DATE NIGHT by Corey Isaacs I’ve got a date. My hair is a thick, floppy, tangled mess. I’ve worn plain t-shirts and blue jeans every week for the past two months. My teeth are crooked, and my left eye has been drifting to the side since I turned ten years old, but it’s Friday afternoon and by some miracle, I’ve got a date with a beautiful, yellow-haired girl named Jenny. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, warily checking myself out. My face is a mess of scars and imperfections, but my body has managed to stay generously athletic. Or at least, athletic enough. Athletic enough to get a Friday night date with yellow-haired Jenny. What the fuck am I going to wear? I feel vaguely gay for even thinking it, like a thirteen year old girl trying to chose the right dress for her first school dance, and yet as I stand in front of the mirror, I can’t imagine what the appropriate attire is when one takes a girl on a date to a rock concert. A rock concert that cost me two hundred fucking dollars! That was my gas money; I’ll be taking the bus for the next two weeks now. My closet is a clutter of poorly hung t-shirts, jeans, polos, and hooded sweatshirts. Every now and then, a button-down flannel shit or the tan of a pair of khaki paints peeks out from the avalanche of casual attire. Those are my “dress-up” clothes. I take out a checkered red and black button down shirt and consider it for a brief moment before throwing it on the floor in helpless frustration. I go back to the mirror for no particular reason at all. How ridiculous was all of this, anyhow? People don’t go on dates anymore. They drunkenly meet at nightclubs or bars, forget to use a condom, and wind up married. They find each other online and talk over e-mail or instant message for days before actually meeting one another in the flesh. When you find a pretty girl at a bookstore, you’re not supposed to do something as stupid as getting her numbers. We are living in the era of instant gratification. We’re incessantly horny teenagers, or at least at heart, and we want our sex now! We hit the fast-forward button on our relationships and divorce years down the line. We don’t have the time for “dates”. And I am a man who is desperately behind the times. I get the numbers, as I got Jenny’s, and I make the awkward, stupid phone calls (“hey, uh, do you like music?”), and I shell out two-hundred dollars for a pair of concert tickets to see a band I hardly know. I’m behind the times, and I’m completely in over my head. I reach for my phone and dial Susan’s number. Susan is a beautiful girl with whom I had a stormy relationship with just a couple of years ago. As friends go, we’re quite a pair, and as lovers, we were even better, but a long-term relationship simply turned out to not be our thing. We have, however, managed to stay the best of friends. The phone rang a number of times before I thought about hanging up. Susan was an unstable, borderline alcoholic. For her not to answer the phone was a common occurrence. Finally, after a minute of mind-numbing ringing, I heard a wonderfully high-pitched voice at the other end of the line. “Hello?” She answered. “I’m screwed,” I said, distantly and frustrated into the phone. “Corey!” She said with a gleeful delight, as if nothing could be better to pick up and recognize that it was my voice on the other end of the line. She was probably drunk. “Hot date tonight, right?” “I can’t find a fucking thing to wear and I’m worried that I’m going to be terribly boring and awkward.” I said in a monotone that was meant to be matter-of-factly and even headed, but in practice turned out to be desperate and frightened. “Well, still haven’t changed have we?” She said, her playful laugh echoing out of the phone and into my ear. I sigh, displeased with some of my life choices. For instance, this is the person I call in my time of need. “Relax,” She said, after laughing at my misery for a good thirty seconds, “You’re going to be just fine. Sure, it’ll be a little awkward at first, that’s why nobody goes on dates any more. But the music will start and you’ll have a few drinks and the two of you will come home and screw on the kitchen floor.” I looked down the hall into the small kitchen inside my apartment. It was a wasteland of dirty dishes surrounded by empty containers of Cheese-its and Cup Noodles. The floor was dirty and hadn’t been cleaned since Susan had came over drunk one time and barfed on it a couple years back. Five years removed from college, and I’m still living in a goddamn frat house. “Yeah, the kitchen floor,” I thoughtlessly echoed. “Corey, shut the fuck up.” She said, her speech ever so slurred, confirming my suspicions of her sobriety (or lack thereof). “Everything is going to be fine. Green Day, they’re a great band. Everything’s going to be great. Just be yourself, you know, to an extent.” “To an extent?” “Forget I said that. Go get ‘em Tiger! I gotta go.” Before I know it, the dial tone buzzed once more through the telephone. Susan had hung up, and I still didn’t know what I was wearing tonight. Should I just stick with my unofficial uniform, my consistent t-shirt and jeans? We were going to dinner before the show, though. How dressy is too dressy for a rock concert? I went back to the battlefields, in front of my closet, and took a second long, hard look. Fuck it. I ripped out a faded red V-neck t-shirt and selected one of my many pairs of dark blue jeans. They were the kind with buttons instead of zippers, but I had found them on sale at some store or another and so I had decided to save a few bucks and live with the frustration. I returned to the mirror, combed my hair, sprayed on some cologne, and shaved. I put my clothes, still in front of the mirror, and took a second to examine the finished product. I wasn’t much, but there I was, ready for the best and for the worst.
Glad you liked it Wisp! And no, I haven't written anything further on this yet. I've sent the piece out to a couple magazines. Right now I'm waiting for responses, but if nobody takes it I might add some more before doing the next round of submissions. Thanks again for the feedback!
I can't identify with the protagonist, he sounds like a chick. You should make the pro a girl and this would work better. I felt it was written OK. I was interested in engaging between the dynamics of this Jenny, the date and the protagonist.The whole premise of this written revolved around this idea/theme. Instead you fuss over what to wear and how is this meaningful to the story ? I understand that you wanted to express lack of confidence, nervousness and excitement but you should have developed it with the premise of the story, which is Jenny, the date. Instead you developed and expressed it with which outfit to wear, how you looked in a mirror. To be honest, all this is incredibly unimportant and boring. And not really a strong showing. Even though you are writing you still are the director. And like movies you have to write scenes and have them strictly follow the story in atheistic, engaging and block building ways. To be successful no deviations or wasteful words or unimportant details are allowed. Where is Jenny ? Rewrite this with her involved. That would be a challenge, and it would make this damn good. Give us drama, not face book status updates. Also the dialog was not believable and seemed to only exist to self serve the plot. This has potential, I see it as an early draft. I hope you are not offended because I would not waste my time if I didn't think you could still salvage this piece. Overall, Good editing and grammar but you misfired completely on the delivery. I would read a part two to see how you may improve. Thanks for sharing. Have you gotten any good news from the publishers you submitted this to ? And what magazines did you send this to ?
Firstly, thank you RambleOn, for the great feedback! Very helpful. I don't feel comfortable writing in the 1st person as a woman. I've tried it before, and I just can't seem to make it work. I feel like there's so much more to being a woman than a man could ever conceive of, it makes the whole thing a bit of a stretch, so I don't think I'd change the sex of the character. I didn't go in planning to write about the actual date. Rather, I feel like, especially with the younger people today, dating has become obsolete. There's so much facebooking, myspacing, and e-harmonizing nowadays, the traditional date is seemingly fading fast from existence. My idea for this piece was to discuss the idea of going on a more traditional first date in the modern world. I'm sorry you didn't like it, but your feedback and insight was great. I'm surprised you found the dialogue unbelievable. I posted it on Absolutewrite and many said one of the things the piece had going for it was the dialogue. I had originally submitted it to two magazines, PANK and The Ear Hustler. Just last week, Pank sent me a rejection saying that while the "dialogue was wonderful" and there were "a few great lines", "the piece lacked maturity". The Ear Hustler has yet to get back to me. Meanwhile, I submitted it to a bunch of other magazines (Denver Syntax, Bellingham Review, among others), so fingers crossed.
Well I wish you luck and you'll get published one of these days anyhow. You show a clear focus in writing. When I said the dialog was not believable I meant this: that it just sat there reinforcing the entire premise of the story. It backed the conditions set already, nervousness, no confidence etc...but on the other side it didn't really develop the character or set new plot dynamics...that's all. I never learned new character traits or got to know the carachert any better than I already did. And that future plot points and story Arch's were not created. I like the idea of dating in the modern world you have set, or lack there of...but the angel you took was a safe one, and this all could really exist in any situation. The modern world was just a filter. Now, you have to take this idea and birth it more connection between us and the character. Take away the "fad" of dating you outlined and this story is bare. This needs more dynamics. I liked it though, to be honest. It's just not a professional piece. What separates successful writers between the ones with an ability to write down words is this: The understanding of drama, how to deliver it and how to explore ideas. Peace my good friend. (don't think that I'm trying to sound like a professional writer, because I'm not).
You seem to sincerly want constructive criticism, so-- To wordy, to many "I'"s, and to many commas. "I’m behind the times, and I’m completely in over my head." better: I'm behind the times, completly in over my head. Writing strictly from first person is a tough nut to crack. It also lends a sense of whiny-bitch to the story. This piece ahould be a third person narrative. As for dialogue-- it dosen't ring true. Get it read out loud to you and you'll see. There's no differentation between characters Remember, stories are about Characters, not action or location.
