Creative Prompt, 10.12.22
Creative Prompt, 10.12.22
Throwback to the 90s...
Hello from the void,
The prompt is down below. First, some quick housekeeping:
Be sure to check out the responses to the last prompt, 40 straight days of rain, which included a beautiful illustration, a poem, and several different styles of prose. Each week, I’ll be sharing select responses on our Instagram page.
For those based in NYC, we’re hosting a live ‘Creativity Night’ on 10/28 at the Bat Haus in Williamsburg — RSVP here.
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Lastly, a humble ask — if you have any friends that you think might gain something from PFTV, I’d love for you to share it with them:
As always, the below prompt is entirely open to your interpretation — you can follow it as closely or as loosely as you want, using your creative medium of choice. Read more about How to Respond to a Creative Prompt here, plus some Tips for Lowering the Stakes here.
Scroll down for the prompt…
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I suggest waiting until you’re ready to create — the less time to overthink it, the better…
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It’s just below here, time to head into Airplane Mode…
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That first thought or image that came to your mind… that’s your starting point.
You can share your response with the community by ‘leaving a comment’ down below. Non-text files will need to be shared by link, but I’d still encourage you to do so — the people are clicking!
If you completed the prompt but chose not to share it, I’d still love to know about it — you can give me a wink by hitting the ‘heart’ button down below.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to drop me a line.
Until next time,
Jasper
I am going into the sectioned-off room of the video store today. I’ve only ever seen men go in there, and only a certain type of man. The kind that’s always in the store by himself, beady eyes, looking around to make sure no one is watching. The kind that smokes — I know these men smoke even though I’ve never seen them smoke. The kind of man that makes my mom grip me tighter when he walks by. I will go in there today.
I’m browsing the kids movies so as to not arouse suspicion. Billy is guarding the outside of the store. If a parent approaches, he will “sprain his ankle” and shriek, warning me and creating a distraction.
I push past the beaded curtain. I step in. I see… naked women. Everywhere. My first tits.
I hesitate, and then I reach for a VHS called Busty Public School Teachers IV. I make contact and an alarm sounds. The curtain falls, the tapes slide into an underground hatch, and a glass dome drops down around me. I am exposed to the store, like a fish in a fishbowl. The alarm has attracted the attention of passersby and they see me, a 12-year old boy trapped in a glass dome, busted for trying to see the busty teachers. I scream. “ I didn’t know! Help! Let me out of here!”
My parents walk in. They are disappointed, and they won’t make eye contact with me. I call out. “Mom! Dad!” If they can hear me, they pretend they cannot. They exchange a few words with the clerk, and walk out.
Three hours pass. The crowd has dissipated, but I am still in the glass dome. The clerk slides my lunch in through a slot. Baloney sandwich and a small cup of water. No sides, no soda, no dessert.
Two years pass. I spend my days pacing around Glass Dome. I’ve grown stronger from puberty and doing wall sits. I still speak English but I also growl.
Five years pass. I am animal now. I have gnawed off left foot. I no like busty teachers no more.
Ten years pass. Big Bank Man come in and talk to Clerk. Clerk down on knees begging, crying. Big Bank Man walk out shaking head. Clerk put sign on door — Store Closed, For Good.
Clerk throw cash register through Glass Dome. “Run away! You’re free!” he say. I no want to leave. I like Dome. “Don’t make this even harder!” Clerk kick me. I crawl out of store, dragging my stump. Clerk crying louder, “I’m sorry,” he say. I cry now too. Light blinds my eyes.
When I was in 7th grade, I became a social pariah nearly overnight and for reasons which are only still partially clear to me. At the end of 6th grade and even during the summer leading up to 7th, I felt well-liked and connected to the other members of my quite small elementary school class. My family vacationed with the families of my two best friends from school. I was “summer friends” with the girls on my travel softball team and made fast friends with girls from basketball camp I would likely never see again.
Once 7th grade started everything changed. From the distance of these many years, the fall from my position of athletic, endearingly clueless yet still “one of the smart kids” who got along with everyone to friendless outcast was precipitous, though hindsight tells me that there must have been signposts along the way that escaped my notice.
The moment it all became clear to me was only a few weeks after school had started. It was Friday night. My parents and myself were the only diners at a new pizza place in town when, halfway through our meal, seven of the other nine girls in my class walked in together. It was somebody’s birthday and I was not invited. I remember feeling pleased at first with a parade of familiar faces, faces I had seen upside down on the monkey bars in 1st grade, faces that I had seen ugly crying after we’d been scolded by our 3rd grade teachers. But then I realized and my face became hot. My mother looked stung. My Dad looked away.
Later, the house was still and mostly quiet. My parents were talking in the kitchen and I could hear only whispers from my seat at the top of the stairs. I am sure they thought I was in my room and well out of earshot. I remember thinking that I could have handled this social rejection better if no one had known, wishing that I was isolated in my aloneness, that it would have mattered less if I didn’t have to worry if my Mom was crying or just whispering downstairs. A few years later, this hypothesis was proven false. Being left out sucks just as much, maybe more, when there is one one around to see it.
If my Dad was surprised to see me at the top of the stairs when he turned the corner to come find me, it didn’t shake his bravado. “Hey, let’s go get a movie!” he staged-whispered with a rehearsed, conspiratorial tone. Though this would have likely been my Dad’s go-to solution for almost any malady or mood that my siblings or I brought home, he must have known it would never fail with me.
I don’t remember what movie we rented that night. I know that, a few hours later, with the lights dimmed, the tea kettle on, and the VHS machine whirring quietly, I experienced relief from a gnawing sense of unease that would, over the next few years, slowly expand into a black hole in my chest filled with relentless self-doubt, crippling envy, and profound sadness. My capacity to feel absorbed in a movie, to meditate within its walls, became a lifeline during this period in my life. Over time, though, the movies would not only offer an escape from these bad feelings. Sometimes, they provided a cathartic release of the feelings themselves. At other times, they left me with a sense of meaning. But, perhaps the best outcome of all was when they assured me that I was not alone.