February 20th, 2008

Character sketch

Not a useful patch of prose, but I like it, so I thought I’d put it here:

Joe was so tall, with such big beaming eyes, with such a loud and easy laugh, such an extensive music collection, so generous, so talented, so warm, that he could be forgiven a lot by a lot of people. Sloppiness, for example, in not only his personal dress and the state of his bedroom but the state of his life: missed appointments and forgotten birthdays and relationships that never quite ended although they ceased to exist. He wasn’t all that bright, either—a liability at Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit or deciphering a roadmap, never able to calculate the tip or whether Christmas would fall on a Wednesday or not. He was a bad cook, though he worked hard at it. He was promiscuous, but sincere. He disliked cats, dogs, rabbits—and it wasn’t allergies. He tried to avoid holding babies.

We’re just kissing /we’re just hugging
RR