Every day produces something new, but
more often that not, it isn't worth shit. I've noticed only about 3 out of 37 students
say much of anything. The rest of them
just sit there. Some glare, some make
faces. Only a few of them try to be
human beings and make an effort to participate.
Anne Anwar actually asks questions and responds
as if she were a human being. She is
one of the few. Out of 37 students,
at each class meeting, at least a third of the class is absent, sometimes
half or even more.
The girl in the back row is so sensitive
that her face seemed to have an orgasm when I looked at her. That was a first. She contorted her face in an odd look of incomprehension
at one point and then it looked as if she were having a facial, intellectual
orgasm, a kind of encyclopedic paroxysm of the understanding. Maybe it happens to teachers only once in a
lifetime, if they are lucky, to shake a student's mind so strongly!
I suppose when a young woman has orgasm
after orgasm over an imagined face and form, at night in bed, our actual corporeal
presence has a preternatural, elemental force. Like a rock star's. Certainly in the Middle Ages women swooned over
images of Christ. Her face looked relaxed
afterwards and, to prevent from embarrassing her, I tried not to look at her
again and pretended that I hadn't noticed. It suddenly occurred to me that she was sitting
directly behind the sexy little-girl blond who wears shorts every day.
For some reason, she refused to look at me all morning.
I steal a large number of looks at her legs in class anyway, and because
she never met my eyes, probably far more yesterday morning.
They excited the girl behind her to orgasm.
Krazny came
up after class, triumphantly holding a court summons, telling me that she
won’t be in class Friday and therefore I will have to give her a makeup quiz.
She is quite ugly because she thinks it is necessary: she has a big
nose. She is probably a lesbian also.
She is basically out of control and pretends that she doesn't like
men. The Porn Queen came to class this morning looking
32 going on 40. They always look old
when they try to look 20. There is
a real asshole who comes to class 3 or 4 times a
month and looks at me like I'm crazy whenever I say anything slightly out
of the ordinary or whenever I actually try to arouse a little enthusiasm for
mathematics. I really hit him in the
face. I couldn't resist. He reminds me of one of those bullies that we've
all suffered under as kids. I was talking
about perception and the capacity to see things, and I said that sometimes
you have to work at a body of knowledge for a long time without understanding
much and then suddenly, you see it, you see what
it means. While I was talking, his
face turned into that sadistic, lighted face that says, with burning-eyes,
"I'm going to get you after class."
I continued, "You see what you are
After class, as I was walking towards
my office, I saw the Porn Queen standing near the door of the Psychology Department.
It looked like she was screwing up the courage to go in.
Who knows, maybe I influenced HER somehow.
One must be able to risk everything.
Otherwise, what is risk? Risk
can't be divided. You can't have security and adventure at the
same time.
The Swedish Iceberg came into class
late, smirking at my welcoming smile. She
was five minutes late. She is the kind
of woman who smirks at strong feelings. Stephanie Britain came on so strongly that I
got nervous and backed off. She had
asked me to be her advisor before the class started. The rest of the students were so bored and dull,
and she was so alive, that I had real problems. And only eight students showed up. She, a fiery-eyed bitch in heat, and the rest
of the class locked in a sleepy smirk. I
had to pretend to look at them all, of course, and to divide my attention
between them equally, so I could look at her without drawing attention. So that I wouldn't have to completely ignore
her cunt-intense eyes, I endured their smirks, their veiled looks of fatigue,
their mocking eyes and aggressive boredom just so that I could occasionally
study the changes in her blood-engorged face.
Blood engorged with power. It
seemed to announce, "I know what you want and I'm dangling it in front
of you. If you really drool, if you
go down on your knees in front of me and maybe here, now, in front of the
whole class, I might allow you to sniff it."
Power doesn't make women happy but it is what they want most. She wants mine. I could cultivate her. Offer to help her with her homework, etc.
Actually, I am just trying to find
a way of dramatizing life, of making my life meaningful by having "real
encounters" with people. But it
would be clearly ridiculous to dally with a 20-year-old, wouldn't it? Only the most ridiculous 37-year old men play
with pretty, young women.
I just put $495,000 on the line in
the Scudder International Fund after Reagan announced he would sign the 75
billion-dollar budget reduction bill. Isn't
that fun? Are we happy yet?
I'm going to go to the telephone to find out the prices.
Really exciting huh?
Here goes.
They didn't answer the phone. It's too late already on the East Coast! It's Friday so I won’t know until Monday!
If I lose $10,000 it won’t be fun.
But it's just paper money for me. It
is my retirement, not my disposable income.
I know that doesn't sound like Literature, but it is.
She was wearing bright red lipstick, black stockings
and a black dress, with a green, silk blouse.
Her hair was pulled back, her face had a golden
brown layer of makeup masking the tiny black hairs on her face that she thinks
make her ugly. She is very tall and
she looks like she doesn't know what to do with her hands. Like a caged animal, she has a wild, hunted
look in her eyes. But she looked into
my eyes twice, and her eyes were soft, doe eyes.
I see her in the mornings just before my Computer Architecture class.
She is there with a very pretty, very cute Iranian girl and a small
fanatical looking Iranian man who has a constant, clinging scowl.
But I can only get impressions from her.
She LOOKS like a whore. I'm
fascinated with her. I said, hello to her once, when we were alone,
and she ignored me imperiously. But
since that day, I imagine that she loves me. It was after almost a month that I began to
get tender looks from her, and I imagine that I am the only one. What caused the change? Could it be bad news from home? A brother or even her mother killed in the war?
$495,616 worth at
33.02. Not too shabby. 15,000 shares. 50% more than the 10,000 shares I owned about
3 months ago. Well as long as we don't
have a real crash, things should be all right.
But lets face it, I'm in for the short run
only. I didn't need the 508 point drop
to convince me of that. The British
Bond Market taught me that already: 10% drop in one night I'll have you know.
Her exoticism attracts me and her beauty
translates into power. Raw, sensual power. She
is tall and thin, small breasted, and she has a large, eagle nose.
Her hair is thick and tangled, like a wild mare's mane.
It's jet black. And the tiny black hairs on her arms reach from
her forearms all the way to her shoulders.
It is a kind of down, black, that covers even her face. Her fierce eyes flashed with desperate longing
and sweetness. It was a face she hadn't
shown me before. There were other people
in the snack bar but she didn't seem to care if they noticed. Maybe she is the Iranian woman that the French
teacher was referring to. That would
be awful.
The women are closing in on me. The girl in the back row is ready. Stephanie already made a move. Now the Chinese woman is responding. I had a cup of coffee with her today. It seems that she was married in mainland
Stephanie wants me to be her advisor.
I may remain perfectly chaste. This
isn't a question of fucking per se. It
is a question of making contact, breaking through the distance, the narcissism.
And in my case, it will be a question of teaching. Anne Anwar wants me
to be her advisor also!
The little Iranian guy looked like
her pimp. They know I like her. He looked at me sternly and then, when I stared
him down, he gave a little laugh as if he was saying to himself, well I'll
be damned, it’s true. I really don't
care if she's a whore. Henry Miller's
June and Beaudlaire’s Jeanne Duval were whores.
She makes me tremble when I'm near her.
None of the others do.
But I feel like fucking Wai Shiow just to liberate my member.
I need an excuse to leave State anyway.
Let them fire me for playing around.
Impossible! They'd have to fire half the Department.
I'm drunk on one glass of wine and
country music.
I've just finished reviewing a BASIC
programming textbook, for $250. It
only took me four hours, but if the fuckers listen to me, their book has a
chance. Its Saturday night, 22 minutes
after
I'm listening to a Country song called
Is this Literature? Maybe not. But my 1/2 million feels like
Literature, now. And I'm fighting
tooth and nail to make that money grow. And I believe in
I talked to her after class for about
40 minutes! It was magical. And I can't describe it. So much happened and was said in forty minutes.
So many gestures and smiles and half-smiles and doubts. I'm afraid that we made love. At least for part of the time.
She demurred for awhile and hid behind a veil of coldness and doubt
but came back, even more intensely, later. She could see
that it was no use pretending. I think
we were both surprised at how much we like each other. But something indifferent, protective maybe,
appeared. Something
that just wants to fuck without responsibility. And I've never made love to a Chinese woman.
When we were kids, we used to make jokes about them fucking sideways
because their cunts were different, that the hole went in sideways instead
of straight up.
I haven't really thought much about
her since the conversation. She is
strikingly pretty. And tall and very
thin, and she isn't like the Chinese women from around here. She is from
I'm afraid that she sees me as an entry
ticket into
I have never wanted marriage because
I always wanted freedom from bourgeois morality. But it's impossible. If you live with a woman and her daughter for
ten years then you are married or a philanderer. A piece of paper can't change that. Why do I love two women? And could I love a third? Will I, CAN I love her? There is something hard in me. And that makes me laugh. Because I didn't mean it that way but that might
be all that it is. I can't love three
women. Can I? And the Iranian woman. She just looked at me. I love her too. And the Mexican woman who thinks she loves me.
Now Wai Shiow.
I can't believe that they will actually
pay me $250 for a review of a computer science book. Why not? As
usual, I feel schizoid about money. Because,
tomorrow I will learn if I make $10,000 or lose $10,000, or hopefully I suppose,
if I end up somewhere in the middle. And I won’t receive a penny of it for at least
ten years. And I'm happy about a measly
$250.
I feel like stopping this. Maybe I should plot to kill some nefarious Mafia
leader or politician. Or maybe I should
simply admit that life is absurd and do nothing, drift, or maybe take up Yoga
and stare at my navel. Because nothing much seems worth doing. Power and sex are nature's illusions. But we
I am surrounded by women. It is only my love for them, for what is unique
and sweet and proud and powerful and passionate and beyond words. But they will give themselves to the powerful
and rich because women are still whores. And
so, possibly out of an even deeper love, I will take them as whores, and fuck
them in dingy rooms, on water beds in tiny houses, in the modern apartments
that they share with sisters, pimps, mothers.... I will ball them in their parents’ homes when
their parents are at work, and then I will fuck their mothers when THEY come
home. I'll ravish little sisters, butt
fuck their brothers. I'll sacrifice
myself to their whoredom, to their lubricious attack on love. I'll sacrifice my love on the altar of my love.
But I am a liar, a fool, a man who
is capable of self-deception in cowardice.
She smiled at me, almost saying hello
with her eyes, and I looked away in icy indifference. I could hear a laugh that seemed unbelieving
almost raucously skeptical of my sudden purity, my sudden puritanical contradictoriness.
But love is like that. C'est
l'enfant du
Bohème. Si je t'aime,
prends garde a toi et si
tu m'aimes ... I was enormously depressed until I wrote that,
until I thought it. I was physically
depressed. Now I am simply depressed
- mentally and my thoughts are in a state of flux and life is absurd, again.
But, physically, I am just slightly on this side of equilibrium.
It is utterly depressing to see a woman that you want desperately yet
whom you know is a fool. It is a degrading,
ugly experience. It renders D.H. Lawrence
and his "blood" absurd, maniacal, even ridiculous.
My Indian student came to see me about
her test. She is a painted monkey.
With bright red shoes and matching fingernail polish and a bright red
sweater run through with black threads, to match her hair, she is a siren,
a harpy, a carping descendent of Nagarjuna, the Indian logician. But she is a piece of cake. If I were a Sultan, I would make love to her
languorously, distractedly, like a man eating pastry on a Sunday afternoon,
bored, taking his little pleasure for granted.
But the little monkey disdains me, thinks I am a fool and easy to manipulate.
And naturally I acquiesce to her illusions, allowing myself to drool
ignominiously over the plump flesh of her forehead and the wonderfully curved
fingers and hand. She is like a piece of cake that I can't have,
and I feel like throwing a temper tantrum, like breaking things. But her whiny, sing-song voice, her petulant
pleading for points, stirs my vanity and I luxuriate in the sounds of her
wheedling, demanding, scolding, and finally triumphant voice as she manages
to get points from me, as I scan the ones and zeros looking for faint erasure
marks, for signs of cheating, and she feels like she's ravishing me, fucking
me in my office with my pants down around my ankles and that in spite of myself,
in spite of all my principles of fairness and all of my authority, she has
her delicate hand firmly around my cock and she is methodically and skillfully
teasing me towards the orgasm, despising me all along. And then, almost before its over, she steals
out of the office in triumphant disgust, her B+ turned to an A- and her cunt greedy for other victims,
eternally unsatisfied. And yet I don't
despise her. She is simply a fool,
a victim of man's imperious need for estrogen engorged flesh, for rich feminine
scents. Like all men plagued by too
much testosterone I am a wailing, teeth gnashing fool in the face of so much
estrogen. May the Gods take pity of
us. On ME.