"I lean against the cold cement wall, slowly sliding down, my back starting to burn. My ass hits cement and the gun in my hand clanks against the floor." Clayton paused, cleared his phlegmy throat a few times and glanced around the space, an elementary school classroom used for adult education in the summer. Then his eyes wandered back to the manuscript.
"I stare at the ghostly cobwebs strung in strands and clumps on the back wall, my eyes half shut and blurred. I begin to see the curve of her cheek bone in those webs, the slant of her nose. Even in the bowels of hell, she haunts me!" Clayton stopped again, looking up from the manuscript, his face twisted as if he was experiencing the same torment as the character in his story. I gave him a nod, encouraging him to keep going. He rubbed his palms across his scraggly beard and continued.
"'Get out of my brain!' I cry. 'Out!' I grab a rodent-gnawed box lying beside me and hurl it at the webs. 'I'll get you out of my head, my motherfucking head!' I shout. I maneuver the clip from my front pocket and shove it into the butt of the gun. I raise it slowly to my mouth. It clacks against my teeth and tastes like oil and grit. My trembling hand squeezes the trigger. The bullet blasts through my brain and out the back of my skull, splattering the wall with blood and brain. I slump sideways. 'Who's laughing now, Loretta?' I cry out. Then all turns to black."
He looked up, his eyes wide, his face even more gaunt than usual. My classmates looked at him uncertainly, shifting in their plastic chairs and taking quick glances at one another.
"That's it," said Clayton.
"Wow," said the teacher, a mousy 24-year-old with an MFA in creative writing from Cornell. "Let's go around the room and give Clayton some feedback." She forced a smile and looked to Lorelei, an empty-nester trying to write a romance novel.
"Well," said Lorelei, "I was a bit confused at the end."
"How so?" said Clayton.
"He died, right?"
"Yeah, he put a .44 Magnum in his mouth and blasted his brains out."
"It's just, how does he know blood is splattering on the back wall if he's dead?"
"Maybe he's a spirit," said Dirwin, long-haired and reeking of clove cigarettes.
"But if he were a spirit, the story wouldn't end there, it'd have to continue," said Will, long, lean and published.
"He's not a spirit. I'll clean that up," said Clayton, jotting a few notes in his journal.
"I'd like to comment on the language too," said Will.
"Yeah," said Clayton.
"It's overwritten. Too many adverbs and adjectives. Let the nouns and verbs tell the story."
Clayton stared at Will, a grimace edging into his features.
"Like in the first page, you say he slapped his grandpa hard. Duh? It's a slap. It's inherently hard, so it's best to cut the adjective. Or at least use a less obvious adjective."
"Yeah," added Dirwin, "like an ugly slap, a loving slap."
"'A loving slap?'" said Clayton.
"Or just a slap," said Will. "Boil it down to its essence. You know, you should take a look at some Carver."
A bead of sweat trickled down one of Clayton's sideburns. "Carver?"
"Raymond Carver, the master of short stories," beamed Lorelei.
"Yes, that's what you need, a heavy dose of Carver. That's Doctor Will's prescription," said Will.
"Oh, yeah, definitely," added Dirwin.
Clayton looked around the room, distress creeping into his face, and I started to feel for him. "Eh, Carver's overrated," I said.
Everyone except Clayton looked at me with horrified faces. Will lifted two fingers over his head and shot them right at me. "Sacrilege!" he said, a big smile on his weasel-like face, but his eyes were burning.
"Sorry, I just think maybe his stuff is a little too boiled down. Nothing really happens in Carver."
"Everything happens in Carver," said Will. "It's just between the lines."
"I'm just saying, I don't really get him. 'A man and a woman lived in a house, they drank beer, they moved.' So what?"
"Just for the sake of time we should continue," squeaked the teacher.
"Well, my issue with the story," said Dirwin, playing with a Rubik's Cube he found in his desk, "is that the main character isn't sympathetic, you know? He's not very likable."
"He's in a suicidal depression," said Clayton.
"I know, but I didn't care about him. Even when he kills himself, I was like, whatever. If you make us like him, we won't want him to die."
"But how?"
"How?" Dirwin looked to Will, then Lorelei.
"Maybe show a good side to him, like he has a pet he loves," said Lorelei.
"Where would I put a pet in the story?"
"How about he feeds a stray cat in the old warehouse. People who take care of needy animals – very likable," responded Lorelei.
"But then he can't kill himself," said Dirwin. "Then he's leaving the cat. Then we really hate him."
Clayton's eyes darted from one to the other, his neck sinking into his shoulders.
"Make him live!" said Lorelei. "Helping the cat brings purpose to his life and he decides not to kill himself."
"He has to kill himself," said Clayton. "It's called 'A Date with My Magnum.'"
"So he calls the date off," suggested Lorelei.
Clayton's face was tight, his teeth clenched. "I don't see him as a cat kind of guy."
"No feedback from the writer," chirped the teacher.
"Can I go now?" I said.
The teacher nodded.
"First, I didn't think the character was so unsympathetic." I was lying my ass off, but I just wanted to give the guy a break. Plus, if he went postal, maybe he'd spare me. "I understand he is in deep despair and is not himself when he slaps his grandpa. I feel for him in a way."
"Thanks," Clayton said under his breath.
"Really?" said Will, as if I'd just said I eat babies.
"Yeah, really. I also like some of the language." And I meant it. Better than the garbage I'd been writing lately. "You took some chances, maybe it doesn't all work, but you had some really vivid imagery, like the description of the whiskey burning his throat and even seeing Loretta's face in the spider webs—that was cool."
* * *
After class I walked into the bathroom, a row of urinals with yellow disinfectant cakes at the bottom. I was taking a whiz when Clayton walked in and pulled up in the stall beside me. We nodded. He looked at me as we peed, his face taut like he wanted to say something.
"A little rough in there, huh?" I said.
"They just don't get my work."
"Yeah."
"I'm trying to make art and they're blabbing about fucking adverbs!"
"Yeah," I said, zipping up so I could make a quick getaway. The last thing I wanted was to get caught up in this dude's personal drama.
"I mean, the guy's about to take his own life, to off himself, and they're talking about feeding a fucking cat!"
"Yeah, it sucks," I said, washing my hands.
"They just don't get me. But you, you do."
"Well, you know," I said in the back of my throat. "Anyway, take care."
I pushed the door open, but he grabbed my arm. "Wait! I was thinking, how about we bail on these clowns and form our own writing group."
A minor panic shot through my body. I remembered the time I was nice to this guy, Bernard Hensel, from my accounting firm. Everyone despised him, and though he was kind of peculiar and smelled of fish, I figured it wouldn't hurt me to be nice to the guy. It was fine till he got fired and started calling me drunk and weeping at all times of the night. I tried to escape his midnight rants for months till I finally changed my phone number.
"I think I'm going to stick it out a while," I told Clayton.
"What, you like this crap?"
"It's okay. Well, take care," I said as I pushed the door open.
"Wait!" he said, grabbing me again. "I have another manuscript, something I've been working on. Do you mind looking at it? It's just, you get me, my writing. I can't show it to them.
"Uh, okay."
He started digging through his backpack, pulling out various items: a bag of roll your own tobacco, Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, a power drill. I was just waiting for the human finger.
He pulled out a manuscript the size of a New York City phone book. "Here, buddy. And thanks." He locked my hand in his moist grip and shook.
"This is kind of long."
"It's not so bad, double spaced."
I flipped through it. Double-sided, no freaking margins. "All right, I'll start it and bring it back next week."
"Don't bother. I'm not coming back. I can't deal with these simpletons. What's your cell?"
I thought to give him a fake number, but how could I? He might just come to the class and find me, so I told him.
"Cool, I'll call you in a few days, see what you think."
I was scrambling for an excuse to keep him from calling—a medical condition, a sick child, a paranoid wife.
We walked out of the bathroom. "Which way you going?" he asked.
"South," I lied.
"Hey, me too." Oh, brilliant, now I had to walk the wrong way. We went down the stairs together. "It's so fucking awesome to find a buddy who gets my work. This is great!" he said, his voice echoing in the stairwell.
"Listen, Clayton," I said at the bottom of the stairs, "I might not have so much time to read this and talk and stuff."
He locked his eyes on mine, the cords in his neck tightening. "Really?"
"Yeah, I got a sick kid at home," I said, lying my ass off. The closest I had ever come to having a kid was watching the class guinea pig for a summer in third grade.
"What's wrong with the kid?" he asked, his eyes darkening.
I'd had enough and realized I needed a broad stroke here. I had just read an article about the prevalence of peanut allergies in children. "Allergies. My daughter has life-threatening allergies."
Clayton gripped both my shoulders in his hands and drilled me with his eyes. "Dude, I'm a survivor of severe childhood allergies. If I ate a peanut right now my head would blow up to the size of a watermelon and you'd have to stab me in the thigh with an Epi-Pen." I pondered whether I'd do it. "I want to meet your kid. I could give her hope."
"Well, sure, okay."
"The story I gave you is all about my battle with childhood allergies! It'll be an education for you," he said as we headed south.
During the walk I told Clayton all about the trauma of my little girl suffering with allergies: peanuts, strawberries, cats—which really broke her heart as she was an animal lover. It was possibly my best story ever.
"I stare at the ghostly cobwebs strung in strands and clumps on the back wall, my eyes half shut and blurred. I begin to see the curve of her cheek bone in those webs, the slant of her nose. Even in the bowels of hell, she haunts me!" Clayton stopped again, looking up from the manuscript, his face twisted as if he was experiencing the same torment as the character in his story. I gave him a nod, encouraging him to keep going. He rubbed his palms across his scraggly beard and continued.
"'Get out of my brain!' I cry. 'Out!' I grab a rodent-gnawed box lying beside me and hurl it at the webs. 'I'll get you out of my head, my motherfucking head!' I shout. I maneuver the clip from my front pocket and shove it into the butt of the gun. I raise it slowly to my mouth. It clacks against my teeth and tastes like oil and grit. My trembling hand squeezes the trigger. The bullet blasts through my brain and out the back of my skull, splattering the wall with blood and brain. I slump sideways. 'Who's laughing now, Loretta?' I cry out. Then all turns to black."
He looked up, his eyes wide, his face even more gaunt than usual. My classmates looked at him uncertainly, shifting in their plastic chairs and taking quick glances at one another.
"That's it," said Clayton.
"Wow," said the teacher, a mousy 24-year-old with an MFA in creative writing from Cornell. "Let's go around the room and give Clayton some feedback." She forced a smile and looked to Lorelei, an empty-nester trying to write a romance novel.
"Well," said Lorelei, "I was a bit confused at the end."
"How so?" said Clayton.
"He died, right?"
"Yeah, he put a .44 Magnum in his mouth and blasted his brains out."
"It's just, how does he know blood is splattering on the back wall if he's dead?"
"Maybe he's a spirit," said Dirwin, long-haired and reeking of clove cigarettes.
"But if he were a spirit, the story wouldn't end there, it'd have to continue," said Will, long, lean and published.
"He's not a spirit. I'll clean that up," said Clayton, jotting a few notes in his journal.
"I'd like to comment on the language too," said Will.
"Yeah," said Clayton.
"It's overwritten. Too many adverbs and adjectives. Let the nouns and verbs tell the story."
Clayton stared at Will, a grimace edging into his features.
"Like in the first page, you say he slapped his grandpa hard. Duh? It's a slap. It's inherently hard, so it's best to cut the adjective. Or at least use a less obvious adjective."
"Yeah," added Dirwin, "like an ugly slap, a loving slap."
"'A loving slap?'" said Clayton.
"Or just a slap," said Will. "Boil it down to its essence. You know, you should take a look at some Carver."
A bead of sweat trickled down one of Clayton's sideburns. "Carver?"
"Raymond Carver, the master of short stories," beamed Lorelei.
"Yes, that's what you need, a heavy dose of Carver. That's Doctor Will's prescription," said Will.
"Oh, yeah, definitely," added Dirwin.
Clayton looked around the room, distress creeping into his face, and I started to feel for him. "Eh, Carver's overrated," I said.
Everyone except Clayton looked at me with horrified faces. Will lifted two fingers over his head and shot them right at me. "Sacrilege!" he said, a big smile on his weasel-like face, but his eyes were burning.
"Sorry, I just think maybe his stuff is a little too boiled down. Nothing really happens in Carver."
"Everything happens in Carver," said Will. "It's just between the lines."
"I'm just saying, I don't really get him. 'A man and a woman lived in a house, they drank beer, they moved.' So what?"
"Just for the sake of time we should continue," squeaked the teacher.
"Well, my issue with the story," said Dirwin, playing with a Rubik's Cube he found in his desk, "is that the main character isn't sympathetic, you know? He's not very likable."
"He's in a suicidal depression," said Clayton.
"I know, but I didn't care about him. Even when he kills himself, I was like, whatever. If you make us like him, we won't want him to die."
"But how?"
"How?" Dirwin looked to Will, then Lorelei.
"Maybe show a good side to him, like he has a pet he loves," said Lorelei.
"Where would I put a pet in the story?"
"How about he feeds a stray cat in the old warehouse. People who take care of needy animals – very likable," responded Lorelei.
"But then he can't kill himself," said Dirwin. "Then he's leaving the cat. Then we really hate him."
Clayton's eyes darted from one to the other, his neck sinking into his shoulders.
"Make him live!" said Lorelei. "Helping the cat brings purpose to his life and he decides not to kill himself."
"He has to kill himself," said Clayton. "It's called 'A Date with My Magnum.'"
"So he calls the date off," suggested Lorelei.
Clayton's face was tight, his teeth clenched. "I don't see him as a cat kind of guy."
"No feedback from the writer," chirped the teacher.
"Can I go now?" I said.
The teacher nodded.
"First, I didn't think the character was so unsympathetic." I was lying my ass off, but I just wanted to give the guy a break. Plus, if he went postal, maybe he'd spare me. "I understand he is in deep despair and is not himself when he slaps his grandpa. I feel for him in a way."
"Thanks," Clayton said under his breath.
"Really?" said Will, as if I'd just said I eat babies.
"Yeah, really. I also like some of the language." And I meant it. Better than the garbage I'd been writing lately. "You took some chances, maybe it doesn't all work, but you had some really vivid imagery, like the description of the whiskey burning his throat and even seeing Loretta's face in the spider webs—that was cool."
* * *
After class I walked into the bathroom, a row of urinals with yellow disinfectant cakes at the bottom. I was taking a whiz when Clayton walked in and pulled up in the stall beside me. We nodded. He looked at me as we peed, his face taut like he wanted to say something.
"A little rough in there, huh?" I said.
"They just don't get my work."
"Yeah."
"I'm trying to make art and they're blabbing about fucking adverbs!"
"Yeah," I said, zipping up so I could make a quick getaway. The last thing I wanted was to get caught up in this dude's personal drama.
"I mean, the guy's about to take his own life, to off himself, and they're talking about feeding a fucking cat!"
"Yeah, it sucks," I said, washing my hands.
"They just don't get me. But you, you do."
"Well, you know," I said in the back of my throat. "Anyway, take care."
I pushed the door open, but he grabbed my arm. "Wait! I was thinking, how about we bail on these clowns and form our own writing group."
A minor panic shot through my body. I remembered the time I was nice to this guy, Bernard Hensel, from my accounting firm. Everyone despised him, and though he was kind of peculiar and smelled of fish, I figured it wouldn't hurt me to be nice to the guy. It was fine till he got fired and started calling me drunk and weeping at all times of the night. I tried to escape his midnight rants for months till I finally changed my phone number.
"I think I'm going to stick it out a while," I told Clayton.
"What, you like this crap?"
"It's okay. Well, take care," I said as I pushed the door open.
"Wait!" he said, grabbing me again. "I have another manuscript, something I've been working on. Do you mind looking at it? It's just, you get me, my writing. I can't show it to them.
"Uh, okay."
He started digging through his backpack, pulling out various items: a bag of roll your own tobacco, Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, a power drill. I was just waiting for the human finger.
He pulled out a manuscript the size of a New York City phone book. "Here, buddy. And thanks." He locked my hand in his moist grip and shook.
"This is kind of long."
"It's not so bad, double spaced."
I flipped through it. Double-sided, no freaking margins. "All right, I'll start it and bring it back next week."
"Don't bother. I'm not coming back. I can't deal with these simpletons. What's your cell?"
I thought to give him a fake number, but how could I? He might just come to the class and find me, so I told him.
"Cool, I'll call you in a few days, see what you think."
I was scrambling for an excuse to keep him from calling—a medical condition, a sick child, a paranoid wife.
We walked out of the bathroom. "Which way you going?" he asked.
"South," I lied.
"Hey, me too." Oh, brilliant, now I had to walk the wrong way. We went down the stairs together. "It's so fucking awesome to find a buddy who gets my work. This is great!" he said, his voice echoing in the stairwell.
"Listen, Clayton," I said at the bottom of the stairs, "I might not have so much time to read this and talk and stuff."
He locked his eyes on mine, the cords in his neck tightening. "Really?"
"Yeah, I got a sick kid at home," I said, lying my ass off. The closest I had ever come to having a kid was watching the class guinea pig for a summer in third grade.
"What's wrong with the kid?" he asked, his eyes darkening.
I'd had enough and realized I needed a broad stroke here. I had just read an article about the prevalence of peanut allergies in children. "Allergies. My daughter has life-threatening allergies."
Clayton gripped both my shoulders in his hands and drilled me with his eyes. "Dude, I'm a survivor of severe childhood allergies. If I ate a peanut right now my head would blow up to the size of a watermelon and you'd have to stab me in the thigh with an Epi-Pen." I pondered whether I'd do it. "I want to meet your kid. I could give her hope."
"Well, sure, okay."
"The story I gave you is all about my battle with childhood allergies! It'll be an education for you," he said as we headed south.
During the walk I told Clayton all about the trauma of my little girl suffering with allergies: peanuts, strawberries, cats—which really broke her heart as she was an animal lover. It was possibly my best story ever.
