You know, there’s this one oldies song I heard this one time, I was in the li’l bar down the road from my momma’s house. You ever heard it before? It’s about this guy who goes to the river to meet his love. It’s a helluva song because he finds this note there, and it say, “Dear love, I done you wrong, now I must set you free. No longer can I live with this hurt and this here sin. I just couldn’t tell you that guy was just a friend.”

My girlfriend Susie and me cried over that song, it’s so sad. That poor girl in the song, she took her own life, drowned herself in a river, all because she cheated on him. Can you believe it? People used to kill theyselves because they cheated on their boyfriend or girlfriend. Different days back then, I tell you. Better days too, I bet.

Nowadays, it’s no big deal. Just the other day, there was this one song I heard, it was in the club that my friend dragged me to. Y’all city people and your clubs, can’t rightly figure out what the hubbub is all about, to be honest. Anyway, it got all the people in the club gyrating all over each other. Elvis woulda been proud. The song, it got that sound to it, you know? It sounds so perfect, like it got run through a machine that stamps out all the li’l mistakes that singers make, those li’l mistakes that’re kinda like a fingerprint, y’know? These club songs, they’re heavy on the bass, and the voice got that robot effect that everybody love nowadays. I never understood that…why on earth would you wanna sound like a damn robot? Ain’t the human voice somethin’ to behold?

Anyway, I thought it was a nonsense song because the singer said something about takin’ a ride on a disco stick. At first, I thought she meant to say pogo stick. I tried to get on one of those before, but it sure ain’t no easy ride, I tell you what. I damn nearly broke my head on the damn thing. But anyway, it didn’t sound like no funny song though, you could tell because the bass was all thumpy and the woman sounded like she was all up in your face. I asked my friend, “What in blazes is a disco stick? How you gonna put a whole disco inside a li’l stick?” That’s when she told me that it wasn’t no disco in a stick. It was something that I can’t rightly repeat to you, but I reckon that you city folk got no problem saying that sorta thing.

So then it really got me thinking, you know? Like, how can they put that kinda thing on the radio? It ain’t explicit exactly, but how else can you really interpret a woman saying that she wanna ride on your disco stick? It’s indecent. It’s downright dirty. I’d like to call this lady up and ask her what on earth a disco stick is, if not what my friend told me it was. I can’t imagine she’d talk about it in front of her momma and poppa.

Anyway, I never found out what that song was because, as luck would have it, me, my friend, and her guy friend got thrown out because he got up in some guy’s face and I had to help take down a couple of hot headed fools. My buddy, he can get real drunk when he gets himself in some girl trouble.

See, he broke up with his girlfriend and he was all down about it. So when we was outside waiting for one of them yella cars, I tell him about the song I heard back in my hometown. I told him he needa find an old fashioned girl, a good small town country girl like the ones back home, like the one I got back home waiting for me. Then he ask me, “How do you know that girl didn’t just write that letter and skip town? I didn’t hear about any body floating in that river.”

I was speechless. I never thought of it like that. Made me think, you know? Maybe ain’t nobody ever kill theyselves over cheatin’. Maybe good ol’ Susie back home ain’t so tame and good and loyal as I thought she’d be…in fact, I feel like I wanna hitch a ride back home right about now. Damn city folk…they’ll getcha every time. ¶

The prompt was to write a monologue after writing up a character sheet. I guess my characters all seem to have a naiveté about them. One commenter said that she was ready to read the whole story because the guy isn’t the same guy he was in the beginning. I was trying my hand at dialect, to impart the Southern tone to my character. I also stumbled upon one key point that interests people: change.