Going Back to Frank

Going back to Frank

adult flash fiction

by Kathryn Clark

Frank said I was a blank canvas waiting to be splashed with colour. But he looked at me like I was a sugar-coated doughnut, and he was hypoglycaemic.

‘I can teach you to feel wonderful things,’ he said.

And he did, on the orange sofa in his studio.

Afterwards, his sugar high crashed, and he turned his pale back to me.

‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Forget me. Find a boy your own age.’

That boy was Ralph. He didn’t look at me like I was a canvas, or a doughnut; more like a bucket waiting to be filled.

‘The trouble with real girls,’ he said, after two months, ‘is that they have pubic hair and no interest in threesomes.’

I moved onto girls. Tracy, then Julie. But girls are so needy, and want to move in together after just one night.

I went back to Frank. His hair was starting to slip backwards off his head and his belly pouted over the top of his jeans. He said my aura was troubling him and prescribed celibacy.

Turns out, celibacy is a great way to get laid. People see it as a challenge.

It was fun for a while, but then every new lover insisted on smearing their pigment over my canvas, and filling my bucket with their muck until it threatened to slop over and ruin my shoes.

I went back to Frank and told him it hadn’t worked.

‘Revisit your past,’ he said.

I went back to Ralph, but he was married with two kids. Driving me to the station, he said: ‘Fancy a quickie? For old time’s sake?’

I went back to Tracy, but she was shacked up with Julie, and pregnant by anonymous donor.

So, I went back again to Frank. His head was shaved, but he still flipped the ghost of his hair.

‘What is it that you want?’ he said.

I’d never even thought about it. What I want.

For a week, I stayed home writing lists of things I wanted, crossing through them, ripping them up, until on Friday, one word was left.

And so, I went out and got myself a dog.

The End