Illinoir

24. A photo of you that your hair looks nice in. 11/14/2009 Nanowrimo Pic-A-Day

Pictures where my hair looks good are few and far between. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the less hair I have, the better I look, which is a good thing, since it’s going away whether I shave it or not. This one is from last year’s NaNo again, newly shorn, sitting outside on the back porch, writing about Melvil Dewey.

An example of a bad hair day. I'm the clown.

Not much to speak of in NanoLand. Sitting at 40,953. The home stretch awaits.

Here’s a deep cut of an excerpt, from way back in the…middle. Or something.

I looked back over at Kelly. There was no chance of anything happening with her. I know that Luis, one of the warehouse guys, had gone out with her a few times. He was too much of a gentleman (or so he claimed — I think he just didn’t like me enough) to reveal any details, but from what I gathered, Kelly only dated Hispanic guys that were over six feet tall, drove red cars made in a factory that was on Greenwich Mean Time, lived in 1200 square foot apartments north of New Brunswick, spoke three languages, knew the rules to Brazilian League Football, scored between 1000-1200 on their SATs and could harness a donkey using six feet of twine and a food processor. I failed on so many levels when it came to her.

I turned back to Steph. She was starting to look better and better in my eyes. I smiled at her and said, “Well, around you, Steph, I feel like I can just say anything.” I wasn’t usually prone to such shmaltzy declarations, but desperate times call for desperate measures, or something like that. “Say, would you like to go have a drink this weekend?”

Before Steph could answer, Kelly skewered me with another glare. She must have sensed that we were no longer talking about Cola Industries related topics. I could sense her gaze burning into me without looking over. I think Stephanie did too because she immediately turned back to her computer and started typing randomly at her keyboard. When I did finally muster the courage to look back over at Kelly, she pointed angrily at the doorway. In case I didn’t get the message, she said, “Arthur. Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

I beat a hasty retreat. As I passed through the doorway, Kelly said, “Come on. Those pictures won’t take themselves.”

As if I didn’t know that already.