Mean Boy

by Lynn Coady

  “No, it isn’t, though,” said Janet. “It’s class. That’s the difference between where Catherine’s from and where we’re from. That’s what’s so fascinating.”

  “What’s fascinating?” Our beer had begun to shimmer in its mugs because I was tapping my fingers so hard against the table. Maybe Catherine was a Vulcan, like Mr. Spock.

  “We have no class,” said Janet. “I mean, there’s no middle or upper class. There’s just one class.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Us,” said Janet, gesturing back and forth with her hand, at herself and me. Then, to my discomfort, she expanded the gesture to take in the whole of Little Billy’s. A few feet to her left was a drunk in a too-small Snoopy T-shirt. His fly gaped open beneath a white halfmoon of belly, and one eye was closed and he weaved back and forth in front of the jukebox playing air guitar to the flute part of “Kung Fu Fighting.”

  My chair was digging into my back. My body seemed to be rearing itself farther and farther away from Janet the more she talked.

  “You keep talking about this whole thing like it’s a case study,” I told her.

  Janet looked down at her beer for a moment. “Well—it kind of was a case study, really. You all were. Catherine suggested I write a paper on it.”

  I reared even farther back in my chair, so that its feet shrieked against the floor. “What do you mean, we all were? So you had the devastated mother, the evil father, and then—what—the asshole cousin?”

  Janet laughed. When I didn’t, she composed herself. “I don’t think you’re an asshole. My father is not evil. My father—” Janet looked away from me suddenly, toward where the Kung Fu Fighter was now steadying himself against the jukebox. She blinked a bunch of times before turning back. “My father is a very sweet man. But he’s not the most progressive guy in the world, Larry, you’ll agree with me on that one, right?”

  I shrugged, even though I agreed. I wasn’t in the mood to agree out loud.

  “I mean, he’s a product of his culture and time and place, just like the rest of us are.”

  “Why are you always lumping me in with everything?” I moaned.

  Janet cocked her head and gave me a blank, innocent look, like a curious dog. “Because you’re a part of things, Larry—you don’t stand outside the system you inhabit any more than I do.”

  “But you do,” I argued. “If you’re writing about it and critiquing it like you said, you’re—you have to make yourself an outsider.”

  “That’s by necessity. How am I supposed to analyze—”

  “That’s just what I’m saying,” I said, leaning forward and feeling my neck heat up. “If you’re going to analyze it objectively, you’ve got to stand outside of things, you’ve removed yourself.”

  “Well,” said Janet. “For the purposes of writing the paper, I guess. But I don’t claim to—”

  “I do that too, though,” I shouted at my cousin, for we were on our second pitcher of beer at that point. “I do that too. Because I’m a poet. I do that too.”

  I sat back. Janet regarded me. It was the first time I had ever announced myself in such a way to any member of my family. I do poetry. I’m studying poetry. Sometimes even, I write poetry. But never: because I am a poet. I lay claim to this, because I am a poet.

  Janet’s the one to appeal to now, after all—the guru to go to—she whose good graces must be sought and won. I like almost nothing about how she did it, and yet the fact that she did it—with no scholarship, with undistinguished high-school transcripts, with no familial support or expectation—is inescapable.

  And how did Janet do it? The process, it seems to me, was two-fold.

  One: she got herself an ally. Someone powerful. Someone with contacts. Write this paper, Professor Catherine told Janet, and I will oversee it. I will give you the name of journals where you might get it published (and who would have thought there were journals out there for psychology and sociology the same way there is for poetry?). I will send it along to my friends at Columbia, promised Catherine. I will set you on the path.

  Two. Two is more complicated. Two involves the internal Janet. Two was Janet taking a giant step backward, like in a counterintuitive game of Simon Says. Remember that game? I hated it, because I hated most games as a kid—anything involving strength or speed or stealth. Mostly I hated the pointless suspense of Simon Says, the kid at the front barking orders—giant steps, baby steps, half-steps, and bunny hops, sending you back if you made the fatal mistake of executing a bunny hop that hadn’t been legitimized with the preface “Simon Says.” All those games were essentially the same dynamic: inuring yourself to someone else’s arbitrary whims.

  So Janet executed a big psychic backward step away from her family on PEI. Was it on Catherine’s say-so, or by this time was Janet following the dictums of her own tow-headed Simon within, an eight-year-old tyrant telling her where next to place her feet?

  Either way, the step is executed, the distance created, the microscope wedged into the gap. So Mom and Dad become The Mother and The Father, the house becomes Their Environment, the island becomes Their Society. Home becomes Their Culture.

  Ours, in short, becomes theirs, and Janet cools, a planet turning from the sun. She leaves them to their oblivious heat. She leaves them to their stifling warmth. The cloistered, body-hot, stultifying safety of their hearth—she leaves it with one giant backward step. She leaves them.

  That’s what was Two. That’s what Simon said to do.

  25.

  LOOKS ARE EXCHANGED. The clock above the blackboard clicks once, twice. Will it be Dekker? Will it be no one? Everyone has heard about what happened over Christmas. People seem to have soaked up the knowledge the moment they stepped back onto campus, as if by some kind of psychic osmosis. The minutes click by.

  A few more clicks in the silence, the occasional responding cough and then—Jim. He comes bustling in a mere six minutes late, and the tension eases from the room as though someone has adjusted a gauge. Shaved, combed, composed, his work shirt buttoned up to the neck. He welcomes us all back with a few perfunctory words and then gets down to the business of handing back our midterm portfolios.

  Then the sound of paper slapping against wood as he meanders past our desks, flinging out manuscripts as though he’s dealing from an oversized deck of cards.

  “Not bad work, folks, some real innovation going on this past semester. A lot of progress …”

  Mine lands in front of me. It has a B on it. A fat bulbous B like a set of tits scrawled across my title page by some high-school graffiti artist. I turn it face down on my desk and look up at Jim, but his back is to me as he makes his way down the aisle. His back seems particularly straight, perhaps an effect of the fact that his shirt, I can see, has been ironed this morning.

  Jim informs us that he has chosen one poem from each of our portfolios to critique in class this month. “The Ass of the Head” turns out to be the first we are going to discuss. He hands out copies of it next.

  I have to stop myself from raising a hand in protest. Things seem to be moving fast. There’s none of the expected first-class-of-the-semester lassitude in the air, the feeling we have to work up to things, ease our way back. There’s been no catching up, no How was your holiday? Or, What’s everyone been reading?—always a preferred time-waster of Jim’s.

  I stare down at the page emblazoned with my name and my work, wanting to stall. The characters I had typed in such a self-satisfied hurry glare up at me in mimeographed purple. The purple print adds to things. I’d forgotten about the purple. In purple, the poem seems to have taken on a completely different personality. Sillier, more disposable. Fresh-typed poems in black and white always feel so clean, so austere. Unassailable. But mimeographed copies fuzz the characters, make them look ill-defined, uncertain. And purple—the colour defies you to take the writing seriously.

  This is student work, the purple announces. Ill-formed, half-baked. Feel free to mark it up, colour in the o’s if you get
bored, draw faces in the margins. Throw it away when you’re done.

  There is nothing I can do. The critique commences as I sit staring at my sheet, willing the characters back to black. If everyone could just see how “Ass of the Head” looks de-purpled.

  Claude doesn’t like the sing-songy quality the poem has to it. The clunky, awkward rhyme scheme. He uses the word “facile” a couple of times.

  Sherrie deems herself intrigued by the this in the line “on which this angel.” Good old Sherrie. “Who is the angel?” she wants to know. A short but lively discussion ensues.

  Todd objects to my use of the word ass. He finds it deliberately vulgar—”vulgar for vulgarity’s sake,” he says, “adding nothing of substantial value to the piece.” A couple of people near the back argue with him, but, to be fair, they are vulgarity advocates in general, always peppering their own poems with fuck and shit for shock value.

  When everyone is finished taking their kick at the can, Jim speaks. He slides his eyes in my direction for the first time since arriving in class.

  “Larry?” His black eyes are ringed with red—the way mine feel. “Nothing to say? You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject of your own work today.”

  A thin smile. I thin one back at him, shaking my head as everyone chuckles at Jim’s joke like the miserable suck-ups they are.

  “Well, then,” Jim says, once they are good and finished. “I guess I’ll weigh in.” He coughs explosively, then, startling us all. I can’t believe that much phlegm has been sitting in his lungs this entire time. Jim has not so much as cleared his throat since class began.

  “The poem encapsulates an idea, the idea of a duality, and this in itself is intriguing,” he says. “Our poet articulates this duality with the metaphors head and ass. The question is, are these metaphors legitimate? It depends on what we believe is the nature of the duality the poet is attempting to elucidate. So what is it? Anyone?”

  “Ass and head,” answers Todd. “Brains versus shit.”

  “This seems the most reasonable interpretation,” nods Jim.

  “But is it brains versus shit?” Sherrie pipes up. “Because he seems to sort of be saying they’re one in the same, the ass of the head.”

  “Shit for brains,” chortles Todd, snorting like a sow at the trough.

  Jim smiles more widely than I feel the joke really merits.

  “That’s a good point. And yet the poet reinforces the idea of a duality, doesn’t he, with the lines, the question of which should take its rightful place up top? So this gives us the idea that, yes, it is an either/or situation, it is a struggle between the two.”

  “But the title,” argues Todd, “and the first line contradict that.”

  “Yes, they do,” says Jim.

  “Maybe,” ventures Claude, “the contradiction is intentional.”

  I don’t kid myself that Claude is rushing to my defence. He’s adopting his usual contrarian stance.

  “That would be nice to think,” admits Jim. “But the poet confuses us further with the ensuing concept of a unity when he evokes the idea of ‘the axis, the pinhead.’ ”

  “I thought ass-kiss was cheap, coming after axis,” offers Todd at this point. “I thought it was a pretty cheap pun, really. I just read it and, like, winced. At the cheapness.”

  Jim nods. Todd is earning a lot of nods this day.

  “Also,” continues Jim, “the repetition of the word ass in this secondary context, ‘the ass-kiss,’ didn’t really work. I’d say it muddied the waters somewhat.”

  “I took that as intentional as well, actually,” counters Claude. “Followed by the squats at the end, evoking the idea of shit again. I thought that was actually pretty good, pretty consistent.”

  From where I am sitting, I only have a side profile of Claude, but I notice the way the light in his eyes flickers as they shift, very quickly, in my direction. Sympathy is the name of that flicker. I can’t believe it.

  “And,” Sherrie jumps in, “the idea of an angel, um, having a … taking a … dump … is really consistent with the whole ass-of-the-head idea, isn’t it? I mean the whole dichotomy thing—divine human intelligence versus the more base aspect of human nature? I mean, isn’t that a really archetypal idea?” Poor Sherrie, her voice, her thoughts—always questioning.

  “It is a classic duality, sure,” agrees Jim.

  “Hackneyed, though,” smiles Todd with his eyebrows. It’s all he can do not to actually break out in a grin, but Todd’s eyebrows are practically floating above his head.

  There is silence, during which a couple of faces turn my way. Everyone is waiting for the eruption of arm waving and sputtered objections I would normally uncork at this point in the discussion. I keep my head down, however. I keep my eyes on Jim.

  “Hm,” he says after a moment, wrapping his arms behind his head, making his characteristic deep-thinking rabbit ears. Oh yes, I think, seeping relief at the sight of those ears. Please. Let us now speak of Alfred Hitchcock films. Now would be the perfect time. They’re so rich, after all, and there are so many of them—so much material to discuss. Some shitty little undergraduate poem certainly doesn’t merit all this attention. So let’s go, let’s talk about something that matters. Vertigo. Rear Window. The Birds.

  “Hackneyed, maybe,” answers Jim at length, slowly bobbing his head. “And I do appreciate Sherrie’s and Claude’s interpretation, but I think they may be reading more into things than the work actually merits.” North by Northwest. Strangers on a Train.

  “I suspect they may be giving the poet a bit too much credit in this instance.”

  Psycho.

  “Ultimately, it’s a vague piece, I think. It hints at profundity in the hope that intelligent readers will pick up on these hints—as indeed Sherrie and Claude have—and run with them.”

  Frenzy. Torn Curtain.

  “But it relies too heavily on the reader for that—it toys with more grandiose ideas than the author is actually able to get his head around.”

  Stage Fright. Notorious.

  “It’s ambitious,” allows Jim, “and it’s not without its charm. I, for one, rather enjoyed the musical aspect Claude was disparaging.”

  Sabotage.

  “However, that same nursery-rhyming quality should also tip us off that this work is not to be taken all that seriously. It’s lightweight.”

  Lifeboat.

  “It’s a confection, ultimately.”

  Rope.

  26.

  Jan. 17, 1976

  Dear Larry Campbell,

  Thanks for your submission to Re:Strain, but we didn’t see anything we’d like to use for our upcoming issue. I didn’t really get the short poems, didn’t see what the connection between them was beyond the similarity of the titles. Seemed deliberately vague. The longer one was a bit more interesting but not up my alley, ultimately. Best of luck with your work.

  I call up Charles Slaughter, and Charles Slaughter and I get drunk. Charles Slaughter, I quickly decide, will be my best friend from here on in. Slaughter was the perfect person to call—an instinctive part of me knew this. First I went to the liquor store and bought a giant bottle of rum. Then I called Charles Slaughter and told him I had a giant bottle of rum. Slaughter told me he loved me, which was nice, and that he would be right over.

  Slaughter does almost all the talking for the first hour or so. He tells me about his holiday and how it was just him and his dad, and his dad was a pain in the ass. Everything’s got to be a project with his dad, complained Slaughter, even Christmas. There was no sitting around drinking eggnog by the fire. It was all about going to get the goddamn tree and putting up the goddamn tree and decorating the goddamn tree and then taking down the goddamn tree practically first thing in the morning on Boxing Day. Then there were the goddamn lights to be put up and promptly taken down.

  “I mean, what is the fucking point of all that? Do you know what they make you do in the army, Campbell? To punish you?”

  �
�No,” I say. “What?”

  “They make you dig a hole. A big fuckin’ hole. Then you know what they make you do?”

  “No,” I say. “What?”

  “They make you fill it up again. That’s my dad. That’s my dad’s idea of a holiday.”

  Hey, it’s Sisyphus again. He seems to pop up everywhere.

  I snort. “So what’s your dad’s idea of a punishment in that case?”

  Chuck takes a pull from the forty we’ve been passing back and forth all afternoon.

  “A punch in the fuckin’ head—that’s his idea of a punishment,” grunts Slaughter.

  “You?” I laugh. “He punches you? How big is your dad?”

  “He wouldn’t try it these days,” Slaughter assures me. “Much as I’d like him to.”

  Slaughter hands me the bottle. I swig.

  “I’m gonna quit Westcock,” I tell him, having just decided. The swig seems to have clinched it somehow. “I’ll go to Oxford. I’m gonna be a—an Oxfordian.”

  “Buncha fags in England,” Slaughter opines, unfazed.

  “I know,” I say. “But everybody’s always telling me how faggy I am. I’ll fit right in.”

  Slaughter leans forward to fix me with an earnest gaze.

  “You’re not faggy, Campbell. You’re just kind of a pussy. You can be fixed.”

  It sounds veterinarial. “Yeah, yeah.” I gesture blandly with the bottle. “I just need to work out.”

  “That and maybe take an interest in something besides books for a change. You didn’t come to one of my games last semester.”

  “I don’t understand football.”

  “You don’t have to understand it, Campbell,” says Slaughter, looking pained. “You think the only reason to do something is so you can understand it. You gotta stop reading all the time, and get out more. Take an interest in the world around you.”

  It strikes me as an apt idea, particularly at this point in time. Forget about understanding. Forget about poetry. That’s what Sparrow seems to think I should do. Jim too. Not to mention my good buddy Joanne Not Up My Alley, whoever the crap she is. The universe conspiring against poetry—against poetry combined with the likes of Larry Campbell, that is. Who am I kidding? Who gets to be a poet in this world? The rich and the crazy. Byron and Blake. Because if you aren’t rich, it drives you crazy. That’s the path on which I’ve plunked myself.