undergrowth.

“Oh, great,” I thought dejectedly. “I should have known.”

Julie was a Disney princess. If only I had been a handsome prince, I might have stood a chance. Then we could have lived happily ever after.

But no, I had learned all too well many years ago that I was the ugly duckling, and I had no place with such a perfect princess.

In hindsight, I ought to have recalled the end of the ugly duckling story. The part where it turns into a beautiful swan. Maybe I was a handsome prince after all, but whether I was or not, in the end, made no difference. Instead of reality, my deep-down, unconscious beliefs and expectations dictated my behavior and destiny, and despite staying friends for a while longer, I never even held Julie’s hand.

Discussion Quotes & Questions

1. What do you believe about yourself? What do you feel perfectly capable of accomplishing and what could simply never work out? What do you deserve to enjoy, and what is “out of your league”?
2. How have such beliefs steered you through the billion opportunities that stand there waiting for you to recognize them every single day and hour of your life? Do they encourage you to dream big and go for it, or to know your place and play it safe by staying small?
3. When was the last time you wanted something but didn’t try to get it?
4. List at least three things you’ve wanted for a long time but have not pursued.
5. Pretend you’re finally going to “go for” those things and get them! What feelings does such a decision stir inside you? Do you feel excited or uncomfortable and afraid?
   
   “You act based on what you expect, not what you want.” – Jennice Vilhauer
   
6. Why haven’t you pursued those things?
7. Does it have to do with expectations? Do you think it would be too difficult or that you would fail in the end?
8. Do you believe that such deep-down expectations can change?
9. If so, how?

…

The post Expectations appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.

On the very first day of trying out her new self, her new plan paid big dividends. She quickly discovered that being positive allowed her to share her private thoughts that she had never spoken aloud before, albeit with a positive twist that she would attempt to talk herself into believing. It wasn’t easy, but if she could do this, she could do anything, and she would become the most cheerful person in town in no time!

“I love your musk,” she told him that evening.

“I’m not wearing any musk,” Tom said with a sneer. “You know I detest cologne. Leave that for the girly men.”

“I know,” Melissa agreed. “I mean your natural musk after working at the garage all day and when you don’t take a shower before you come over. It reminds me of buck scent, or goats who pee all over themselves to attract hot goat babes.”

Melissa knew all about buck scent because Tom sometimes wore that during hunting season. “Why wash it off,” he asked, “when I’d just have to reapply it tomorrow?” It was the most pungent aroma she had ever smelled, and she gagged whenever Tom got too close with it, so she would hold her breath as long as she could, then find an excuse to step away for a moment, long enough to take a few deep gulps of air from a distance.

Tom’s second most common complaint was about Melissa’s cooking. “These alligator tacos could use more avocado,” he mused over dinner, “and the ice in the grape juice is a little too cold.”

“I love your attention to detail,” Melissa replied, “and the fact that you’re willing to eat avocados, that you don’t say they’re only for girly men anymore.”

Tom found so much love and affirmation and cheerful positivity disorienting. Every time he turned around, there was more love just waiting to knock him off his feet, putting him in unfamiliar territory, which made him feel like he wasn’t in control anymore, and that made him grumpy.

“Will you please stop saying you love everything?!” Tom shouted.

“You certainly know when enough is enough!” Melissa replied, skillfully avoiding the word ‘love’.”

“You certainly don’t!” Tom accused, pointing a finger in her face.

Melissa drew in a sharp breath. An astonished look crossed her face. An epiphany lit up her brain. “You’re right!” she whispered as she abruptly realized the truth. The truth that had been kicking her in the shins for three years, trying desperately to get her attention. “I don’t!” The past three years of dating Tom flashed through her mind. All the crap she had endured, and for what???

Brand new possibilities began to flat through her mind – or rather, one new possibility flashed through her mind over and over, in full color, like a string of Christmas lights. She could leave Tom. She could be with someone else, or be alone! Any other option would be better than this!

“Okay, I learned. Now I do.”

“Do what? I hate how you always have full-blown conversations in your head and then expect me to read your mind when you bring me in to the tail end.”

“Now I know when enough is enough,” she explained. “And I just realized what I like best about you.”

Ever ready to hear a compliment, ever eager to reinforce his arrogant belief that he was great and everyone else was the problem, ever hungry to punch the much deeper belief that he wasn’t good enough in the face, Tom paused and put his next complaint on hold. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“I love…,” Melissa began, “when you leave.”

“Because you miss me?” Tom asked with a charismatic smile. “Because you realize how much you love me and how great I am, and absence makes the heart grow fonder?” he prompted.

“The opposite, actually. Now please make yourself lovable and vamoos.”

“Ha ha,” Tom replied, unsure of what else to say. “Very funny.”

“I’m serious,” Melissa said, standing up from the table and waiting for him to do the same.

“What’s gotten into you?” Tom asked, lifting his fourth alligator taco to his mouth.

“Would you like more avocado on that?” Melissa asked.

“Yes, please!” he replied, putting it back on his plate and handing it to her.

Melissa took the plate, stepped into the kitchen, and dumped to the whole thing into the garbage can.

“Looks like we’re all out of avocados,” she said flatly, setting the plate back on the table. Tom looked down at the empty plate, then up at Melissa with a confused look plastered across his face.

“Go,” Melissa ordered, nodding her head toward the door impatiently.

“You’re crazy,” Tom said slowly, still trying to figure out what was going on.

“I certainly was!” Melissa agreed. “Whew! I’m glad I got over that!”

“Go!” Melissa ordered more loudly when Tom still hadn’t budged.

Tom stood slowly, the confused look lingering in his eyes, and took one furtive step toward the front door.

“Ew!” Melissa exclaimed, taking an abrupt step back when he leaned forward for a goodnight kiss.

“You’re weird,” he merely observed then.

“Okay.”

And then Tom stepped out the front door and out of her life and I’ll update this story with a better ending line when I think of one.

The post Love, Love, Love appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.

“Use your words,” her mother often chided to help Jesse through frustration and impatience of childhood, and once she mastered those infinite combinations of letters, those endless compilations of phonemes, her childhood seemed to fall behind her, and everyone around her began to treat her, more or less, as an adult.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” she often replied to children who teased her about her advanced vocabulary, “but words will never hurt me.” She stopped saying that after one child picked up a small rock and hurled it at her, striking her in the neck and bruising her sternocleidomastoid.

Even her father, a school psychologist at the local junior high school (who secretly wished to be a motivational speaker, Jesse felt certain), reinforced her powerful conviction that words shape reality each time he reminded her that, “Your reality is nothing more than the story you tell yourself.”

The teachers she most admired further entrenched her faith in nouns, verbs and prepositions, showing real-life, world-changing applications throughout history, including the Civil Rights Movement and famous quips like “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

As her knowledge and understanding of the wider world expanded, so did her confidence and her willingness to step into new roles and try out new experiences. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked herself simply. “If anything goes awry, words will always be there to rescue me and set everything aright.”

During freshman year of college, in a creative writing course, Jesse met her soulmate, Jimmy. They were kindred spirits, sharing an equal fascination with all things lexical. Together, they attended plays, sat in the shade on campus and read, and argued about their favorite punctuation. Jesse loved the interrobang above all others, for obvious reasons, while Jimmy revered the pilcrow more than it deserved. Sure, it was cute, but utterly useless. Somehow, though, she found it in her heart to forgive his lack of practicality and taste.

Incrementally, inevitably, they fell irreversibly in love.

They married after spring semester, and by winter, a bouncing baby boy entered their home. The child was adorable, much of the time, but less so when he cried, when he filled his diapers with the most offensive-smelling goo several times each day, when he peed in the bath, which often hit her in the face, and when he laughed and laughed at that like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his entire, short life.

Jesse longed for her past when she had plenty of time to read, but now, even when the infant fell asleep, she felt too tired to crack open a book, and even when she did, she was too exhausted to sink into its plot like a warm bath, to absorb its comforting illusions, and to escape this unruly and unkind reality.

The evening after the toddler’s first birthday party, when a weary Jesse realized that she had only made it HALF WAY through diapers, and that the “terrible twos” would then begin by the time potty training stopped, that she might need to wait until the child turned five and spent half the day at school before she could hope to properly balance her life again, sank to her knees in despair and wept. How could everything have come to this?!

The desperate interrobang at the end of her question comforted her just enough to regain the slightest grip on her senses. On her inner strength. On her determination, and above all, on her savior – words! Words had never let her down before, and they would not desert her now in her hour of need! “Use my words!” she reminded herself, a desperate hope suddenly welling up inside.

Two words, that is. Two words that would fix everything! A sentence, sort of, despite the lack of predicate. An exclamation, actually, which she had learned from her creative writing professor the year before.

Jesse slowly rose from the floor. She stood, tentatively at first, then firm and determined. Yes, she would utter the words. She would make all the bad go away. She would set everything into its proper place.

She took half a dozen steps to the front door, opened it, then turned her face back toward the home’s interior and its two occupants, and shouted the words:

“Plot twist!”

With that, she stepped outside and strode away into the gathering dusk.

She didn’t know where she would go, or where her new plot would carry her, but she would work everything out in good time. She would revise as needed and create happy endings to each and every day. Reality was nothing more than the story she told herself, she told herself, and she would tell herself the best story she possibly could.

The post Plot Twist! appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.

The series begins with Courage, Love and the Meaning of Christmas. Follow Spencer and friends as he searches for the meaning of life, strives to learn audacity and change the course of his life, follows his inner knowing, faces life-threatening emergencies, and rolls with plot twist after plot twist from chapter one all the way to the final sentence.

Order from Amazon at bit.ly/artheart1
Now also available in audiobook! at adbl.co/3oSUG4c

Book 2, The Perfect Gift, happens one year later a week or two before Christmas. A lot has changed since book 1, but not nearly as much as is about to! This year, it’s Spencer’s roommate Ski’s turn for a miracle, and boy does he ever need one! As the plot once again twists the characters around in circles, keeping readers guessing about exactly how everything will turn out, you’ll learn about following your heart, healing, hope, and more.

Order from Amzon at bit.ly/artheart2
and very soon to be available in audiobook!

Book 3, The Art of Heart, is the grand finale, and it truly is grand, in so many ways! A lot more is about to change before all loose ends finally get wrapped up satisfactorily – and then some! You will love the characters, the character arcs, and all the insights about living with heart, forgiveness, and taking another chance. Oh, plus more life-threatening disaster to spice things up.

Order from Amazon at bit.ly/artheart

The post The Art of Heart Christmas trilogy appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.