Joe Long: Blog

My writing wasn't up to my current standards when I started on this. I's already rewritten from scratch one, but this week while rereading to refresh my memory for new writing, reworded some sentences and emoting that were clumsy, and on a few places added detail to the story by replacing some telling with showing, making the writing style more consistent with later chapters. I uploaded chapter 1-3. I'm going through chapter 4 now, but it looks like any further edits will be for clarity and misspellings.

Like 'Photographs', this continues the present day semi-autobiographical tale that starts with 'One Thousand Apologies', which was set in 1979/80.

Those two recent short stories pick up on Joe's life in the present day as an older gentleman who still has an eye and a charm for the youngest of ladies.

This time, there's a bevy of nerdy college girls at a conference who treat Joe like he's a rock star. He's got his eye on one, but a connection comes from an unexpected direction.

Who says nerdy girls can't be sexy and needing of attention?

I like to weaver personal anecdotes into my stories. A relationship, a scene, or even just a brief exchange that I can pull from my memory banks and weave with others into a new fictional story, while other parts may be pulled totally from whole cloth.

In "Photographs", fourteen year old Emma says to her older pursuer, "We could never have sex." He replies, "Why is that?" and she explains, "Because I am not a cheater."

Once upon a time my fourteen year old niece said the exact same words to me and I've had that snippet filed away for a story when it fit. Circumstances had led to her riding three hours in my car en route to a week at her grandmother's (my mother-in-law).

Almost immediately once or journey began, she opened up to tell me all her personal issues, including all things sexual. She likely noticed that I had a hard-on (for nearly the whole time) so quite unprompted informed me that we could never have sex and why. I instantly noticed that she left out the facts that I was her uncle and was thirty-five years her senior, which of course caused me to want to fuck her even more.

Now, as evidenced by the female leads in both the recently "Photographs" and soon to be revived "One Thousand Apologies", I'm not much of a boob man. In fact, just last night I was at the local convenience store ogling and chatting up a young new cashier. Beautiful baby face, wide his, thick thighs, round ass and not much tits. Just perfect.

But my niece had tits, once I couldn't take my eyes off. Despite her confession, it took so much to not pull into a motel and insist on having my way. So much that my wife accused me of having sex with her when, now fifteen years later, I still haven't.

But I can still dream.

Hey, I finished a story!

I was able to crank out 10k words in around 10 days and am quite pleased with the quality. I hope that's enough motivation to get back to One Thousand Apologies (just been a lack of time IRL)

Photographs is a fantasy that I'm sure many in my situation is life share. It starts off true then at some point heads off in speculative fiction.

I'm proud of how it turned out and encourage you fine folks to check it out.

Thanks!

I liked to take pictures. I also liked the girls. It would be dangerous to wait until a hot young thang came walking up to raise the camera, or to be found with just the girls in the catalog of images, so the strategy was to take a ton of pics. I had a good eye for artsy shots, so I had the camera in front of my face more often than not. I was just the guy who liked to take photos, so if ever questioned I’d easily have a hundred or two images from an event, with maybe only a handful that were incriminating, which I’d quickly download and stash once I got home, the rest carefully arranged into folders by place and date. Even the innocent ones, which I frequently contributed to event organizers, could be quite enjoyable.

No shit, she had been gorgeous since the time she could walk. Puffy cheeks, upturned nose, she was a beautiful child. Her mother was a friend of my daughters, her grandmother a friend of my wife’s. Eight, nine, ten, she would sit in the pew directly in front of me, close enough to reach out and caress, but of course she was too young. I settled for the occasional handshake and “Good morning” and treasured the infrequent hugs.

When she was ten I was taking photos at the picnic at the lake, as I did every year. I swung around to look for a shot and she was not more than a dozen feet away, walking towards me in a one-piece swimsuit. Seeing the camera she smiled and struck a pose. I grinned and thought “Oh, you little minx” as I snapped the shot.

When twelve she was approaching five feet tall, again in a one-piece, when she rose from the lake, walking towards the shore. I snapped a series as quickly as I could. Her shoulder length hair wet and draped back over her head, she was a goddess emerging from the deep. Forget Bo Derek. It was immediately my favorite picture of her.

Because of thunderstorms, this year’s picnic was moved into the gymnasium. Fourteen and half. Five foot two and an ass any grown man would drool over. I’d begun counting the months until she’d be legal at sixteen. One half of the room was filled with tables of families eating hot dogs, hamburgers, and a variety of pot luck selections. The other half was set up with games for the teens.

I went up on the stage at the corner near the games so I could get shots of the teens. Right in front of me was a game of “nine-square.” The player who failed to return the ball was sent to the end of the line to wait to get back in, those remaining rotating under the rope grid.

I’d already gotten several pics of the crowd of kids, some closer but still innocent shots that included that perfect ass and muscular thighs, and a good closeup of her face. I was scanning the room for anymore wide shots to hide my favorites amongst when I spotted her at the end of the nine-square line. Dammit, was she waving at me? She was making a face! I smiled and raised the camera, flicking the power back on and impatiently waiting for it to power up so I could zoom in, as she was maybe fifty feet away. I quickly clicked a couple shots of her and the boy behind her.

Satisfied, I lowered the camera and turned away, then remembered that I’d been looking for a good moment to approach her. With the camera hanging from my neck, I quickly strode over, stopping within arm’s length of her. I was transfixed by those sparkling eyes and she gazed up with a big smile on her face. I took a deep breathe and asked. “I have some pictures of you at the Globetrotters and out at the lake. Would you like me to send you some copies?”

She tilted her head then drawled, “So whyyy are you taking pictures?”

Oh God. I froze. Find words, dammit! “So I can remember.”

“You mean like when you’re at home, alone?”

I could feel the blood draining from face and must’ve looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. I sort of mumbled something and think I nodded my head just slightly. Oh fuck, I got caught.

“Yeah, you can send them to my Grandma. She’s on Facebook.”

I could finally exhale. “Thanks, I will.”

She knows, and she doesn’t mind.

The face pic is now my new favorite. Artsy too, as the girl to her right who is slightly closer is a bit out of focus as is the other girl to her left and ten or fifteen feet behind. But there in sharp detail is that face and the Taylor Swift t-shirt, pushed out slightly by the twin mounds that look like they may never be more than a handful.

Just perfect.