Hi mandersbear! I finally got around to critiquing this story in full! In general I suggest you trim up some of your longer sentences and pick out some of the cliche and sappy phrases that pop up now and again. Otherwise, I found this to be a very strong work. You ended it beautifully, I think that it is my favorite ending to the story I have read of a peer.

Your characterization was very strong. I felt I could have used a little more characterization of the women, however, so that I would fall in love with her, too.

As I played my little melody, I began to hum along in an inharmonic tune perfectly suited to the night's dreary mood.

I found the second paragraph started out much stronger than the first. Your description of the melody helped me imagine it splendidly.

I prefer to spend time in good company, and judging from my former observations my neighbors were either want-to-be suburbanites or less civilized than Cro-Magnon men,

This sentence is a good example of unneeded words. I would suggest trimming off the fat from some of your longer, more elaborate sentences. Here you could take out the want-to-be. Also, I am not familiar with the term "Cro-Magnon" perhaps use something a little more easy to understand? Not everyone is smart like you!

All of the shops around the area had been closed on Sundays about as far back as I can remember.

I would change this to "All of the shops were closed on Sundays." The other words aren't needed, in my opinion.

...her rounded body as though I were a Spanish conquistador showing his more sensual side to the woman he loved behind a bedroom door.

Oooh, racy. I enjoyed this simile!

"dream-world" "te question"

dream world does not need a hyphen, and the other is a simple typo.

My jaw falls to the bottom of my neck as if it is a slide whistle going from a high note to the lowest of them all.

Um. This is thoroughly awkward and took me out of the reading. And it sounded painful. I would change this a little, because the visual image I get is very cartoonish.

"Thanks a lot. You're a lifesaver,"

I'm assuming you mean life saver, not a delicious hard candy.

I look at her one last time as I stand up from this spot on the bench that has become one with my loneliness and solitude these few years and I say the only thing I can.

This sentence seems pretty long and elaborate and kind of run-on-ish. I would trim it down to: I look at her one last time and stand up from the spot that has been my loneliness and solitude for years. I say, "...

I hope these little tid-bits help!

Very good. The whole piece has a poetic feel to it which marries well with the story itself. My only criticism was taught to me by a professional editor. The cadence of your story, because of it’s poetic feel, sticks out, especially at the beginning of the story. Try varying your sentence length -it helps the reader flow along. Brittany touched base on this subject in her critique. Shortening some sentences and taking out unneeded words definitely would help your piece. As it was put to me -when writing, sometimes less is more. Just a small bit of advice to offer. Otherwise, I enjoyed reading your story and look forward to future works!

Hello Mandi, this is my first critique, and I'll try to be as absolutely helpful as I can for you.

I read your story, and I really liked your vocabulary. It's what caught my attention before anything else, honestly. Not many people use the words "Stagnation" or "Mahogany" to describe something. They are simple words, and most people do know them, but they never ever use them to get a point across.

I really liked that about your story.

However, you seemed to make up a word "Inharmonic," the readers will know what you mean, I mean... I knew what you meant, but may I suggest the word "atonal," I think it expresses what you were trying to get across, but it is actually a real word.

As for the rest of the story, I loved your tone, the mood you set, the constant mentioning of music and musical terms all throughout, I thought it was a very well done piece, but it wouldn't hurt to make it a bit longer. You could elaborate on a few more music spots, or musical ventures, just to name a few.

 I was sitting on the front step of my dilapidated old house

Rather than just telling us about the dilapidated house, why not show us.  This is a great opportunity to set the scene.  When the narrator tells us, she expects us to just believe her.  As the second sentence in the story, we have no reason to believe her yet.

It was mellow

Again here, tell us what mellow sounds like.  Words like 'plunking' 'strumming' and 'sliding', all have different conotations, creating a mood. 

Did it? No.

This just seems a bit out of place here, breaking the flow of reading.  The paragraph reads fine without it.

my baby broke a limb.

I admit that I had to go back and read this to figure out who the baby was.  It read kind of strange and I found myself wondering if she had a baby inside.  Perhaps it's because I don't play guitar, but I'm reading this as an average reader and thought I'd mention it.

You see, I'm not exactly an elite socialite

Again here, 'you see' is unnecessary and reads a bit strange.  Try without and see what you think. Also, I'd break the paragraph here because you are starting a new thought.

I prefer to spend time in good company, and judging from my former observations my neighbors were either want-to-be suburbanites or less civilized than Cro-Magnon men, and this was a poor excuse for a town

This is a bit of a run on that is difficult to follow, particularly when you go off on 'and this was a..." . This is also a great opportunity for great description that you never really break into.

The voice... it's so beautiful and harmonious that te question almost seems like a song.

I like this in the context of this story, but perhaps a more concrete description, something like "The voice, like a concerto."  Bad example, I know, but it's more concrete so that the reader can hear the voice that makes a different.

so obviously out of touch with beauty himself

Call me stupid, but I thought the narrator was a woman until this point, leading me to think it's a lesbian love story.  Could you clarify this before now?

Backtracking...

I've never seen a sight as ethereal as this woman before in my entire life.

We have no idea what this woman looks like.  For all we know, she could look like Divine in Hairspray.  You're asking the readers to take his word on this and we'd like more. Description is very important.

Overall, it's an interesting story and I like the ending.  What I don't like as much is that it isn't real to me.  It's a bit like watching someone tell their story on Dr. Phil. I want to be there, not just here another story about another missed love. Let me know if that doesn't make sense. I also think you need to make Tyrone a bit more alive.  Give him some personality and some possessions other than his guitar.  A creaky rocking chair, a worn guitar strap, a chipped nail.  Make him someone I could pass on the street. We don't get to see peoples thoughts as we sit in the next booth at Burger King, but we can see their faded bowling championship teeshirt. 

Good start and thanks for the read.

--Amber

 Hi Mandi,

You've got talent. For the first time in a while on this site, I felt immersed in a story. Your piece drew me into that dream state we look for in fiction. Excellent job.

I'll admit that the first paragraph did give me my doubts. I agree with Dylan that the narration there draws attention to itself rather than to the unfolding story. Perhaps if you took out that one adverb and some of the adjectives and then tinkered with your verbs a bit, you could lessen that effect. I also like Amber's idea of you showing us actual parts of the house, such as the porch, the windows, etc. That's a great place to elaborate.

After that paragraph, you really fall into a good pace with your narration. Your narrator is verbose, but I bought it because you kept it with that stylistic decision. 

The phrase "football preseason" did pull me out of the story though. For some reason,  I didn't see this man owning a TV or even being into football. Maybe I was the only reader who had that reaction though. I'm not sure.

The two lines of dialogue on the page 1 also felt off to me.

"Dammit," I muttered under my breath.

I think you could paraphrase this sentence and have it work just as well without the actual quotation marks. The same thing applies to

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now?" I wondered.

As a reader, I would be perfectly alright with you simply removing the quotation marks here and giving us the text of his thought without them.

I thought this sentence fell a little short.

I know I might have sounded crazy, but...I would have told you that it felt like I had lost something of great value.

That didn't sound very crazy at all to me. You could cross out

something of great value.

and just incorporate the next sentence, since that's where you give us the strong illustration set up by

I might have sounded crazy

Phew, that took a lot of quote blocking to explain. Okay, so moving on - the last two paragraphs of page 1/the first paragraph of page 2 were the least clear paragraphs of the piece. They seemed to ramble on a bit as I was reading. I understand that they were setting up the transition to the present, but they were a little rough.

three years older, not two years wiser, thinking back to those dreary days and luminescent nights where I sat under the moon paying the lunar gods their respects and tracing the outlines of obscure constellations in my mind.

This sentence, in particular, made me pause. Because this idea was touched on so briefly during the flashback and because we're not given a strong contrast with the present, or  made aware of any reason why the present should be any different, sentence feels ungainly. I think it would be smoother if the transition were set up by establishing the present, rather than recalling the past in this instance.

This sentence

... strumming my fingers over her rounded body as though I were a Spanish conquistador showing his more sensual side to the woman he loved behind a bedroom door.

could also be smoothed, maybe by removing "more" and tweaking "behind a bedroom door".

The dramatic question of this piece could be reinforced. The decision to walk away from the woman Carolyn could be played up, for right now it doesn't feel like a climax. Feeding the contrast between his desire for human company and his love of his guitar, his longing and his contentment, charging up that relationship would make the climax more powerful to the reader. His decision seems to easily made. This conflict would be more interesting if the narrator truly is shaken by this woman and does consider taking her offer even just for a moment. Right now, he seems to grow dazed for a second or two and then pop right off the bench and not look back, which lessens the story's significance to this reader.

I also think the woman could use a little more characterization. I'd like to know what exactly about her is ethereal and which of her features he finds beautiful. Even though the narrator was a strong character, Amber's right in saying that he could be "more real". You've done really great work with characterization, but just a few more specific pieces could make this piece glow in a more polished manner.

In all, this story had a quirky, rustic feel to it that I really enjoyed, and I seriously look forward to reading future drafts of it as well as your other work!