X, Rated

X is an ex-tremely ex-asperating causing many ex-pletives trying to think of a post for the A to Z Challenge. I’d go so far as to say it should be ex-peditiously ex-pelled from the alphabet, but that may be a slight ex-aggeration.

So in desperation, and we’re talking scraping the very bottom of the barrel here, I’m raiding the dictionary and trying to think of a passage that contains the first X words from the dictionary (Ten. I meant Ten. See what I did there? And I’m not including that in my list.)

The words are: X-acto knife, Xanadu, Xanax, xanthine, xanthoma, xanthophyll, X chromosome, Xe, xebec, Xenical (this is Oxford Concise 10th Ed).

Here goes…

Xavier replaced his X-acto knife with a sigh. He’d spent hours cutting the model pieces and his wrist was aching. He briefly imagined himself in Paradise, his own private Xanadu where Xanthia made him Sex-on-the-beach cocktails every hour and the only models he bothered with were the blonde bikini-wearing kind. He popped two more Xanax, then considered briefly and popped another two. The anxiety attacks were getting worse and he snarled as he pushed the paradise image a little further away, since he wouldn’t even be able to get on the plane without going into meltdown. Xavier stretched as he stood and wandered over to the window. Xanthia had left some document on the desk that she was working on; some essay about xanthines. She’d always been the scientific one while he was more creative. His reflection in the window caught his eye and he rubbed absently at the xanthoma on his arm, the redness from his fingers temporarily overpowering the yellow patch before it glared angrily back at him. It echoed the trees outside, being devoured by xanthophyll, their leaves glowing red and orange and yellow even though it was only September. He wondered what it was about chemistry that fascinated Xanthia so; maybe it was something to do with her X Chromosome. It was one of her favourite jokes that men were not all there – a chemist’s joke, he thought sourly – and maybe that missing piece was the factual, analytical skills Xanthia excelled at. A bottle of Xenical stood on Xanthia’s work, covering up a sentence about Xenon. Funny, he’d always thought she made up those words. They sounded like some trashy sci-fi novel where the author had strung random letters together to form names and language. He looked over at the picture on the wall, of a pretty xebec on sparkling turquoise water, and began dreaming of his Xanadu again.

Phew! Now, if anyone who does writing advice blogs wants to use this as an example, I’m willing to negotiate…

Post Script:

If you really can’t be bothered to look up the X words, I’ve done a very concise summary here:

X-acto knife: utility knife with very sharp blade

Xanadu: imaginary, wonderful place

Xanax: trademark for Alprazolam (anxiety drug)

xanthine: Crystalline compound formed by…yeah, I’m bored already too (not a scientist!)

xanthoma: irregular yellow patch on skin formed by depostion of lipids

xanthophyll: yellow or brown pigment causing autumn colours of leaves

X Chromosome: If you don’t know what this is you need to refresh your basic biology. The joke, of course, is that XY (the male combination) looks like it’s missing a leg from the 2nd X in XX (female).

Xe: the chemical Xenon

xebec: a small, historical three-masted ship

Xanical: drug used to treat obesity.