Writers Festival: The Kim Chinquee Challenge

Taking Kim Chinquee’s challenge, I wrote the same plot four different times. Each entry is exactly five hundred words:

A man walked into a corner bar with nine dollars and thirty cents in his worn pocket and a phone number written on a frail piece of receipt paper. Earlier that day, Alan Weaver gazed in the foggy mirror of his one – bedroom apartment. He noticed the grey hairs that had recently settled in throughout his scalp, his face wrinkled with loneliness. Focusing in on his hallow eyes, now such a duller grey, he finally admitted to himself what needed to be done. Alan was a structured man, only allotting himself exactly what he needed. Before he left, he counted out exactly nine dollars and thirty cents to purchase a roast beef sandwich and a dark Belgian draft, leaving a precise ten percent tip to the chubby blond waitress who always served him at the Ugly Dog. As he walked out his door, he felt the number burning in his pocket. He knew that he needed that draft to muster up the strength required in dialing that number. He planned on using his left over thirty – five cents when he crept into side phone booth of the bar, one of the only left around town, to make an anonymous call.

A young man walked into a bar down the street from his building, he had said he was going out for a walk to clear his mind. As an undergraduate he had every intention of becoming a writer. He sighed and ordered a Bud Light, knowing that he had the drive to succeed, and maybe even the talent. My life isn’t concussive to the needs of a writer, he thought. In high school, he considered himself awkward, tall and thin with thick Buddy Holly glasses. But in college, he came around to humor and suddenly everyone took his corky nature as a hip alternative style. He dated a beautiful blond sorority member and had four years of fun. It wasn’t until the two moved in together after graduation that he realized what had become his life. Initially, he looked at his page position at an editing firm as a step in the right direction. But when he really listened to his own dinner conversation, consisting of Sydney’s views celebrity gossip discussed like prayers, he saw his future embodied. Fearing that he was too late to save his mind, he looked forward to becoming quite accustomed to walks of that sort.

A man walked into a smoky bar to meet her, an old friend. She was the kind of sleek that gets men into trouble, the flow of her dark chocolate hair brushing her plump chest, the way she sipped her beer out of its skinny neck. Her eyes became so small, Asian like, when she was drunk, and her smile barely fit her teeth. He did not love her, but the energy refreshed his leather skin. They knew each other well, but never really knew the other’s life. He had devoted to another woman, his children, two girls. Years ago, his wife had past, taken by ailment of the heart. He remarried, for the girl’s sake, into misery. When they were grown, they wished he would find joy in life, they did not know that he did at the smoky bar. The man never slept with his joy, he only admired. She laughed and touched his arm and made him feel full, and if he had the desire, no morality would stop him from his pursuits. He paid for her drinks and laughed as they walked to their cars. His daughters worried and worried about his happiness, without any need.

A man walked into a bar which he had never been in, but always indented to visit. Henry spent his time in coffee shops more often, picking the skin on his hands and reading from science text books. Sometimes people sat around him and he listened to their conversations, how to wrap a ball of yarn, how to make love while pregnant. When he ordered a bagel with cream cheese and tomato, he imagined that he was deaf to hearing his order called. He entered the bar, intimated as hell, alone. A slender man with long blond hair approached only after he had just placed himself on the tall stool, “Never seen you here before.” Henry shuddered and sipped from his round cup of vodka and ice cubes. “No,” he looked down, “never.” Henry was short with dark eyes, he was always said to look mad. He wore all black and allowed his hair to shag in his face. The man smiled and looked down, “That’s okay, my name is Scott.” Henry shook his projected hand and sipped his drink again, it burned going down, worse than he remembered. “Can I invite you back?” the man asked. Henry, relieved, followed.