Kristy voted 1929 Funniness by Julie Ann Weinstein into the final and awarded it one judge’s point. Here’s what she had to say about it:

I love all things (well, almost all things) strange. So when I read the first sentence of Julie’s story, I couldn’t help but be hooked:

“My great, great grandma’s journal was something I couldn’t read without touching myself first to suppress the embarrassment and second to hide the arousal that her encounters with men in the Roaring Twenties elicited.”

Someone who mentions touching themselves in the first paragraph, how could I not be hooked? I love that she takes risks. She’s bold and witty and has a great style.

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1929 Funniness

My great, great grandma’s journal was something I couldn’t read without touching myself first to suppress the embarrassment and second to hide the arousal that her encounters with men in the Roaring Twenties elicited. She had altruisms or rather euphemisms of the day listed like, “Boot-leggers all own high-powered cars”, or “eating ice cream after lobster is always fatal”, or “a Square jaw is a sign of determination,” besides details of the sex transactions. Those are the ones she traded for a wagon load of silk from China or a crate load of precious spices from India, or the very number of days (seven) she bent over for a certain backwards hacksaw, or the supposed sacred bird nest from the Himalayans she absolutely had to have (requiring ample amounts of massaging of the gentlemen’s nether (three times a day for a week) to which she confessed that her dog did three-fourths of the job as the man was too looped on Opium to notice that it had been outsourced.

That’s my Grandma. I always knew she was ahead of her time at least not the way I thought.

I’m come to think of these treasures notes of hers as more than mere fragments of her flesh requested, but rather as my legacy. Although to Grandma these exchanges were only about business. Unless of course, I take her serious preference for a square jawed man, who often wore nothing but boots and woolen leggings as he spoon fed her ice cream alamode on his bare chest or hers depending on her mood. These notations of hers I’ve come to think of as a devote representation of my Grandfather, the one she never named, exactly.

His likeness is captured by a servant’s drawing in a clapboard house in Chattanooga, that is, before my Grandfather consumed that fatal lobster on her bosom.  She consented for two mink stoles to have him make a pseudo necklace of her breasts and in the process she’d gotten hungry and ate some vanilla ice cream. He’d had a lick or two, though she warned him with the lobster’s claws in her hands that if he misbehaved she’d have him with the pinchers.  An exercise she’d done before where she’d scratched his initials onto his inner thighs as a joke, a certain R.S., though she claimed it was her initials at least in half the entries. (Rosa Marie Santorian) In their last encounter he’d drizzled chocolate fudge on Grandma’s chest making her a gooey blotted mess, for it seemed Grandma was allergic to chocolate and proceeded to break out in hives and itch profusely. And the lobster recognized it was in fact from the crustacean family and not a direct party to human copulation. Like Grandma it viewed the man’s large nether region. Whereas Grandma may have had thoughts of being a passenger in a car and playing the game,” who’s behind the steering wheel, or “honk if it’s a red light and you need a breather,” the lobster instead clamped down hard as only a sentient creature can when it’s hungry.

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A reminder of those voting rules…

1. No writer can vote for their own work.

2. Apart from the judges, any voter may only vote once and for one entry.

3. For your vote to count, you need to include a feedback comment so people can see why you chose what and who you chose.

4. Voting ends midnight, Friday August 6, California time.

We’ll announce the winner on Saturday August 7.