Stories and Their Flaws

What many do not realize is that Andy Warhol's "15 minutes" applies to all, whether we're talking about our beloved Literotica here or the "more mainstream" publishing arena. How widely a piece of writing is read depends on how it generates "publicity."

This reflection, however, pertains to LITEROTICA only. Its main focus is on story flaws. There are tons of stories posted everyday, but most are not worthy of comments, so I'll pick only one, a well written story, to critique. Targeted is the CLASS of writing like "The Stein," not "The Stein" in and of itself. KK's over-all argument was that the wife Nicky's ignorance of the history of her colleague teacher John and her husband Eric as well as her confession (to Eric at the very end) to having broken the stein in their living room right after the shooting, not only ABSOLVED her of conspiracy issues but that that confession revealed Nicky's loyalty and trustworthiness. I vehemently beg to differ!

But before I go on, I should quickly mention the main characters: Nicky was the wife; Eric was the husband; John was Nicky's colleague teacher at her high school and he's also the shooter; Trenca was the detective.

One small idiosyncratic thing: Eric has a small collection of mugs and the exquisitely hand-painted, German stein Nicky brought from Germany during her last trip there was very precious to him. John and Nicky, as high school teachers, went with the German Club as chaperones. "Honey, I brought this from Germany for you." In reality it's John who bought it and gave it to her. John had kissed her once or twice. "What he [Eric] doesn't know won't hurt him..." mug and kisses from John alike...

Despite what KK said, there's no mystery over-all. He made the readers privy to most of the things almost immediately. The possible, little suspense was this: So if the female of the species coyly accepted a beautiful and expensive gift from the male of the species, and with the latter being able to gently land a few light kisses and caresses with the former, did that mean acceptance of full advances was merely a matter of time? No, the author said. That was a dead end lead. It's really about John seeking to harm Eric, with Nicky being used merely as a means.

Here's what happened:

Eric returned home a day earlier than planned. Nicky and John and other school staff were out for some gathering, after which John and Nicky drove to Eric and Nicky's place. She went up to her room to change. John followed her into her bedroom, she said (later during formal questioning), without her knowledge. But momentarily, they heard someone entering the house. Since Nicky did not expect her husband to come back until the next day and must have conveyed that information to, John said for Nicky to hide in the closet and he'd go and check.

Eric, in the mean time, was about to walk upstairs, having surveyed his and Nicky's living room and laid down his brief case. Eric looked up and there was a man, with a gun, on top of the stairs! Bang! (Days later he woke up in the CI unit, hearing Nicky talking in a hushed up, worried tone with a man: "Does he remember?" "I don't know.... He's too doped up from the painkillers... John, please leave before he wakes up and sees you." "Okay, but remember what I said." "I will.")

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here: immediately after the three shots, John went back to get Nicky, saying he accidentally shot her husband. Then he also said, well, he initially thought Eric was a burglarer who was reaching for a weapon. Both versions seemed to make sense to Nicky at that moment. Eric, in the mean time, was now bleeding profusely at the bottom of the stairs, needing immediate help!

Then immediately, John added: "But, Nicky, you have to wait a couple minutes before you call 911. I'm going to TRASH your living room. WE need to make sure it looked like a simple burglary gone bad. Otherwise, if John dies, we're BOTH in big trouble!" The wait, it turned out, was 8 minutes, before she dialed 911, frantically telling them she had just entered their home and had found her husband shot.

By now John had taken off, but not until after he had bent close to Eric's ear and whispered audibly enough for Nicky to hear, "This is for Sara." It made sense Nicky didn't understand this one weird whisper; but she if didn't question the other three successively set of "ideas" from John, it was illogical for Nicky to now ponder whether such a last action by John was strange or nonsensical!

But, wait, before the police arrived, Nicky went into the living room and picked up the exquisite German mug from Eric's little collection, and smashed it, adding to the debris on the family room! (At the end of the story, KK/Eric said this act, ALONE, and her immediately and truthful confession, revealed more about Nicky's character integrity than all the other things she did or didn't do! But let's step back into the present situation for a few more moments.)

Please, note: the idea about the *accidental* shooting, for BOTH Nicky and John, had immediately morphed into an more believable, to them, idea about the gun man now being other than John; let it be some unknown burglarers! But if so, a "evidence" to (mis)lead the police to those bad burglarers was needed! Thus, John's trashing of Eric and Nicky's living room. We can be sure all the while Nicky, being such a loving wife, must be shedding a lot of tears, looking at her totally helpless and fast dying husband, "unable" to call 911 until John thoroughly done trash the family room!

I think it is also logical for us to assume Nicky reluctantly agreed to all this! But to her unthinking mind, John's been a good colleague and he's been right so far, so he must also be right on this latest room-trashing idea! No need to even wonder what the fuck he was doing with a loaded gun in her house, in hers and Eric's bedroom. That's too complex a question: Just wait for John to finish trashing the room, make sure he's gone, and THEN call 911 for Eric!

We must further assume that's all Nicky could or would think about!

The "problem" here was NOT, it should be clear enough by now, that Nicky could not or did not think, but that, she THOUGHT very similar THOUGHTS as John DID, not that Eric needed to die but that no matter what, the trashing of hers and Eric's family room must happen first before Eric would get help; otherwise, as John said, SHE and John would both be in deep trouble, if it was later found THEY were the two people in the house when Eric was shot, when he surprised them! But, folks, 'tis not an issue about missing panties! Or whether our highly popular "Sarahhh" having lied to her brother, when she gave him cow milk, but duping him to believe it was actually her precious breast milk! We're talking about a situation in which a man, Nicky's husband, being shot 3 times in his own home, laid dying, with his wife conspiring with the gun man to manufacture false evidence and to tell DELIBERATE lies, for days on end, trying to lead both Eric and the police astray!

Whether Eric should forgive Nicky is NOT the real issue; that's between Eric and Nicky. The "concern" here is: what would the POLICE say about this manufacture of false crime evidence with the sole purpose to mislead them? Note this short, telling dialogue between Eric and Nicky, when Eric was a bit but still in the hospital: "What did the bastards take from our house?" "I don't know. They left a mess in the family room but I don't know what was broken or damaged and I didn't really look to see what missing yet"!

This, among other situations touched on, I submit to you, was clear, DELIBERATE, and serious lying to conceal the truth! It was NOT a little white lie like the bringing of the mug home from Germany, letting Eric assume Nicky was thinking of him when she bought it!

But, if all this is too confusing, ask yourself the following two questions: (1) What would have happened had Eric not survived? (2) Would the police, at the end, agree that Nicky's belated confessions were enough to absolve her of any possible wrong doing, by saying something like: "Well, your husband was shot multiple times, bleeding badly. Even if you didn't wait 8 or so minutes, he'd still likely have died by the time the ambulance arrived"?

To me, character integrity deals with how Nicky dealt with both Eric and the police, explicitly and through subtle acquiescence ("Yes, we must work together and bring the burglarers to justice," etc.), in the subsequent minutes, hours, and days following the shooting! The mug, then, was not, as KK argued (per Eric and Nicky), the most important SYMBOL in this story pertaining to character revelation. If it WERE Nicky would have already failed the "test" when she had first given it to Eric, letting him think falsely she was thinking of him when she bought it in Germany!

Please, note: Nicky's true ignorance of John's ultimate motives towards both her and Eric was a separate issue, not immediately germane to the issue of her intentionally neglecting a badly wounded Eric, SOLEY for the purpose of allowing John to trash their place.

That act alone, to me, should make her crying and tears null and void.

Lastly, Nicky's quitting of her high school teaching post at the LAUSD stemmed from the SOLE FACT that she KNEW an investigation would eventually point to her and John as being the two people in the house when Eric was shot (potential murderers whom she knew nothing about but was as eager as Eric and the police to catch!); it was not due to a fear of some potential embarrassments surfacing on the FACT that she did NOT have a sexual relationship with John, anywhere!

HenryDavidThoreau