Drunken Divination

by Brian Cartwright
Unwrite.Com


I've always been a sucker for stories about drunk assholes. I've even written a few myself. Drunken Divination is such a story, this one about a conversation between the narrator and a girl he's sweet on. It begins with the two drinkers spouting out absurb hypotheticals, playing them for humor. I can relate. My attention is seized.

Cartwight's storyteller thinks harshly of himself, and his internal monologue manages to pull off scathing and funny at the same time. Try this out:

"I think Patrick Stewart is sexy. I thought they didn't wear jumpsuits on that one though." She rolled onto her side and looked me in the eyes. The bag of wine lay in the grass abandoned and she was pouring herself a glass of scotch. I had brought the Kalhua out for nothing.

"They did for the first two seasons." Jesus, I sounded like a fucking idiot. My best material was to be a stickler for Patrick Stewart's 17-year-old nut hugging jammies.

As he gets drunker, he lets his frustration get the best of him, and he becomes hostile and cruel. I really like that, because many stories will spend time demonstrating motivation, trying to elicit sympathy for the emotionally tortured narrator before displaying his faulty behavior. Not here. There's some bare minimum background on his secret crush, but no wailing and crying. Thankfully.

Instead, the ugly outbursts are simply laid out. The conversation happens, but it's never softened by mealy-mouthed whining. It's pure raging angst with no apology, and offers no catharsis for the reader or the characters.

The story is biting and mean. I appreciate that. The tone is a far cry from the vague spiritual mumbling and incidental soul searching in the last story I read, Weightlifting For Catholics, in the 2005 Atlantic Fiction Issue.

It's a shame that in-your-face stories like this get so little attention in literary journals. I find that loud bright stories with high levels of kinetic energy are generally ignored in favor of stories revolving around philisophical contemplations, chanted elegies, and pseudo-European sophistication. You can write about the weather in Vienna all day long. Go for it. I'll take the story that makes me cry and bleed. This one does.

It's online. Go read it!