Justine

I cut this picture out of a magazine in search of Justine's beauty.

The first story I published in this recent effort to be a real writer was "Justine." It appeared in (Short) Fiction Collective June 9, 2010 (find a direct link to the story below in my publications list). (Short) Fiction Collective is an exciting up-and-coming journal that publishes a wide variety of fictions, and I'm proud to associate with it!
Of course, I never expected "Justine" to be the one that got picked up first. The story and I have been through a lot together: editing at home and by my then-boyfriend, multiple workshops to cover lack of new inspiration, too much geography to list here. Maybe that's why I see her/it as a little bit tattered. I wrote the story over the course of an intensely creative week or so after having a dream. I don't remember how much is the dream and how much is story anymore, but the somnambulant inspiration explains some of the more strange details. I invite my readers to guess which parts were dream, which real life, and which pure story. I would love to have your ideas on it, because then I might remember myself!
Looking over it now, I like the light and humorous feel of this piece. I feel very weird that it's so unabashedly male-bashing. I was more than a decade away from formally making my peace with the opposite sex when I wrote this story. Maybe the reader can see the story as anti one man, i.e., the Scott character, who was never real and never did any of those things, instead of anti all males. Because, come on, he really made a mess of everything, didn't he? Right? Hmm...