Creative Writing

This is my creative writing class.

We have the girl in the black dress
Who writes about vampires
And calls herself 'Mauve'

When we work shop
She always gets the same comments

'There was a lot of blood'
'Why was there so much blood?'
'I could have used less blood'

While we're giving her comments
She chews on a lollipop
I think she's trying to file down her teeth
It's freaking me out

Her last story involved a character
That sounded a lot like me
Getting drugged by a coven
And sacrificed after hours
Of sadistic lovemaking

I won't say I wasn't a little intrigued
But when I tried smiling at Mauve
She hissed at me
Then went back to her thermos of--

--What I can only hope is--

Fruit punch

Wicked gay kid keeps writing about being gay
And about the summer he slept with his cousin
And the teacher loves the story
Because it has gay sex AND incest
Which is like, the double whammy

He uses wayyy too many active adjectives

'His pulsing vibrating stirring loins'

I never knew loins
Could do so much

The fake name he's given his cozy cousin
Is, wait for it, Polonius

That's right
Like, as in Hamlet

'Polonius had a pulsing vibrating stirring personality'

Apparently Polonius
Whose real name was probably Ned
Was a big old
Walking shake 'n bake
Just waiting to get nasty
With whichever branch of his family tree
Happened to drop the most apples

Sorry for getting descriptive there
That's what you learn in creative writing
You learn to be descriptive

My teacher loves to talk about 'scenes'

'You could have used a scene there'
'That could be an additional scene'
'You know what I'd love? A scene'

I imagine her snacking on these scenes
Late at night, when she gets hungry
Because her stomach, like her soul
Is constantly hungry

Again, description, I apologize

I see her approaching our pile of stories
And picking one up
That's particularly loaded
With scrumptious scene

'Mmmmm...Mauve's vampire heroine seduces the stable boy'

She gobbles up the fictional version
Of our less exciting lives
And retreats back to her bedroom
To masturbate using only Wicked Gay's active adjectives

'Pulsing vibrating stirring'

Farm Girl only writes about the farm
Things she did on the farm
Animals she was in charge of
All of them with very sweet names

Whenever she goes to tell a story
I take my allotted smoke break

From my standard spot outside
I can see inside the classroom
And I only return
When I see Farm Girl start to cry
When Mauve explains to her
What most likely happened to Pogo the Extra Fat Pig

Nasty Mary writes things to shock
But I'm never shocked
And neither is anyone else
Not even Farm Girl

(After inseminating a sow, not much will shock you)

But God knows, she tries

Last week she wrote a story called 'Tit Fucking'
And it was about...

Well, pretty much what you'd expect

Work shopping that one was a real joy

'On Page 4, when she licks cool whip off him...I don't know...It was a little much for me.'
'I thought it could have used another scene.'

Why am I taking a class with these people?
Why am I pretending what they're writing is any good?
Why am I bothering to suggest to Nasty Mary
A viable euphemism for 'bondage'?

It's like being a doctor
And knowing someone's terminal
But trying to find a way to say it
So they don't freak out

'Now, I've seen other stories get better. I mean, the odds are slim. After all, you have no plot, one long paragraph, and half your characters are livestock, but really Farm Girl, that's no reason to give up hope.'

You know what I write about?

I write about my Mom

I write about her...

...And it's not very good?

Sorry, declarative statement--It is NOT very good, no question mark

The teacher is going to give me an 'A'
Because she's terrified how to tell me
How to write about my mom

She keeps suggesting I take a non-fiction writing class
But I did that, and it was just too weird
Too close, you know?

Writing about her using her name
Using actual experiences
Having to describe real life
As if it's a passing car

They do that, you know
They make you describe passing cars
To teach you to describe things

Passing car, easy--Shiny, red, fast, convertible

Dying mother? ...Try and find some words for that

Try and find an active adjective

Withering
Wilting
Losing
Evaporating

Okay, so maybe it's not that hard

Until the adjectives stop being active

Then it's just...

Going
Going
Gone

She wants a scene where I confront my mother
She wants a big long messy scene
Where I unleash all my anger
About...everything

She says it's okay to have that scene
Even though it didn't happen
Because it could have
Because it would really help the story

Isn't fiction nice?

All that matters
Is the story

Do you know what it's like
To be told
That your life
Makes a lousy story?

That you are your character
And that your character
Is unlikable

That your unresolved issues with your mother
Are cliche and uninteresting

To have people read your past
And then say--

'Why am I reading this?'

Gee, I don't know...

WHY THE FUCK WAS I LIVING IT?

I cried in class the other day
And Wicked Gay took my hand
And told me I'd be all right

I cried because Farm Girl
Wrote about her pet calf
Being slaughtered

The only reason I wasn't outside
Was because Mauve chose to sit by the door
And I was afraid to walk by her

That calf being slaughtered
It got to me

I mean, why?
It was just a calf
Why did they slaughter it?
And why did I cry about it?
And why did Farm Girl
Out of the blue
Suddenly decide to get so morbid?

I wanted to beg her to stop reading
Because I knew it was true
And it didn't matter how she described it

I knew it had happened
I knew the calf really was slaughtered
I knew that you couldn't dress it up in fiction
And make it any less horrible

I knew that it was happening still
I know that calves get slaughtered
All over the world, all the time
But to hear about it
To sit in a room and hear about it
As if it was such a technical thing
And then to discuss the language
To talk about the nouns and the sentence structure

I almost threw up

She's dead

Why do you need more than that?
Why does anybody?

She's dead
She's dead
SHE'S DEAD

There's no way to dress that up

And there was no ending
Because there was no closure
Because I was never the type
To make a scene

Pun, sorry, sorry about that

I thought if I wrote it
I could get it out of me
And then I tried
And I became afraid
That if I wrote it
It would solidify on paper
And every time I looked at it

It would happen again and again
And again and over and over
And I'd find myself okay with it

The repetition would soothe me
And I'd find myself able to look at it
As if it were just a bunch of words

And I didn't want that

. . . . .

I dropped the class
I took pottery instead
I made an ashtray

I still walk by the building sometimes though
Doby Building, Classroom 161
With the circle of chairs
And the dry erase board

With a bunch of freaks
Freaks I was so much better than
Because I was so deep
Because I was edgy
Because I held back

Sometimes I want to walk back in there
Sometimes I want to stroll in
And slam the whole story
The real story
Right down in the middle
Of that circle of chairs

A big messy pile
Of unfinished conversations
And unresolved psycho-bullshit

And I want to say--

'Here. See if you can make something of that.'

Then I want to walk away
And hear them describe me
Like just another passing car