Please review my first story "Lovesick"

Little Thrills

J

And then this happened

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Philip Muls

Guest
A week after my 16th birthday, I am sitting in a classroom with 22 other boys pretending to listen to a Latin teacher. Our minds are everywhere but here.

I for one cannot stop thinking about Connie. She is the reason for the lovesick state I have been in for weeks now.

She is the epitome of perfection to the 16 year old me. She has hazel brown eyes and a classic face of beauty. She is wearing a navy school dress accentuating her figure. For a moment, it makes me wonder whether the school has intended this effect when making girls wear a uniform. With her hair in a boy cut, she is simply irresistible. I do not fight it, I am powerless. I recognize a higher force.

She walks with an air of carefree confidence, seemingly unaware of what she does to boys and men. With hindsight, that was a pretty naive thought on my part, I now know that she was aware of her powers. Pretending she wasn’t just made it perfect.

It started with a smile. I am not even sure she was smiling at me, but nothing has been the same since.

One morning before school, Dexter’s Midnight Runners are playing their signature song Come on Eileen as a backdrop to the epic scene that follows. I am looking at Connie walking towards me along with 2 other girls all wearing winter jackets, woolen mittens and hats. She is laughing out loud because of something her friend says. Her gaze crosses mine and it seems to me that her smile is now directed straight at me. She simply says “Hi, don’t you just love this song ?”.

That’s it. That is all that happens. I am in awe.

Awe is called the 11th emotion, beyond the basic ten known by science i.e. love, fear, sadness, embarrassment, curiosity, pride, enjoyment, despair, guilt, and anger. Awe is the overwhelming feeling on the boundary between pleasure and fear, inspired by great beauty or the incomprehensible mystifying. It causes us to completely forget ourselfs in a moment of great wonder, feeling the presence of something greater.

Yes, right on the mark. I am in awe.

And I am not equipped to deal with it. I manage to say a profound “Hi, yes I do” back at her. A few days later, I even ask her out in a burst of supreme confidence. She hesitates for a brief moment…

That moment lingers on in my eternity. It is a moment in which all is still possible and yet you feel that it is not you but fate that will prevail. James Blunt’s You're Beautiful captures this brilliantly : “I saw an angel. Of that I'm sure. She smiled at me on the subway. I don't think that I'll see her again, But we shared a moment that will last 'til the end.”

She said no.

Later in life, I learned how to see rejection as a useful step in the pursuit of victory. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.

But back then, it took me apart. When it comes to drama, there’s nothing quite like unrequited love. For weeks I did not sleep or eat. It seemed to me that the meaning of life was found and instantly lost again.

If rejection hurts, rejection without a reason is a killer. It tortured me in the most intense way that she denied me the chance to that one date. To my endless frustration, guys who were not paralyzed by her loveliness did manage to get on a date with her. And they did it in a casual way, nothing to it.

A lesson in love right there ! She needed a cool guy, a guy she had to fight for. Why did I not know that ? Why was this not genetically pre-arranged in my moves ? Why did all the males that preceded me let me go empty-handed to an unfair fight ?

Thinking back about it so many years later, it makes me wonder about love and awe.

Why was I in awe looking at her and not at other girls, who were in fact even more beautiful ? Why did her smile hold that power over me and not over other guys ? Can beauty be a product of love rather than an objective measure ? Can you love someone just on the outside, without knowing her really ?

Exquisitely painful as it was, I wouldn’t want to have missed it. This First Love which did not go beyond “Hi” and yet took on legendary proportions in my memory, inspired me to look for experiences that brought me the same feeling of bewilderment and wonder. But somehow, I never quite reached the same high octane level in my emotional fuel and probably never will.

By design it seems… you can only be truly lovesick once.
 
Slow down, there, Phil! Can I call you Phil? Tell us a bit about yourself, Phil. Join the community! I'm Jason. Pleased to meet you. What'd you like to write? What'd you like to read? How do you take your cake? How do you feel about camels? These will all become important.
 
Hi Jason. Yes you can call me Phil. I live in Belgium and I like writing short stories, usually impressions from my own life as you can see in this thread.
 
Welcome to the forum. You've achieved the grand thread post! Well done. I was about to take votes who would be the one to start the 1000 discussion thread...this was certainly not expected. :)
 
Welcome to the forum. You've achieved the grand thread post! Well done. I was about to take votes who would be the one to start the 1000 discussion thread...this was certainly not expected. :)

Yes, a happy day!
 
Thanks Emurelda. Funny I started discussion 1000...I did not mean to enter with a bang.
 
Hi Jason. Yes you can call me Phil. I live in Belgium and I like writing short stories, usually impressions from my own life as you can see in this thread.
Well hello and welcome, from Eastern Standard Time! I tend to over-write and have a big problem with length, but paradoxically short stories tend to be my favorite stories — like a Zen painting, when you only have five thousand words each one must be chosen very carefully, and very well.
 
A week after my 16th birthday, I am sitting in a classroom with 22 other boys pretending to listen to a Latin teacher. Our minds are everywhere but here.

I for one cannot stop thinking about Connie. She is the reason for the lovesick state I have been in for weeks now.

She is the epitome of perfection to the 16 year old me. She has hazel brown eyes and a classic face of beauty. She is wearing a navy school dress accentuating her figure. For a moment, it makes me wonder whether the school has intended this effect when making girls wear a uniform. With her hair in a boy cut, she is simply irresistible. I do not fight it, I am powerless. I recognize a higher force.

She walks with an air of carefree confidence, seemingly unaware of what she does to boys and men. With hindsight, that was a pretty naive thought on my part, I now know that she was aware of her powers. Pretending she wasn’t just made it perfect.

It started with a smile. I am not even sure she was smiling at me, but nothing has been the same since.

One morning before school, Dexter’s Midnight Runners are playing their signature song Come on Eileen as a backdrop to the epic scene that follows. I am looking at Connie walking towards me along with 2 other girls all wearing winter jackets, woolen mittens and hats. She is laughing out loud because of something her friend says. Her gaze crosses mine and it seems to me that her smile is now directed straight at me. She simply says “Hi, don’t you just love this song ?”.

That’s it. That is all that happens. I am in awe.

Awe is called the 11th emotion, beyond the basic ten known by science i.e. love, fear, sadness, embarrassment, curiosity, pride, enjoyment, despair, guilt, and anger. Awe is the overwhelming feeling on the boundary between pleasure and fear, inspired by great beauty or the incomprehensible mystifying. It causes us to completely forget ourselfs in a moment of great wonder, feeling the presence of something greater.

Yes, right on the mark. I am in awe.

And I am not equipped to deal with it. I manage to say a profound “Hi, yes I do” back at her. A few days later, I even ask her out in a burst of supreme confidence. She hesitates for a brief moment…

That moment lingers on in my eternity. It is a moment in which all is still possible and yet you feel that it is not you but fate that will prevail. James Blunt’s You're Beautiful captures this brilliantly : “I saw an angel. Of that I'm sure. She smiled at me on the subway. I don't think that I'll see her again, But we shared a moment that will last 'til the end.”

She said no.

Later in life, I learned how to see rejection as a useful step in the pursuit of victory. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.

But back then, it took me apart. When it comes to drama, there’s nothing quite like unrequited love. For weeks I did not sleep or eat. It seemed to me that the meaning of life was found and instantly lost again.

If rejection hurts, rejection without a reason is a killer. It tortured me in the most intense way that she denied me the chance to that one date. To my endless frustration, guys who were not paralyzed by her loveliness did manage to get on a date with her. And they did it in a casual way, nothing to it.

A lesson in love right there ! She needed a cool guy, a guy she had to fight for. Why did I not know that ? Why was this not genetically pre-arranged in my moves ? Why did all the males that preceded me let me go empty-handed to an unfair fight ?

Thinking back about it so many years later, it makes me wonder about love and awe.

Why was I in awe looking at her and not at other girls, who were in fact even more beautiful ? Why did her smile hold that power over me and not over other guys ? Can beauty be a product of love rather than an objective measure ? Can you love someone just on the outside, without knowing her really ?

Exquisitely painful as it was, I wouldn’t want to have missed it. This First Love which did not go beyond “Hi” and yet took on legendary proportions in my memory, inspired me to look for experiences that brought me the same feeling of bewilderment and wonder. But somehow, I never quite reached the same high octane level in my emotional fuel and probably never will.

By design it seems… you can only be truly lovesick once.
I like that you taught a little lesson about emotions — I love a story that teaches me new true factual information, and also makes me fall in love with the characters. I like that Connie only has one line of direct dialogue, as if she's drifting consciously oblivious through the story, and the effect might be even stronger if it's not a quotation but narrated that she said don't you love etc. and his is the only direct quote. You do a good job of capturing the poignant emotion I believe you set out to convey — nice, effective little short.
 
Tell me, I guess I did it wrong posting my story like I did ? What is the proper way to do it ?
 
No no you're in the right place. We've just had several people come in over time, ask for a critique, and once they have it never show up again. Litopia was founded by @AgentPete on mutual support between authors. Glad to have you!
 
Hello Philip – nice to have you here. This area, Cafe Life, isn’t for writing review or critiques. It’s for everything else :)

If you stick around here and contribute, you'll find The Houses open up to you, which is where we do critiques.
 
Hello Philip – nice to have you here. This area, Cafe Life, isn’t for writing review or critiques. It’s for everything else :)

If you stick around here and contribute, you'll find The Houses open up to you, which is where we do critiques.
Oh that's true — now that we have the Houses, we don't need to put stuff out here, any more.
 
OK thank you all for the arm welcome. I will indeed (try to) contribute.
 
Phil, you may want to consider removing your story from the original post. This thread is in the public view, so anyone--account or not--can view it, which might technically render it "published".
 
It does render it published, as it is available in its entirety to the general public — if you plan seek publication for Lovesick, @Philip Muls I would remove it and wait for the Houses.
 
Or maybe approach some of us with regards to beta reading. Getting some of us to read your story in a more private arrangement, through emails mostly, with critique and feedback as part of the deal.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Little Thrills

J

And then this happened

Back
Top