HT100 Challenge #119: You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my head ever since.
“Never let anyone see you naked, boy; once they do, they’ll have you by your balls forever,” the old man had told me, on one of those nights the booze’d made him philosophical -- when I was too big for him to use for a punching bag anymore. He’d get like that certain days of the year, days I finally knew for anniversaries to be marked with mocking sentiment; one last try at covering his vulnerable spots when it’d been too fucking late a long old time ago.
Took me a while to figure out what he’d meant. Took meeting Toby, letting him all the way inside and finding all the tender places he could sink a shank the deepest; letting him spit poison at me and kissing it from his lips like wine, and knowing I’d keep coming back for more because a punch to the jaw from him is just the other side of a caress.
-- from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Drabble: 158 words; with quotation: 181
“Never let anyone see you naked, boy; once they do, they’ll have you by your balls forever,” the old man had told me, on one of those nights the booze’d made him philosophical -- when I was too big for him to use for a punching bag anymore. He’d get like that certain days of the year, days I finally knew for anniversaries to be marked with mocking sentiment; one last try at covering his vulnerable spots when it’d been too fucking late a long old time ago.
Took me a while to figure out what he’d meant. Took meeting Toby, letting him all the way inside and finding all the tender places he could sink a shank the deepest; letting him spit poison at me and kissing it from his lips like wine, and knowing I’d keep coming back for more because a punch to the jaw from him is just the other side of a caress.
-- from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Drabble: 158 words; with quotation: 181