I Need Your Honest Opinion...

So I have an idea that may work. I am working on a a short story collection and trying to submit some of my short stories to journals for publication, thus...I'm going to include about 2 pages of my first story "Nutty Kisses" that I am submitting to various journals. If you have some time, could you give me your thoughts....

I haven’t had a single dream since the night my brother died. My head is empty and remains that way until morning, when mom throws the towel soaked with ice cold water on my face, claiming that’s the only way she can get me up in enough time to have some breakfast and get to school. I hate having an empty head. I like the motion and clutter of a head filled with boy mischief and this emptiness rates second only to the death of my brother. I thought that by sleeping in his room I could channel him through osmosis or something, filling my head with memories of us --- but nothing. My head is just as blank as the day he died. It’s that life sized poster of Pam Grier as Foxy Brown above his bed that I thought would most bring back my dreams. I’d stare at that picture for hours, almond butter colored Foxy in that green dress and get hot all over, remembering how my brother loved her and how I came to love her through him. I would fall asleep at the foot of Samson’s bed with the nightlight on just staring at Foxy, remembering every curve of her body in my head before I drifted off to sleep, hoping that she would stay with me through the night. But even Foxy escaped me and I was left with emptiness all night long.
I even included Foxy’s image in the documentary I’m making on my Samson’s life. I want to finish it in time for them to play it at what would have been his high school graduation. I spend most of my days after school and football practice editing the footage I have, mostly from his football games. And each day I edit I see more and more of Samson’s girlfriend Dee Dee, the Jezebel that murdered my brother. I was silently enraged when my mother let her attend the funeral saying that Dee Dee couldn’t be held responsible for what happened. “God called Samson home that night”, she told me over and over again. Yet I couldn’t shake Dee Dee’s involvement in it all. I guess I need someone to blame and since she caused his death, I feel like my anger is justified.
I was there the night Samson took his last breath. Dee Dee and I were in the stands amongst the thousands of onlookers as Samson played the best game of his high school career against the Cougars that night. When we were growing up I thought God used his best tools to make Samson and saved the leftovers for me. At 6”4, 230 lbs., he was huge and a great football talent, making Samson one of the best and most remembered quarterbacks at my school. He wore an afro all through school but shaved it off, ‘cause he said he wanted a new look for college. Me, I was tall for my age about 6ft. and only 14 but I was 160lbs. soaking wet. Samson used to call me JJ Evans, to get me mad and it always worked. “JJ hand me my helmet!” “JJ pass me the remote!”. I hated the reference but loved the attention from Samson. Everyone wanted a piece of him --- my parents, Dee Dee, the school, the team --- so I was happy when I got my chance.
That night the crowd pulsed with excitement as Samson scored touchdown after touchdown. Dee Dee and I were in the stands cheering him on; I was eating a hot dog and Dee Dee guzzling down some hot salted peanuts. After the game, they both ditched me to make out while I was stuck carrying his football equipment to the car. Later, according to Dee Dee, about three minutes into kissing, Samson began to have trouble breathing. At first, she said, he just laughed it off and said she took his breath away. She laughed too but when Samson’s breathing became more frantic and his throat and face began to swell, they both began to panic. Dee Dee ran to the parking lot and found me in the car. We raced back to behind the bleachers but Samson was already unconscious. Twenty minutes later he was dead.


quondam -- adj. :Having been formerly; former; sometime.

"For a woman to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her emotional and intellectual capacities, would enrail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration of the social conditions that demean and constrain her. Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby constrain herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal feminity --- a perversion, if you will".
----Louise J. Kaplan