Awkwardly-Clingy ticket-taker at the Toulouse-Lautrec Metro Station in Paris: “Madamoiselle, I don’t know why you felt compelled to leap over the turnstile whilst bellowing something in Swedish, but I can’t have you running amok in the bowels of this city without acknowledging fair trade agreements. It’s anarchy!”
PETA-defying Greta: “Let go of me, you Soviet gym teacher. I simply must be on the next train to Montmartre or Salvador Dali will produce a sculpture of my personal landing pad that will be unflattering in an asexual but shockingly sexist way.”
Ticket-Taker: “I have no idea what you just said, so it must be above my pay grade, but I cannot let you board the Metro unless you have purchased a ticket. By the way, we don’t call them trains, we call them metro cars.”
Greta: “It’s idiotic statements like that which explain why your country surrenders within two seconds of a war being started.”
Ticket-Taker: “I must take offense!”
Greta: “And I must take the train to Montmartre.”
Ticket-Taker: “I refuse to allow your aggressive behavior to dominate my lifestyle.”
Greta: “What? Do you really think it’s necessary to turn this situation into a proclamation about the latent lesbianism you haven’t discussed with your clueless husband?”
Ticket-Taker: “How in the world did you get there from here?”
Greta: “Let’s just say that I’ve visited every station on this line, multiple times, and if I’ve learned nothing else I’ve surmised that most people are in denial about what they truly want. Since I don’t have a lot of free time, I like to get to the point as soon as possible, especially when dealing with people that I don’t really care about. Let your love fly, like a bird on a wing.”
Ticket-Taker: “Oh, glory be. I find myself in the midst of a powerful personal revelation as you speak such wise and wonderful words.”
Greta: “No, I speak of a Bellamy Brothers song that won’t be released for another fifty years. Now, unhand me, Nikita, so I can rush forth and stop Salvador from denigrating my hoo-hoo in Italian marble.”
Previously published, slight changes made.
Categories: Past Imperfect
Bonnywood Manor 
But how beautifully back-lit she looks as she looks moodily into the half distance. Or vacuously. But what’s with the bat-like decoration adorning what some out there might see as less hum-drum pillar than a symbol of some sort? Yes, I’m calling you out, Freudians.
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Are you referring to the base of that staircase pillar? Because I questioned that as well, initially, but then discarded the possibility of pursuing said angle any further, as you see such things all the time in the parts of Paris where the plumbing is suspect and people have window frames that are older than America. (But I’m sure Freud will answer your call, because he can’t help himself…)
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I love it! I might suggest one small change for the next run… Greta looks like she’s in the mood to quote something by The Cure or maybe My Chemical Romance???
Or maybe I’m just projecting my musical tastes onto an innocent pro-fur non-payer🤷🏼♀️
💌💌
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Oh, I can certainly see the Cure Allure of Greta’s Garb. Robert Smith could easily make a cameo in this scene and feel right at home, even though he apparently never felt right at home and thereby crooned songs about eternal dismay and bad Chinese food…
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What a disturbing scene.
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Oh, this is nothing compared to family snapshots from my childhood in Oklahoma… 😉
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The Divine Miss Gx2. Unforgettable.
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She will always be there, gloriously etched in our memories. (Well, at least in the memories of those of us who appreciate artistry…)
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You could try the cardboard cutout angle that this photo communicates. Wasn’t that what the G-zone was angling for anyway? 😉
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Or is this really a mirror, hinting at the things the many of us never want to acknowledge about ourselves? Okay, perhaps I made that too unnecessarily deep. It seemed like a clever thought when I first started typing, but then I found myself trapped on a road that perhaps should never have been followed… 😉
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Maybe you should follow that road. Sounds interesting.
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As pale as they appear one has to wonder when the last time was that either really saw sunlight.
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Related philosophical note: And even if they did see the sunlight, would they really appreciate it for what it is?
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From the looks of them, no, I think not.
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Are they vampires?
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Truth be told, aren’t we all, in some way?
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Ha ha. Ugh. Probably. These two were extra creepy though.
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Why does Greta look like the walking dead? I was half-expecting a zombie story.
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German cinema at that time was ALL about unhappy, pasty-white people doing sad things… 😉
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Accurate for Dali tho! Good post
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Thank you! If I can somehow work Dali into the narrative, it’s a good day… 😉
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A good way to view it!
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The dialogue reminds me of that classic TV Soap Opera, “As The World Turn-styles in The Metro”. The accompanying photo looks like a scene from that less classic German Expressionist movie, “The Adams Family ~ A Night at The Hoarse Feathers Opera” (the Kurt Weill & David Lynch collaboration, which was fraught with difficulty, Lynch’s Ouija Board had trouble with Weill’s accent and metre).
I’ve recently posted a surreal stream of consciousness hardboiled narrative of dubious poetic merit. Lots of monochrome images to punctuate the plot holes. 🙂
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Ah, I’m glad that you brought up “Turn-Styles” and “Night at the Hoarse”, as I’ve been chomping at the bit to share my thoughts on both…
“Turn” was one of those soaps that doesn’t quite rinse off properly. The plotlines were initially admirable, but they quickly veered off course and none of the involved writers were interested in righting the wrongs to any respectable degree. When that one lead character was struck by lightning and thereafter only spoke Spanish backwards? Well, that was fun for about two minutes, but then they lost me…
“Hoarse” was even worse. I’m the first one in line when Lynch launches a new project, but with this mess it was clear that he was laser-focused on somehow seeking revenge for that unnamed network cancelling “Twin Peaks” based on the fairly-obvious reasoning that Lynch was apparently out to lunch after about, oh, episode 17 or so, and there was no longer any plot, whatsoever. Quirky is only fun until it doesn’t make sense anymore…
Wait, that last line just summed up the whole Bonnywood Manor experience. Hmm…
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I think you are confusing the show with “As The Tureen Pours Over The Edge of Night” – an equally fascinating Soap, that began as a spill-over episode from “Turn-Styles”. Note that “spoke Spanish backwards” is an anagram for “backhands pokes ripsaws”, and the episode makes perfect poutine.
As to the movie, I was referring to the original B&W version. You must have watched the poorly edited “Hoarse” of a different colour. 🙂
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I appreciate how you do that… The dialogue writing. I am currently doing a diploma in creative writing. Just finished writing the assignments. Dialogue writing part felt the toughest for me!
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Thank you! Writing dialogue can be tricky, but for some reason it comes naturally to me, usually. (As evidenced by many of my stories here at Bonnywood that consist of nothing BUT dialogue.) The hardest part for me, from a composition standpoint, is transitioning from one scene to another in the longer pieces. I can spend hours on one transitional paragraph. And so it goes…
Best of luck with your creative writing diploma. The writing courses were always my favorites during my formal education, which took place back in the 17th century… 😉
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