This Might Be Too Much

Reminder, people in creative writing classes are criminally stupid. Bad readers. Not readers. I can assume without a hint of superiority, just the facts folks, that these fucks don't read short fiction in their spare time. I doubt that they even read it when it is assigned to them. Who the fuck reads in America? Is it the elitist left coast (northward facing southward)? If creative writing students aren't reading then who is? Oh. Sorry of me to assume that the calibre of these fucks, the students of Texas State University (formerly SWT-- Playboy's number one party school circa 1996 (?)), could be compared to to the amoeba that strangles the weak of any accredited university. Seriously. Maybe people are reading. Whatever. Workshop is useless. These people can't figure out that if a character uses simple language then it might be because a character is simple. Or that certain faults actually do belong to a character, tell of that character, describe him in motions that are as subtle as a hand shake, fuck, we all know what a hand shake is worth, have you morons ever actually looked at the language in a printed story, or even listened to the language of a human being? Ever really thought about it?

No. Probably not. Reading their manuscript comments is an exercise in vanity. It is fun to know what people say to you when you aren't around. The punishment is the vacuous comments, condescension that I won't be able to help but lunge at them, mind clenching fear at the pudding-consciousness that describes our contemporary America.

Whatever. Fuck the lot of them.

Today on the bus (Cap Metro) there were no seats. There was one seat. I don't usually like sitting in the handicap section. I don't like the pressure of knowing that if and when that moment comes we will all have to look at each-other, like mothers clenching on to children clenching on to lifeboats in the Atlantic off the titanic-- something about his seems similar, what about the news could this sound like-- and leap up, surrender out of good faith, out of good manners, out of weakness, and out of strength-- but all of this is decided by how you act. The only reason that I sat there was because there wasn't anywhere else to sit. And I don't like standing for obvious reasons. Sandwiched next to me was an old derelict man who I didn't look into the face at first because I knew he didn't want me sitting there. He was practically sitting Indian legged, his knees at least claimed a second seat--my seat-- and his arms were bowed out the same. After I wiggled in between all of that he kind of growled at me, looked up, but I looked down, into my manuscript. Soon he found out that I wasn't moving, wasn't going to do anything but the requisite 'excuse me' in hushed and surrendering tones, and he got uncomfortable touching my leg and gave me some room. Fine for a while. But when I had finished my manuscript reading and moved on to Ionesco he got chatty. He couldn't talk. There was a strange one on my other side, talking about Jerry Lewis driving around shooting cops. I don't know why, maybe because I was young, maybe because I was reading, or maybe some synaptic urge for truth, tenderness, knowledge, but for some reason he asked me to read him the name on the prescription bottle he had. Well, that's what I figured he said. His words were all screwed up. Mumbled, like his face was four feet thick. Eventually I wondered why he wasn't told how to say it, and when he turned to the old woman next to him and asked her I realized that he wanted to know what it was. He wanted to know if I knew what was in the bottle, what it would do to him. What could an older guy like that want with those kinds of things...

What I'm saying is that I can't trust myself. I can't trust myself not to be prejudiced, because every time that I start to imagine for people, it is for the worst. Especially if they have some stigma going against them.