A Self Made Monster

by Steven Vivian

  Holly returned to her reflection. Her stomach and thighs had responded well to her spring break regimen. First, a three mile run in the morning. For breakfast, a bowl of Fiber Feast, a cored apple, a cup of strained peaches, and iced tea. For lunch, a patty of tuna on toast, and water. For dinner, either a bowl of boiled pasta (no oil or margarine) and salad, or a skinless baked chicken breast and baked potato (no oil or margarine).

  Following dinner, Holly grunted out fifty stomach crunches, sixteen one-armed pushups (eight an arm), and thirty leg raises. The leg raises were performed with ten pound ankle weights. The pain nearly made her weep. Before bedtime, Holly jogged for a mile. She thought of spring as a runner thinks of a big race. The gun had been fired, and the race was on.

  Summer was the finish line, and countless other women were racing toward it. Beyond the finish line was the beach, where the winners of the race—posing in their nearly-nude swim wear—enjoyed the beach studs’ stares and erections. Some women had already dropped out of the race. They consoled themselves with chips, dip, pop, and pizzas.

  Holly’s only class on Tuesdays was astronomy. Astronomy bored her more than most courses. Professor Nova droned about red stars, red dwarfs, the parallax view, and other stupid stuff. She usually skipped on Tuesdays and spent the day lounging. She did a quick ten pushups every hour or so, watched her soaps Tyrannies and Love and Spite, and sipped low-cal gin and tonics.

  But today Holly had to work.

  She had torn off the first page of Edward’s Dylan Thomas essay. At least the introduction was good: it stated the theme of sexual metaphors and narrowed the discussion to three poems. She had not read the poems, and she did not want to. But she pushed aside these complaints and opened her copy of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas.

  The first poem mentioned in the introduction was “If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love”. Holly liked the title. It evoked a fantasy of a small hot tub with a young Paul Newman. But the poem was incomprehensible. She sighed and willed herself to read it a second time. Then a third.

  Let’s try the second poem, she thought. Sounds easier. “Fern Hill”.

  An hour later, exasperated, she turned to the third poem, “Alterwise By Owl Light”.

  On the library’s third floor, one level above Holly Dish, Edward Head approached Claire Sweet. Edward had not seen her since the day he left the note in her car. He wondered if she were avoiding him.

  She saw him and smiled instantly.

  He returned the smile and asked if he could sit down.

  He could.

  “Around here it’s, well, the library’s been less pleasant lately,” Edward said.

  “Why’s that?”

  How many reasons do you want? he thought. Because your hair is long and wavy. Because you’re five feet nine and wear blue jeans and cotton blouses. Because you don’t wear makeup and your skin is perfect.

  Edward shrugged. “You’re good company.”

  “So are you.” Claire pushed away her books and gracefully covered her yawn. “But I’ve been holed up at home with the flu. I’m fine now, though.” She smiled.

  When Claire smiled, he wanted only to pat her hand. He wanted to be as serene and peaceful as she. Christ, even her nostrils were lovely. He was wondering what to say when she offered to buy him a cup of coffee.

  On the way to the student union, Claire wondered what to say. She did not want to hurt Edward’s feelings. But she could not let him think romance was possible. She promised herself to gently approach the subject after the first cup of coffee.

  After the second cup, she lost her nerve. She hated confrontations, even those that were not confrontational. She decided to play it by ear and broach the subject only if necessary.

  Edward had relaxed a bit. He was talking about his plans to study film. “I think I can write well enough. At least well enough to write a script. If I can get a 3.75 grade point average this year, I can get in a good film school.”

  “Have you made any short movies yet?” Claire imagined Edward in a director’s chair, surrounded by technicians and equipment. The image fit him.

  “I actually started one on a field trip to Chicago, but I don’t think it’ll work out.” He imagined pointing his camcorder at Claire: She sat on a sunny sloping hillside, wearing jeans and a sleaveless cotton blouse. Her knees were drawn to her chest, and a cooling afternoon breeze rippled her hair.

  “Wish I had your ambition,” Claire said. “I’d have a lot more—”

  She paused: in the periphery of her vision, she noticed someone waving, or pointing.

  Edward saw it too: Holly Dish was standing ten feet away, thrusting her middle finger at him. He rested his forehead in the crook of thumb and forefinger and pretended not to see her.

  Holly approached the table, anger rolling off her. “What kind of agreement are you making with her, Edward? Hand jobs for short papers, legs in stirrups for a long paper?”

  Edward jumped up. “Thanks for the coffee, Claire! I’m really tired, and I—”

  “Of course!” Claire blurted.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly said to Claire. “Excuse me for the—”

  “Of course!”

  “—the intrusion, but I’ve got to talk with him.”

  Holly followed Edward out of the room. She was asking about pen-wah balls and foot-long pearl jams. Fleetingly, Claire wondered what Edward had done to make the woman so mad. She looked like those aerobic women on the cover of women’s fitness magazines like Me, Myself, and I or Saucy! or Super New You. She could probably kick Edward’s ass.

  Edward refused to talk to Holly, or to even face her. She had planned to tear into him, perhaps shame him enough to write the paper for her without any sex in return. But he hurried away, leaving her seething in the middle of the union courtyard. With Edward gone, Holly found herself thinking of Claire: specifically, she was critiquing Claire’s appearance. The critique was not triggered by Claire’s possible involvement with Edward. Please, Holly thought, take the grease spot! The critique was simply reflexive, like a drunk downing a free drink. Holly had worked hard for her figure, and she was always aware of other attractive women.

  At first, Holly was unsettled. Claire made her feel fifteen pounds heavier. That familiar and loathsome dread of weight grew in Holly, and she had to jog around the campus a few times to calm down.

  The jog cleared her head. Now she could critique Claire more objectively. Yes, she was attractive. Nice long legs—but on the bony side—and graceful white arms. Good hair, but kind of messy. The eyes were good: they demanded attention without any makeup. But the bust. Not the best. No banana tits, but they looked small—lucky to be a C cup. And her rear end was probably flat.

  But her age was the clincher. She was twenty-five or twenty-six if a day! Must be a loser, still in college at that age. No need to worry. In five or six more years, Holly would be at her peak, and Claire would be finished: she’d be in her thirties.

  Edward sat fidgeting in his darkened apartment. Maybe Holly is nuts, he mused. She had stood defiantly, jabbed the air with her middle finger, and did not care who saw her. His face was still sweaty and flush.

  Finally Edward turned on the floor lamp. He paced for a few minutes, then scrubbed his face with a new acne soap that smelled like cough syrup and made his face burn. The soap had tiny abrasives that “invigorated old skin” and “made way for vibrant, healthy skin.” Edward imagined that his nose’s oil-clogged pores were being purged and tightened. He risked a look in the mirror. His skin was certainly clean, but it looked as if he had scrubbed with sandpaper.

  Edward watched a few porno tapes and fell asleep counting the pimples on his face. Later, he dreamed he sat in the union with Claire Sweet. He was naked. He did not want to stand up because Claire would see his pocked, pimpled buttocks. Holly appeared. She pointed a camcorder at Edward.

  “Stand up, tart,” Holly ordered Edward. “Make love to the camera.”

  Edward clumsily shook his ass.


  “C’mon. Get hot,” Holly insisted. She zoomed in on Edward’s face. The viewfinder was filled with the lopsided mountain of Edward‘s nose. The lens studied the face’s canyons, crevices, and clumps.

  Holly turned the camera toward Claire. Claire smiled agreeably when Holly told her to strip.

  Holly put the camcorder on the table. She leaned over Claire and kissed her mouth. Soon the two women were on the floor, Holly the Jock atop long-limbed Claire. Edward picked up the camcorder and filmed the action. He became the director.

  “More hip thrusting, girls. Claire, reach up and squeeze Holly’s nipples. Holly, reach behind you and spool her ass with your finger.”

  The women ignored Edward, so he paused for a handjob.

  Edward awoke with a start. He cursed himself—his raw skin, his embarrassing virginity, his tedious booksmarts. He realized that his plans for spooling Holly and Claire were moronic. Trying to seduce Holly with a camera…what a loser! And hoping a pat on the hand would lure Claire into the sack.

  Pathetic.

  Chapter Twenty Two: The Day He Was Born Again

  Dressed in black jeans and black shirt, Jimmy Stubbs drove around the block several times. The neighborhood was quiet. Cars slumbered in driveways while people slumbered in houses. Jimmy took a final drive around the block, reviewed his plan, then parked thirty yards from Edward’s apartment. He walked silently, his supplies in a lunch sack.

  Jimmy followed an alley to the rear of Edward’s apartment, then crouched beside a tree. A porch light brightened Edward’s back door. To the right stood a garage, which would shield Jimmy from the neighbor’s view. To the left was a row of shrubs, which offered further protection. The only hazard was the top apartment’s kitchen window, just to the right of Edward’s entrance. But the window was dark. Jimmy reasoned that if he worked quietly, the top tenants would have no reason to look out the window.

  He crouched before the entrance and slowly opened the screened door. It squeaked only once. He positioned himself between the screened door and wood door. Silence was crucial, so attaching the hasp took forty-five minutes. Slow turn by slow turn, his screwdriver drove the screws into the door’s old wood, then into the door frame.

  He slipped the padlock through the hasp. The padlock yielded a confidence-inspiring click.

  The next target, Edward’s car, was parked outside the garage. The car was a riskier target because Jimmy would be in the open. Still, working quickly would reduce the risk. He crouched at the rear of the car and pushed several packets of firecrackers deep into the tail pipe until they dropped into the muffler.

  “Have a nice day, loser,” Jimmy whispered toward Edward’s apartment.

  Edward woke at 7:30 and took a quick shower. After a candy bar and a Coke, he gathered his books and headed for campus. Or rather, he tried to head for campus. The door would not open. He yanked hard on the doorknob several times and managed only to hurt his hand.

  Realizing he would have to bust out, Edward slammed his shoulder against the door. Twice. Three times. The door stubbornly remained shut. Edward ate a second candy bar in two mouth-stretching bites and tried to reason out the problem. Perhaps one of the women upstairs had gotten drunk and parked the car against the door. He stood on a chair and looked out the basement window that faced the driveway, but the window was dirty and he could see only his car.

  Edward cranked open the window that faced the back yard. Although wide open, it was too small for even a child to squeeze through. Edward considered his two options: beat the door down or call…who? The police? The idea of calling the police embarrassed him, so he tried slamming into the door again. Three more futile and painful slams persuaded him to call the police.

  He tapped the phone plunger several times—no dial tone. He hung up, picked up the receiver. Still no dial tone. The absurdity of his plight was sinking in. He laughed bitterly before slamming the phone against the wall.

  Dr. John Fear, the English department chair, was used to Alex’s odd ailments: sensitivity to sunlight, outbreaks of eczema, changes in hair color, lung-ripping coughs, lurching limps and sideways stumbles. But even John asked if Alex was all right when Alex wore wrap-around black shades to work Tuesday.

  “I’m fine,” Alex assured. Be casual, he thought. Just another odd symptom. He took two steps back: John had an unnerving habit of standing three inches away and talking directly at one’s face. “My eyes are medicated and, I mean, the medication is—”

  “Bothering your eyes, yes.” John studied his fun-house reflection in the shades.

  “I feel good.” Speaking was difficult. The haloperidol had dried all the saliva in Alex’s mouth. The medication aggravated Alex’s light intolerance, too. Even with the shades, Alex squinted at table lamps as if they were klieg lights.

  John leaned to the left, then to the right, trying to see Alex’s eyes. “Alex, we have to talk. How about my office?”

  Alex nodded in agreement and followed.

  “I’ve always liked you Alex,” the chairman lied.

  John had written three “serious” novels. “My novels,” John sometimes sniffed, “are about ideas.” Publishers returned the manuscripts with form-letter rejections. Only one publisher responded personally to John’s third manuscript, This Sad Evening’s Swan Song. The editor wrote she could not read beyond the first paragraph, which “at least made the manuscript stand out.”

  Now that Alex had no literary reputation, John was relaxed enough to tolerate Alex. John occasionally watched Alex walk, or limp, or cough down the hallways, or get lost on his way to class. If that’s what the literary life is about, John periodically mused, I want no part of it.

  “And so you want me to see a doctor,” Alex sighed. “You think I’m cracking, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t say that.” John poured two cups of coffee. “But your little, uh, performance yesterday didn’t go over well with the administration.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been all bad.” He waved a hand at John’s frown. “Those humorless, good for nothing leaches. Gives them something to gossip about before their lunch break, doesn’t it?”

  “Still…”

  “Okay, you have a point.” Actually, Alex was foggy about what he had done. He remembered only tearing up a copy of his novel The Best Year of His Life in front of his freshman composition class. One alarmed student ran out of the classroom.

  “I just took too much medication.”

  “There’ve been rumors of a—well, of your condition. Just rumors.” John spoke gently, as if comforting a sick friend.

  “I do have bad headaches,” Alex confided. “Sometimes they cross my eyes. Maybe my medication discourages the, well, discourages my inhibitions.”

  “—Headaches?” John marveled that a headache would drive a man to tear off his own shirt. Not to mention tear up his own novel.

  Alex struggled to remember what he had done. “Tell me what the rumors are, and I’ll tell you what really happened. After I get a laugh from the exaggeration.”

  John related what he had heard: Alex had stopped in the middle of an English 101 lecture, complained of the heat, and removed his shoes. A few minutes later, he had torn off his shirt. A student giggled nervously, so Alex folded his arms across his chest and announced that he was a world-class author and was therefore a libertine in the social graces.

  “Are my sources accurate so far?” John asked.

  “A little.” He recognized one of haloperidol’s notorious side effects: delusions of grandeur. “What happened next, according to your sources?”

  “After your tore off your shirt, you tore up a copy of your novel. Then you yelled that the shirt and the book were equally useless to you. That they were both just trappings. Or that they both trapped you and had to be destroyed.” John scratched his chin. “At this point, I’m sure the rumors make the truth unrecognizable.”

  “Unrecognizable,” Alex agreed.

  “And you implored the students to do the same.”

>   “Rip up their shirts?”

  “And photos of their parents.”

  “I think I said photos of their siblings,” Alex smiled.

  “Whatever.”

  Alex tried to remember, but his vague and fractured recollections refused to cohere.

  “Since the class was reading Thoreou, I suppose you were trying to dramatize the reading,” John suggested. “The need for simplicity, the seduction of possessions, and all the usual clichés.”

  “I’ve never compared myself to Thoreau.”

  “Of course not. But really, Alex. You can imagine all the freshman coeds, burning up the phone lines that evening to their mothers and fathers. The Dean has had five phone calls from worried parents already. And one from a major contributor.”

  “I should have known,” Alex sneered. “It’s about money.”

  “Of course it’s about money,” John snapped. “You’re smart enough to know that. And spare me the Thoreau nonsense. He isolated himself in the woods. You really don’t want to do the same, do you?”

  “But it was the medication.”

  “For a headache. Yes.” John stood up, peered out his office window. “How is your more serious condition?” John asked delicately.

  “It’s no secret I have mild schizophrenia,” Alex noted almost cheerfully. “Actually, my case comes closest to what’s called ‘simple’ schizophrenia. You know, the retreat into silence, the inability to participate in life emotionally. The occasional odd response to things.” Alex adopted a broad German accent. “But you take zee medication und you vill be fine!”

  “You’re not having a relapse?”

  “No.”

  John smiled weakly.

  Alex solemnly removed his glasses. The pain was extreme: his eyes felt like pincushions, pierced by a thousand pins. “As I said before, I’m fine. If the administration wants to force me to see a doctor, then—”

  “No! It’s nothing like that.” John shrugged. “We’re just concerned.”

  “I appreciate your concern. I guess I got out of hand yesterday. But you know how dull classes can be near the end of the semester,” Alex deadpanned.