Oh Fuck.

Posted on May 14, 2003 in Prose Arcana Writing Exercises

Note: For another exercise in the group, I had members draw three cards from a deck I’d prepared in advance. Each card has an action on it such as “riding a horse”, “crawling on hot sand”, “wading across a river”, “washing a car”, “having sex standing up in a closet,” etc. The point of the exercise was to describe the actions in terms of the sense of touch. To use the car example, you would consider what muscles were pulled, the splash of the water on your face, the sting of the soap in your eye, the way your wet-t-shirt or bra clung to you. You chose one and wrote about it.

I got “loosening a stubborn nut”.

Three out of four came easy. The fourth — that one balked. He fit the lug wrench to the six corners and slipped the trunk-warmed iron through its hole. Then pressed and pushed. He felt the resistance first in the palms of his hands. Then it telegraphed, unfelt, past his arms and shouders to the top of his belly of all places, along that narrow muscle that lined the bottom of his ribcage. Sweat beaded up on his chest and his shoulders. It trickled down his arms, broke out like a rash on the back of his hands. Mixing with the dirt of the road shoulder, rubber fragments from the blown tire, and axle grease, it made a scratchy mud that only made the task more irritating. He put his back into it and a new tea-saucer-sized patch of stress appeared, also just below the rib cage, but on the back this time. A slight motion and then, one two three, he felt the tool slip. He looked — six corners were gone, torn free of mass of metal. He’d stripped the nut beyond salvage.