Flâneuse by Carrie Cooperider

What are the chances, I ask you—not one, but two—two! white-stranded gentlemen in as many days sailing past me seaside with their swollen scrota slung to the right of their inseams? Hammocked belowdecks in cargo shorts, both, and aptly named, laded as they are and ready to ship out.

Those chances we were just betting on? Pretty good—puh-RIT-tee da-HARN good, my friend! It’s a loooong boardwalk, and I really do put myself out there, you know? You’ve seen me?

Also: I notice these things.

I notice the people with missing teeth and the women with makeup that’s too much but not enough to cover the bruises. I notice the limpers and the lispers, I see the valet with the mullet hauling the elderly patron aftward from the back of her sedan toward the entrance of the restaurant. Up she goes, steady enough for now, up the fair-weather plank, paddling crab-a-daisy toward Happy Hour and a dockside view of the sun in love with its salty reflection. No tip proffered, we note, to the valet—is it pronounced in the British fashion, do you think: VAL-ett? The VAL-ett with the MUH-lett, then, is it? Or is mullet pronounced in the manière française: muh-LAY? The VAL-ett with the muh-LAY? Global flotsam harrows the currents of speech, as they yo-ho-ho in these here parts.

Anyway, of course he doesn’t have a mullet! Wouldn’t be caught dead in one—that’s just the fiction talking. While we’re at it, only one of those guys on the boardwalk was wearing cargo shorts. Don’t know why I lied. Sounded better, I guess? SOR-ry!

Those testicles, though—like beached whales! What could have caused such bloatage in their dotage? Orchitis? Hydrocele? Hernia? A Moby Dick?

That’s a terrible joke and I apologize. I’m going to edit that out. And bloatage/dotage, that drooling bit of doggerel—it’s unworthy of you as a serious reader of fine literature. I’m ashamed to have subjected you to it, especially as it’s yapping at the heels of that “beached whale” cliché. I guess I just got nervous when I thought of you thinking of me as the kind of person who stares at men’s crotches, and when I get nervous, I,—well, I promise I’ll get rid of all that before publication.

All joking aside, I hope they don’t have cancer. Those two men, I mean. That, my friend, I would not wish on EHHH-ny-one.

Okay, so maybe I’d wish it on some people. A lot of people. But those guys, nah. I don’t even know them. I’m not a doctor so I don’t know what ails them, either.

What I do know is that I have worn that makeup, lisped through those missing teeth, limped along a distance, been stiffed by a corpse-in-waiting.

Ha! Me and you both, right?

What I don’t know: that sticky camaraderie of thigh and ballsac. That frightening vulnerability of external organs subject to the scrutiny of the merciless universe. Ohhh, but breasts! Breasts, now—those hangers-down, I know: the way the old buoys bob about beneath the ventral torso when you’re launched on all fours, swaying with the lunatic tide, seaweed licking your slats.

—But enough about me!

Get a load of THAT guy!!

Ye gods!!!

Artist’s Statement

I often wonder how my dog experiences the world: for instance, if she has her head out the car window, is her delight centered on the myriad odors streaming on the breeze? Are they rousingly cacophonous or harmoniously orchestral? Life’s moments present themselves in a rushing jumble to me as I speed through my days but sometimes a specific event rises into focus that becomes the kernel of a story—an overheard utterance, perhaps, or an unexpected sight; a jostled memory. Like my dog, I have no idea where I’m going when I jump in for the ride, but—wheeeee!!!­—it’s a kick getting there. I’m grateful to those of you willing to come along.

Carrie Cooperider is a graduate of high school Remedial English and the Bennington Writers Seminars. She currently lives on an island south of Manhattan with her husband and a lion-colored, long-maned mini dachshund. Cooperider is grateful to have had her stuff published among excellent company in a bunch of places, including Ploughshares, Best Small Fictions 2017 and 2019, 3:AM, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Egress, NY Tyrant, The Antioch Review, Cabinet Magazine, Autre, The Southampton Review, and now, in MicroLit Almanac.

She agrees with Louise Bourgeois about spiders: they are useful and clever.