The Black Boot Chronicles: "First Impressions" Post Game

I'm writing this at 4:30 in the morning, why? Cause I'm Brian M Rodriguez, dammit! That's why!

(The M stands for "Man, insomnia's a bitch!")

So a little backstory:

Back in October, Super Pinup extraordinaire, Harlean Carpenter announced plans to create and produce an eMagazine and sent a mass invite to every creative type she knew.. Plus me, asking for volunteers to help create the premere issue for this new endeavor.

I immediately threw my hat into that ring without figuring out what it involved because that's what I do.. And more importantly I do it well!

After discovering what I signed up for and especially it's theme "Love, Longing & Lust" I reacted accordingly:

•I had a panic attack,

•Followed by intermittent bouts of crying and

•Finally I ate a sandwich and contemplated..

(For the record: most fat guys, myself in particular, do some of our best thinking with a sandwich.. I'm just saying.)

After really reviewing the theme and going through both my own experiences and collected stories from others from over the years, I realized that I was more than qualified to tell this story, I just needed to find it and write like I never wrote before.. Or at least write like someone who never took three years off writing a funny-ish, satirical blog about politics & society. Oy.

I decided to stick with something both classic and more importantly, highly possible: an office hookup. Hookups at work happen, they happen for more reasons than I can count (or want to) and are definitely not exclusive to one setting. In fact in almost every job I've ever had, I've come across an average of 5-8 stories of shenanigans happening on the job ranging from "FWB", "True Love", "True Lust", "Revenge Sex" to "Eh, it's Tuesday."

One of the more difficult aspects was trying to create a story that wouldn't immediately double as a porn script. "How slutty was too slutty?", "How much detail can I give?", "Can a straight man write the word "penis" and not laugh out loud because he's emotionally 4?" I stayed up many a night trying to figure that out.

Above all else it all came back to one key facet: the girl. Writing Cassie was a slippery slope for me, if I made her too aggressive, she's a maneater. If I made her too bubbly, she's Katie Morgan.. (Research that one on your own time, kids, NSFW!)

Shows like "The Red Shoe Diaries" (Our Predecessor), "Femme Fatales" (Tanit Phoenix, yowza!) and a handful of semi bad Lifetime Movies showed that there was a way to write women without being too over the top and thus the appropriate levels of sensibility, vulnerability & sensuality came together.

Cassie has a good head on her shoulders, she met a guy while at work, felt a serious connection and decided to pursue it.

Joey wasn't looking for love, he was just trying to make it through his first day of work and not piss anybody off. He just needed a win. He met a girl who was amazing and was surprised when she showed interest in him.

Overall the hookup and subsequent relationship happens for the right reasons.. Yes, I was aiming for a happy ending, I'm a sucker for whimsy.

Writing a story and writing an article are two separate animals to me, and while I could spend up to a week writing one TBF article in segments and patience.  Writing a story is more along the lines of playing the 80's classic watch & match the colors game, Simon: Once you start, you either make it all the way to the very end or die cursing somebody else's name (i.e. The Manufacturer) as you lay dying from the eventual aneurysm you gave yourself.

I wrote down a list of useful bullet points and went straight to work, polishing a rough draft and a final draft in about 6 hours. Let it never be said I don't bust ass for you people! After I finished, I never received word if my story even made the final cut but at this point, I'm just glad I wrote something for the first time in a long time.

Harlean mentioned the next theme involved "Pain, Fear & Loss"...

Red, Blue, Blue, Yellow, Green, Green, Red... Looks like it's my move.