Miller in Bathrooms

by Michael Wright

What am I like? Lost, useless, unfaithful, dick-driven, like, like... like the mass of some cast-off sainted statue thrown from his blue pontiac at eighty-five miles an hour maybe by some other drunk not me but yeah me, yeah, or maybe just in a giggle of precocious wildness as the girl wearing only black lace underwear in this blue streak of a car racing down a backwoods road, no lights, in a fit of crotch chaos knowing the driver is all talk and right now she wants it bad and there she is down to the last waltz and he's more into roaring over ticking macadam into the last faint sunglow with crickets locusts frogs mad in August heat nothing to breathe and she is ready for anything but this and the plaster icon goes rip bonk in one smooth motion from dashboard to road, one bounce, he throws it, belonged to the car's former owner and so what, and into the weeds in a little car-blown roadside shrine made of castaway beer bottles and dried-out condoms and somebody's book of jokes for the john (there to rest for years until a snowplow too wide smashes it all to ice powder bits, new guy on the plow and way early snow), but the driver is too terrified to care about the blue statue gone from the just-cleaned dash, he's got this girl in his car and she is wild free and more than he can handle, he just wanted to play a little with some female heart while Caitlin is away for the weekend, him with the diamond glowing in the change pocket of his jeans, saving himself for her like he promised, but before the kneel-down and the answer, why not check it out and see if he's still got anything going and now here's this one, almost naked, black lace and long tan thighs, hand on his crotch until he almost came and pushed the car into this long pour instead, blue smear on the long tan road, and now he's got to get rid of her or there'll be no way back, not from this not from wanting like this like he wants to so bad like he could lift the car off the highway just from manhood and the plaster saint is gone and the night hum is closing close in and she's singing something in her throat leaning into him, her bra now unhooked and he can't look. Can't not look as she shakes it slowly down off her shoulders. And this is what your stupid face looks like in this mirror right now back home finally... caught. Caitlin came back early and found out and there's nothing but the note on the table and he's caught, and the face in the mirror in the bathroom is all red and streaky, crying like a little girl, Miller, Christ, this is what your stupid face really looks like in this mirror right now. God damn you with all the fumes of the night's shall we say imbibing rising up around his head like the ghost of sanity the halo of all he used to know and there you are looking back at me, god damn you, sick pale busted face.

6S - C1

Michael Wright is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa, with joint appointments in Theatre and Film Studies. He is the founder and moderator of the Fictional Characters writers collective. His books include Playwriting at Work and Play: Developmental Programs and Their Processes, Playwriting Master Class, Playwriting in Process, and the Monologues for Men by Men series, co-edited with Gary Garrison. His plays, poems, fiction, and photography have appeared in The Elvis Monologues, Scenes and Monologues for Mature Actors, Monologues from the Road, Rio Grande Review, Voces Fronterizas and the Moondance Film Festival in 2004 and 2005. His short story "Twig" was published by 5th Story Review in September 2006. "Miller in Bathrooms" is a fragment of a story of the same title.