A Pact For Life (44 page)

Authors: Graham Elliot

Tags: #fiction

BOOK: A Pact For Life

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10
Without shared experiences, mutual friends, and daily routines, most relationships start off with oral biographies. Sure, there are the few people who are able to bypass this immediately and simply enjoy the moment, but most beginnings consist of where you grew up, your occupation, and interests. Of course these things are important and in no way bad, but there should be a way to let it come out naturally. It’s like starting a book saying this is character X and he is this age, he does this for a living, and so forth. Before you know it, you are 100 pages in without any actual plot. This is otherwise known as the way of epic fantasy. Actually, when you think about it, maybe epic fantasy is what is desired in most relationships?

11
A hypothesis: Sex may be powerful, but it's also fleeting. The repercussions may last a lifetime, but the act itself comes and goes, no pun intended. Saying, 'I love you' has a hidden alternate meaning and it's this, 'I want to die with you'. More so than sex, dating, and even marriage, to say, 'I love you' and truly mean it is as good as forever.

12
Diana felt weird calling Cale her boyfriend. It wasn't just the 'boyfriend' that made her feel this way, but the 'my' in front of it. When it comes down to possessives, new ones usually aren't added as often as you might think. 'My house', 'my problems', 'my drink', etc. Common and familiar things like that are not a problem, but when you go years and years without having a boyfriend, it can feel just as weird as saying, 'my third boob'.

13
Of course this can have varying degrees of effect. It's one thing for an eleven year old to have a hissy fit at a baseball game, but it's monumentally different to be a young boy and watch your mother slowly die in front of your eyes which happened to a certain brown haired, gray shirt wearing man.

14
Pronounced Da-Vorce-Say

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An atomic bomb

16
Cale's friend and ex-girlfriend.

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Cale's friend and ex-girlfriend.

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You can probably guess their relation to Cale.

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I'll spend my entire life searching for the words to properly describe your beauty.

20
Look at Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Ernest Hemmingway, Van Gogh... Pretty much any artist with natural talent.

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Alcohol, weed, sleeping pills, sex.

22
If it needs two exclamation points, it's over-excited.

23
Christmas themed bar crawl.

24
Every heartbroken person should use this line on their heartbreaker once they finally move on.

25
DUI's being the main New Year’s cash cow.

26
It also had something to do with being ordered to paint it by Pope Julius II. The man just wanted to sculpt, but the Pope demanded he paint.

27
At least for the guy that is.

28
This doesn't include Diana's maternity leave. If it did, the odds get much better, but getting pregnant every year wasn't something she intended to do. This pregnancy was a one and done deal.

29
Halloweens, birthday parties, and the unwavering love and admiration that can only come from a young child.

30
Still pronounced Divorce-Say

31
Many people are familiar with i.e., but not many know what it actually means. It’s Latin and stands for 'id est', which roughly means ‘in other words’.

32
When it comes to skin tone, clear is most definitely a color. Look at Larry Bird, every member of British Royalty, and that rascally son of a bitch, the Pope.

33
There are three levels to snowfall: Flurrying – Tiny flakes that don’t even stick on the ground. Snowing – Flakes about the size of a dime that slowly fall and take awhile to accumulate, but will eventually stick. Dumping – Globs of snow no smaller than a quarter, visibility is limited to less than ten feet, and God help you if you are driving.

34
This is a hug where the hugger lifts the huggee off the ground.

35
A Snowcat grooms mountains for skiing. Picture the body of a Jeep with the tread of a tank.

36
“Have you called your doctor yet about that procedure?” “You need to end things with that laundromat.”

37
God's in his heaven, all's right with the world

38
For the rest of his life, he would remember every detail of that moment.

39
This actually works. Take a towel or some other padded object, wrap it around the bottom of a wine bottle and bang it against a hard, flat surface. Eventually the pressure will push the cork out enough that you can grab it and pull it out.

40
This is like the doomsday clock that was made famous during the Cold War and the advent of nuclear weapons. The closer it gets to midnight, the closer Cale comes to death.

41
The reason for the blank description is because Diana and Andrew didn't actually know the charity behind the ball. It didn't matter to them.

42
That's why it's never a good idea to date someone with the same first name as a close relative.

43
Stomach pump

44
Charles Bukowski was an author and poet who wrote from the 1960's till the 1990's. You could think of him as a poet for the bar. Someone who didn't write about the beauty of the world, but rather real life. Despite writing about tumultuous relationships, drunk nights, jiggly asses, dead-end jobs, and living in squalor, his words are some of the most beautiful to ever be placed on paper.

45
Once pushed, both couldn't be undone, would likely result in catastrophic damage, and eventually require intense diplomacy to rectify.

46
According to some of Denver's more bar-friendly historians, the story of how marriage was first developed is an interesting one. Back in the BC days, women were getting it on with everyone who had a penis. Relationships meant nothing. It was a free for all. The problem with this was no one knew whose child was whose. So one of the powerful men, most likely a white guy, was bragging to his friends about how he knocked up a beautiful woman, only when she gave birth, a black baby came out. So in order to save others from this embarrassment, he created marriage. Yep, the holy, sacred tradition we have all got started due to the first cuckold.

47
An 18-29 year old who drives a BMV or Mercedes plastered with every jam band sticker known to man.

48
When it comes to ego boosts for the rich, expensive cars and younger women are the two main outlets, but don't discount the power of seeing This piece has been graciously donate by ______ in museums and galleries.

49
A small note about Anti-Depressants: They don't make you happy, but rather just prevent you from being sad. It's like a trigger safety for the mind. Any bad thoughts come and go in an instant. There's no lingering thoughts of, “You suck, you suck, you suck.” Instead, it's just, “You suck, now what's next?”

50
Concert-like

51
He was still trying to change his life by changing his drink.

52
The pregnant one.

53
The end

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Matt Halbmeier, Michael Kaser, and everyone else at Second Home and Milwaukee Street Tavern who graciously gave me advice and more importantly, drinks, while I wrote this book.

To Ryann Horn and the staff at Starbucks on 2nd and Fillmore for always keeping the coffee coming as I tried to sort through the previous night's drunken scribbles.

To Joey Puschak who provided the edits that made this book readable.

To JR Moehringer. Without your letter two years ago, I never would've written this.

To Haney, the man who drew a gray shirt way better than I ever could.

To Andrea Steffes-Tuttle, Kaneen Geiger, Annie DePuydt, and Amanda Thall for telling me what parts of this book sucked.

To Tokyo Joes, the greatest restaurant in the world.

To Trent Killian and Brandon Thall for providing innumerable quotes that I've shamelessly stolen.

To the following bands and musicians: The Decemberists, Dismemberment Plan, The Gaslight Anthem, The Good Life/Cursive, The Killers, Mice Parade, Minus The Bear, Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, Neko Case, Neutral Milk Hotel, Radiohead, Thrice, We Are Augustines, and Wolf Parade.

Thank You

Originally from a small town in Central Florida, Graham Elliot managed to escape a few years ago and now resides in Denver, CO. You can usually find him around Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood where he likes to scare the divorcees (pronounced Divorce-say) and their little dogs too! He's been known to talk ad-naueseum about Kurt Vonnegut and is eternally searching for the perfect walking album. You can email Graham at [email protected]

Table of Contents

Cover

Contents

BATTLING WITH A WHITE FLAG

THE LONELY RED HEAD

A PACT FORMED BY THE STARS, THE MOON, AND

INSTINCTS

A TEST OF FAITH

CONSCIOUS AND STABLE

A SERIES OF HAPPY MOMENTS

A RELATIVE PROBLEM

IT’S NOT A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE IF THE SCALE