Johnny America

 

Per­son­al Gifts

by

Heather ap­proach­es the house, care­ful­ly bear­ing her in­tri­cate­ly dec­o­rat­ed cake. She’s got on these red and pur­ple cor­duroy pants and they’re sort of flo­ral and they match the cake, which has flow­ers. My name is on the cake. She rings the door­bell, and there she is with that god-aw­ful thing and her name is on it too. In fact the cake says “Rob and Heather’s First Date!!!” Idly I con­sid­er her use of ex­cla­ma­tion points.

She’s got this ex­pres­sion like she ex­pects me to eat the whole cake right now while she looks on ador­ing­ly. In­stead I take it and put it on the kitchen counter. There’s a pause. She’s put the cake on a re­al plate, a tac­tic de­signed to guar­an­tee a sec­ond encounter.

“Is this all for me?” I ask. I try to of­fer her some and she de­murs, re­fus­ing to ru­in the din­ner I’ll soon pur­chase for her. Mean­while her pre­vi­ous queries about food al­ler­gies and fa­vored col­ors click in­to place like lock pins.

“Well!” I say, too bright­ly. Then I clap my hands with a man­ner­ism that I be­lieve is com­plete­ly new to me. “Let’s get this date start­ed!” Again the false cheer­i­ness. What’s this per­son do­ing to me? She grins and nods crazi­ly, a marionette’s bob­bing head.

I ush­er her back out the door, leav­ing the hideous cake be­hind, frost­ing hard­en­ing on the counter. Her cake-ass pre­cedes me in­to the twi­light, swathed in my fa­vorite colors.

Filed under Fiction on May 6th, 2005

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Reader Comments

Jay wrote:

This made me Laugh Out Loud. Not quite ROTFL, but more than a chuck­le. Well done.

aaron j. marko wrote:

i wish some­one would make me a first date cake.

Emily wrote:

not LMAO?
I’ll try hard­er next time.

WTF wrote:

I just want some of that sweet cake ass!

Anonymous wrote:

I re­al­ly liked this sto­ry. I’d cat­e­go­rize it un­der “fa­vorites!!!” Could­n’t resist.

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