A Self Made Monster

by Steven Vivian

  “I’ve thought about it.” Edward pretended not to see the snot running from Alex’s nose.

  “I think you will be writer.” He returned the autographed book to Edward. “Maybe you’ll even carry on in my humble tradition.”

  “The tradition of black humor, of course.” Edward was almost shouting from nervousness: why didn’t the professor wipe his nose? Edward turned to Claire, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. “Black humor came out of the early and mid sixties. Authors like Joseph Heller, Donleavy, Stewart, and of course professor Resartus.”

  But Claire did not listen. She was studying Alex intently. “You poor man.” She was no longer Claire the student; she was Claire the nurse’s daughter. “You have been working too hard, and you’re on the verge of a collapse.”

  Edward watched impotently as Claire pulled an unopened bottle of spring water from her book bag. She also produced two sedatives and insisted that Alex take them.

  “I don’t like to take medication,” Alex protested.

  “They’re just tranquilizers, silly.” She smiled. “Now don’t turn me in for dispensing medication without a license.” She balled up a tissue and discreetly wiped Alex’s nose.

  Alex swallowed the tiny blue pills. “Thank you,” he heard himself saying. “I’m…I’m grateful to you.” He had another laughing attack, and Edward and Claire excused themselves.

  Edward and Claire sipped coffee in the union.

  “That guy’s really coming off his rocker,” Edward suggested.

  “I think he’s just over-tired.” She felt protective of the professor.

  “He’s nuts,” Edward insisted.

  “No…he’s a genuine eccentric, and there aren’t many of those around. Too many people pretend to be eccentric because their own lives are boring, or empty, or conventional.”

  “Come off it,” Edward snapped. He wanted Claire’s attention spent on him, not Resartus.

  “Study your peers. They’re so damned bored with their lives they wear tee shirts with ‘Party’ and ‘Go Crazy’ emblazoned across their chest. They put most of their energy into getting drunk and trying hard not to learn too much at school.”

  Edward grunted. He owned a tee shirt that proclaimed “Crazy Party Dick”, but he was too embarrassed to wear it.

  “I’m not romanticizing real insanity, Edward. When you’re crazy, it’s really not funny. But he’s not really crazy—just, you know, a real eccentric. All he needs is a rest.”

  “Hmm.” Edward avoided Claire’s gaze. He wanted to lean across the table and whisper, “I’ll show you what crazy is,” and thrust his tongue in her lovely mouth. Instead, he pretended to review his class notes.

  Claire rose, bought a second cup of coffee. She sipped and Edward pretended to study. The silence grew longer, and Edward’s petulance grew stronger. Claire wanted to joke Edward out of his mood, but the silence soured her mood, too.

  If men can’t fuck you, Claire thought, they hate you. And why should I humor him? Nose buried in his notes…the pompous little ass.

  “Catch you later,” she said.

  “Right.” He kept his face in his notes for a half-hour, and each minute made him feel stronger.

  He had not given in to her overtures for pointless conversation. And she was too old for him anyway!

  He stood to get more coffee. Professor Resartus was sitting at the other end of the room, and he waved. Claire, sitting with Alex, did not wave.

  The pop bottle shattered against the wall, and so did the coffee mug. But the clock radio was stubborn, and Edward had to stomp on it several times before the casing split. A tangle of wires emerged through a crack, and Edward kicked the radio across the room.

  “Bitch!”

  He overturned his floor lamp and kicked the kitchen chair. The chair skittered across the floor, like a falling ice skater, and crashed against the refrigerator.

  He picked up the chair and struck the wall with it. Fatigue made him quit, but he was still angry, so he slapped his face twice, once with each hand.

  “Bitch!” he declared again, but his tone was tainted with regret. “You bitch…” Now only an emotionless utterance. He tried to imagine the bitch’s face: the brown eyes and hair, serene face and graceful neck. The image was fuzzy and gave way to another: large blue eyes, round face, page boy.

  It was no use. He conceded that neither Claire nor Holly was the bitch. He stood before the bathroom mirror.

  “You’re the bitch, Edward,” his reflection smiled.

  “I know.”

  “Yes—”

  “And pull out that unsightly hair.”

  “Which one?” Edward tilted his head, studied his nostrils.

  Edward’s reflection continued to berate Edward until the hate was expended. Edward retreated to the couch and wondered what to do next. He guessed that most males would resort to drink, but the thought of even a beer gagged him. He still had a headache from the twenty-four hours he was trapped in his basement.

  “Might as well watch a tape,” he sighed.

  The tape was called Primitive Man. The poor lighting and grainy image suggested that the movie was made in a roadside hotel. Several women were with a single male; he had the letters “S” and “T” on his left buttock and “U” and “D” on his right. Just as he pinned one women, another woman pulled him off. She controlled him by grabbing his erection and scolding, like a mother grabs a child’s ear, and the women laughed at him.

  “Give it to me!” he screamed at an Oriental women.

  “No,” she giggled.

  “Yes!” he bellowed.

  “If you insist.” As she serviced him, he snorted like a pig—in fact, the snort was that of a pig’s, dubbed into the sound. After a bit more low comedy with pig snorts and fish-eye lens portraits of the man’s red sweaty face, the other women began slapping his ass with palms and a belt. The belt was followed by snapping towels and a dildo. Welts rose on his ass and he scrambled to escape, hands guarding his crotch.

  Edward scrambled into the bathroom and faced his reflection. The reflection was addled—sweaty forehead, pursed lips—but managed a sneer.

  “You’re a grease spot!” the reflection accused.

  “I know.”

  “You gotta get laid before you turn gay.”

  “I made a promise to myself!”

  “So keep your promise. Throw a party, invite the women, and GET LAID!”

  He returned to the living room, and the tape’s new images startled him. The man had been replaced by a dismantled mannequin: trunk, legs, arms, head. The head’s wide painted eyes watched the women fuck. One bony woman with salt and pepper hair and a tee shirt that read “Most Top” barked orders: “On your back, Priscilla. Bend over and grab your ankles, Lashonnia. More tongue, Vron.”

  Edward retrieved the tape’s packing box from under the couch; he had not bothered to look at the faintly printed return address. The company, Second Sex Comes First, was based in San Francisco. A sheet inside the box invited him “to enjoy your free introduction to our company and help us overturn masculine definition of sexuality, power, and gender-controlled behavior.”

  Edward wondered with some pleasure if his film career would be spent with cheap cameras in cheap hotel rooms with cheap actresses.

  Chapter Twenty Six: She Usually Looked So Bored

  “And this lecture on Yeats’s cosmology brings our course to a virtual end,” Alex announced. “We have only two remaining days of class. On Friday, I’ll have some review material to help you study for the final.”

  Jimmy Stubbs and Holly Dish glanced at one another. Jimmy flashed a smirk; his confidence was brimming. Last night, he had found half of the final exam in Alex’s office.

  “I’ll be happy to answer any questions about the exam on Friday, but the review sheets will probably help the most. Good day.”

  Holly had been postponing her talk with Alex, and she had to act now. She followed him to his office.

  “May I speak w
ith you for a few minutes, Mr. Resartus?”

  Alex gestured for Holly to sit down. “What can I do for you, Miss—”

  “Dish.”

  “Yes, Miss Dish.” Alex smiled at her outfit: sweatpants, tee shirt, and 36-inch bust. He guessed she was a hit at the frat parties, especially when the jocks played indoor football: she was probably the lucky coed who got to be the ball.

  “I’m a senior this year, professor Resartus, and I’m getting ready to pursue a publishing career.”

  “It’s a good field. Profitable, I imagine.” Alex knew next to nothing about publishing. He knew only that a writer sent a manuscript to a publisher, laughed off the rejection slip, and sent it to another publisher.

  “My advisor recommended I should ask—” Holly feigned a sneeze. She felt ridiculous: a “D” student asking for a recommendation. “—for a letter of recommendation. You’re a writer yourself, an actual author really, and your letter would be a wonderful help.”

  “I’m always pleased to help out students.” He opened his gradebook. “You’re in my 1:00 class, Miss Dish?”

  “2:00.” Holly’s smile froze on her face. You’re doomed, she told herself. She had not figured Alex would look at her grades in front of her—she suddenly felt fifty pounds over weight and naked.

  Alex studied the gradebook. His eyebrows furrowed, his forehead grew lined. He glanced at Holly, then back at the gradebook.

  Holly forced herself to remain seated. Humiliation’s good for character, she told herself. Humiliation’s something you know all about.

  “Very interesting.”

  “I know that I haven’t taken the final yet. I do want you to know I’m studying very hard for it. Maybe you’d like to wait—”

  Alex waved away her protests. “Your grades are, well, extraordinary.”

  “I suppose you could say that,” Holly said, face in her hands.

  “No, that’s the word exactly,” Alex said.

  Holly wondered if she should leave now, or wait for Alex to kick her out.

  “I’ll gladly write a letter for you, Miss Dish. You’ve got nearly a high ‘B’ average.”

  Holly winced. The guy was sadistic—couldn’t he just say “No letter”? She looked between her fingers. Alex was re-checking the gradebook, and his face did not have a trace of sarcasm.

  “I guess I, I didn’t realize.”

  Alex smiled and pushed the gradebook across the desk.

  Holly stared and kept her jaw from hanging open. Next to her name were two ‘A’s and three ‘B’s. “I guess, um, that’s right. I remember now.”

  “I’ll write the letter in a week or so after the semester ends. Just be sure to remind me,” Alex grinned. “My memory isn’t reliable.”

  “Oh I’ll remind you for sure!” Holly gushed. “And, and thanks so much!”

  “Certainly.”

  She nearly tripped over the wastepaper basket as she hurried from Alex’s office. “Thanks again!” she called over her shoulder.

  Alex was surprised. Though he rarely remembered students’ grades, he was still pleasantly taken aback by Holly’s high average. She usually looked so bored in class.

  Holly saw Jimmy waiting at the end of the hallway. His smirk told Holly everything. She ran up to him and squeezed him until he coughed.

  “You little weasel,” she said lovingly.

  Jimmy looked away, blushing. “Ya silly bitch.”

  “How’d you manage to—”

  Jimmy clamped a hand across her mouth. “Let’s get a coffee.”

  Jimmy explained how he transformed Holly from a poor to a fine student. He reveled in Holly’s full attention and full affection. He wondered if he could spool her now.

  “There’s not much to do up there in his office, you know, just waiting for the janitor to leave the building. Anyway, I found his gradebook about the second or third night I was in there. I didn’t even think of changing the grades until I found a pile of blank grade book pages.”

  “What a break!”

  “So I saw that the student names were printed on the left side of the sheet, along with the social security numbers.”

  “So you copied his handwriting?”

  “No. Every student’s name is printed out by a computer onto the class list.”

  Holly remembered: her name was in caps on the left-hand side, followed by her SS number. Then came the righteous row of glorious grades.

  “So what I did was—” Jimmy leaned forward. “—I copied everyone’s name and number down, then I took a few of those blank grade sheets. Last week I found a printer in the lab that printed out just like those grade sheets, so I used a word-processing program and entered each student name and number onto the new sheet.”

  “Color me impressed!”

  He laughed. “It was a breeze. Except when I came to your name, I must have…” He raised his eyebrows. “Put in the wrong grades.”

  “What about your grades?”

  “I didn’t want to push my luck. I just changed one grade to a ‘C’. Resartus is a senile idiot, but he still might remember how bad my grades suck.”

  Holly was already daydreaming of a publishing gig in Manhattan: a suite of offices, deep pile blue carpeting and leather furniture, private secretary, and a massive oak desk on which rested a computer, TV-sized computer screen, and fax/copier/printer.

  “Now all I need is that paper,” Holly said. She did not see how she could get it from Edward, but she was not worried. She simply had to get it. So she would.

  “Can’t you write a paper yourself?”

  “Sure, if I want to get a ‘D’ or a ‘C’ if I’m lucky.”

  “I can get it for you.”

  “I didn’t know you and Edward are on speaking terms.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  She was starting to appreciate Jimmy. He had brass, and obstacles did not bother him. She rewarded him with a toothy grin.

  “You’ve done way too much for me,” Holly said quietly, “and there’s no way I can ever pay you back.”

  Yes there is, Jimmy thought.

  “I’ll get the paper back from Edward myself.”

  “But if you need a little help—” Jimmy nodded meaningfully.

  “I wouldn’t hesitate to ask.”

  “This is Holly Dish, and I want to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “There’s more than one thing to choose from. By the way, how did you know my phone would be back in service?”

  “Try to make just a little sense, and we’ll go from there.”

  Edward’s forced laugh sounded like a bark. “You play dumb pretty well, but you can’t keep up the act. You’re really not dumb.”

  Do I act dumb? she wondered. “I called to apologize, Edward, and I have. I don’t know what you’re talking about and I guess I don’t care.”

  “You really don’t know?” Edward did not believe her, but he wanted to keep her on the line. “You didn’t call the power company? The phone company?”

  “God you’re weird.”

  “You didn’t lock me in my apartment? Didn’t push firecrackers down my car’s muffler? Didn’t send me a prescription to ‘Lesbos’?”

  “Lesbians?”

  “’Lesbos’.” He picked up the magazine; it was a jumble of lesbian porno and paranoid politics. “A magazine for lesbians from the fine folks at Second Sex Comes First.”

  “Gross.” She wiped her spittle from the phone.

  Holly’s revulsion gave Edward pause. Maybe she didn’t pull all those jokes on him.

  “Where would you even find gross stuff like that?” A little girl’s titter enlivened her question.

  “You don’t know?” Edward tried to sound skeptical, but he guessed she did not send him the magazine.

  “You probably want some fag mag. Tight butts with chest hair and trim mustaches.”

  “Some of the women in this magazine have mustaches, and—”

&nb
sp; Holly faked a huge wretch.

  “—the women in the videotape would curl your hair, and—”

  “A video!”

  “—I don’t mean the hair on your head.”

  “Enough!”

  “These women would start with the hair under your arms and slither downward.”

  “For Christ’s sake, shut up.” Holly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What a rank piece of garbage. How can you watch it?”

  “I didn’t watch it all the way through.”

  “Just some of it,” Holly giggled.

  “It came with the magazine.”

  “I can’t believe you think I sent that to you.”

  Edward was convinced. “Thanks for calling. Apology accepted.”

  “Good.” She frowned. She was not any closer to getting the term paper about Dylan Thomas—if it existed.

  “Let’s forget about the whole thing,” Edward suggested.

  “Forgotten.”

  Like a chess player, Edward made his move: “I’m having an end of the semester party. Just to show what a good sport I am, I’m inviting you.”

  “Maybe I can make it. What day?”

  Edward had not decided, but Friday sounded good. “I’ve got a previous engagement on Friday,” Holly lied.

  “Did I say Friday? I meant Saturday.”

  “In that case, I’m free. Who are you inviting?”

  “Several people. You’ll see.”

  He had not invited anyone else yet, and she knew it. “Maybe I’ll bring a friend.”

  “Sure. How about your roommate Kris?”

  “She’s too busy writing essays that were due last month. She’ll be locked in the dorm until next Christmas trying to catch up.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven: Finally, a Thank You

  Alex had been anxious about the letter, but he did not expect such a quick reply. His heart rate actually increased—a curious vestige of human behavior—when he examined his mail. The return address almost shouted at him: Herman Adler Literary Agency, 54660 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. Alex wondered if Herman still ran the agency. Was he even alive? Herman was middle-aged, overweight, and sweaty when Alex first met him. Herman took his high blood pressure medication between cigarettes, and he waved off David’s warnings about smoking. Alex liked Herman; anybody who cheerily dismissed David, the smug family star, was likable.