Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Fiction

The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey (Part 1)

            Lacey was not a lesbian.  In fact, after all these years, she wasn’t even bi-curious.  She considered herself a realist.  She had a degree in Business Admin, and had worked for the same mega-multinational coffee company for so long she was on the day shift.  She still told her friends she was turning irony into a career.  She lived without frills in a three story walk-up in what was rapidly becoming a trendy neighborhood.  Her real name was Lucinda, but a boyfriend in college had called her Lacey (after her man-catcher underwear) and the name had stuck.  She had two discreet tattoos, but aside from that and her fingerprints, she could have been any woman looking 30 in the face and wondering “Where’d the time go?”  But Lacey, as far as Lacey knew, was unique, because every year, regular as May the first, she packed two expensive suitcases and went on vacation — with Lisa.

lisa and lacey1

Lisa was a secret that had started one sharp rain April evening, nearly a decade earlier, when the woman who was weeping spilled her coffee.  The neighbourhood wasn’t trending then, and the high-heeled woman was out of place.  Lacey, bored beyond relief, took pity on her and strolled over with a moist cloth to offer damage control, and even though she didn’t know it at the time, it was love at first wipe.

That was the beginning.  A random gesture that stretched into three more days.  On the second night, over a very late, after work, dinner Lisa explained that long distance wasn’t the best ingredient for love, and she’d been unceremoniously dumped in favour of someone closer at hand.  Her heart was torn but not broken.  Lacey, after two too many glasses of wine, offered that love was indeed a bastard and that three years of university had left her with no one and nothing but debt and doubt and no way out.  They toasted their equally maddening and mixed up lives and decided two survivors needed to survive.  Later, in Lisa’s hotel lobby, there was a fragile secular two cheek kiss and a promise of lunch.

The next day was an afternoon, wet with glistening streets from a sun broken spring rain morning.

“Do you have a passport?” Lisa said, angling her eyes down and out of the bright bleached cafe window.

Lacey had a passport, somewhere.  It was left over from a less than successful Greek and Roman senior trip.  She looked skyward trying to remember if it was still at the bottom of her sock drawer or had she put it with the income tax.

“Yeah.”

“I know this might sound crazy but the thing is — the reason I’m here,” Lisa pointed down, “Is we were going to take a trip to Europe.” There was a pause, “Obviously we’re not going to now, but I — um — I still have the tickets.” There was another pause, “And the tour company says I can’t get the money back.”

Lisa held out her hands, empty and open.  There was silence.

“Are you asking me?  I-I-I can’t afford something like that.”

“No, no. It’s all paid for.  Flight, hotels, food, everything.  It’s all-inclusive, five star. All we have to do is show up at the airport.”

“Wow!”

“Well?”

“No.” Lacey took a breath, “No, I can’t.  I’ve got school.  I’ve — I’ve got a job.  I’ve got … I — I can’t.”

“Why not?  Paris, a cruise down the Rhone river, the Riviera, back to Paris for a couple of days and home.  Two weeks.  It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

It was.  It was the chance of a lifetime.

“Tell them you’re sick.  Tell them your aunt died.  Tell them whatever.  Come on!  I really don’t want to go alone.

“Why — why me?  You must have friends,” Lacey said, shaking her head.

“It’s the day after tomorrow, and everybody I know is back home. And they’ve got kids and commitments and everything’s all so complicated with them.  This is just the sort of wild and crazy thing I need to do right now.”

The sun slanted across the table, but it was slowly fading as more clouds moved into the sky.  It darkened the room and closed them in together.

“We click, Lace.  We’re simpatico.  Come on, please.  It’ll be fun.”

And there on the afternoon edge of dark and light, Lacey knew it would be fun.  It would be bright and dancing with sprinkling fairy lights and rippling silver water, and it would be like nothing she’d ever done before.  Lacey looked across the table.  It was almost time for her to go to work.  She could see Lisa’s face clearly, and it was friendly and open and warm, and she was smiling.

Next Friday Part 2

———————————————-

These days, a writer can’t just write.  Writers need to be lawyers, designers, social media consultants and a hundred other things.  They need to not only produce their work, but package it and market it, as well.  In short, they need to be shameless self promoters.

This is Part 1 of the last short story in the collection The Woman in the Window.  I’m going to print in all here — on consecutive Fridays — so anybody can read it for free.  The hope is that you’ll like it so much that when the book comes out, you’ll buy it.  Of course, if you can’t wait, the other stories are available on Amazon.  (See my Home Page menu under Fiction — Available on Amazon.)  Or you can check out “Scars” on my Home Page menu; it’s free, as well.  Either way, I hope you enjoy “The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey.”

WD

Emotional About Facebook

facebook11Sell my clothes; I’ve gone to Heaven!  Last week, the boys (and girls, too, I assume) down at Facebook thought we were finally mature enough to handle it and gave us emotions.  Wow!  For years, we’ve been hanging with our Cyber-friends, incapable of doing anything more than “Liking” and “Sharing” — kinda like first-term Kindergarten kids learning how to play nice with the other children.  Now, we can like, love, laugh and be happy — all at the click of a mouse — plus we can be sad and even hate.  Yeah, hate: the #1 bad boy for all millennials.  Cool, huh!

Here’s the deal.

1 — The new emotions were test-driven in Spain.  Curious choice?  Why not Holland?  Or India?  Or Canada?  Quite frankly, I’d pay money to find out who in the vast Zuckerburg Empire decided the Spanish were the emotional weathervane for the rest of us.

2 — We got one more emotion than Riley Andersen, the 11-year-old from the Disney movie Inside Out.  (She got 5; we get 6.)  Take that, you little cartoon rodent!  Goes to show ya the boys and girls at Facebook are willing to play hardball with the corporate big kids from The Magic Kingdom.  It’s kind of a subtle “our marketing department can beat up your marketing department.”  Personally, I can’t address this situation since I’m boycotting Disney right now because they refused to include Nala, from The Lion King, in their pantheon of Disney princesses.  Simba was raised by a same-sex couple, Timon and Pumbaa, and nobody bats an eye, but call somebody with a tail a princess and everybody’s all up in your face.  Damn species-ists!  But I digress.

3 — We still don’t get a “Dislike” icon.  There’s overwhelming evidence that all most Facebook users (Facebookers?) want is a way to “Dislike” those stupid cat pictures or political rants or the “share this post or you’re a heartless bastard” blackmail.  However, Facebook decided that it would be too “hurtful” and “negative” to let us actually dislike things.  I imagine when we get older, we’ll realize this cyber-guidance was for our own good.

4 — We can only have one emotion at a time.  As we all remember from puberty, adult emotions can be tough to deal with, but the folks at Facebook understand this and are making sure we go slowly at first so we don’t do silly things like “hate” something so much we make ourselves “sad.”

Anyway, I love these new emotions on Facebook.  I’m feeling all excited and virginal, and even though I can hardly wait to try cyber-crying for the first time, I kinda wanna save myself for the right moment.  Maybe I’ll just light some candles, open a bottle of wine and wait for somebody to post pictures of puppies — homeless puppies.

Beware the Good Olde Days

olde daysI love to bitch about the Oscars to the point where my friends (IRL) avoid me at this time of year.  If I believed in that crap, I’d say I had OCD or something, but, in actual fact, I’m just a cantankerous old fart who’s become a bore about the Academy Awards.  (FYI, a bore is someone who won’t change his mind and refuses to change the subject.)  My problem is, I remember a time when filmmaking was an honourable profession.  However, in my defence, I’m not the first person to get trapped in the Good Olde Days without an escape hatch.

Quite honestly, if you’re over 18, chances are good that the objects in your life’s rear-view mirror are distorted.  The ice cream was creamier when you were a kid, wasn’t it?  The music was sexier, the rain sadder, the sleep softer and the love — well — who doesn’t remember their first love without tears in their eyes?  This is natural.  It’s how our soul reminds us just how cool it is to be alive.

Personally, I think the Good Olde Days were brilliant, and I play “remember when” better than most people.  I wouldn’t trade any of the tales I can tell from back in the day for even a remote understanding of the techno-tawdry world we live in.  But that isn’t the problem.  As I say, a certain amount of nostalgia is good for the soul.  The problem comes when “remember when” starts to replace Friday morning, 2016.

It happens when we get lazy and don’t actually taste the ice cream anymore or sway to the music or listen to the rain.  It happens when we fool ourselves into believing that our eyes should squint with experience when we look at autumn leaves or that first crust of frost winter gives us.  It happens when we begin to think we’ve “been there/done that” too many times.  It happens when we quit doing the things we love.

Oh yeah, that reminds me: the Oscars suck!