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Back Loudermilk
Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Personae
  4. I: Early Days
  5. One. Control
  6. Two. Doubt
  7. Three. Fate
  8. Four. Same
  9. Five. Fine Arts
  10. Six. In Loco Parentis
  11. Seven. Settling
  12. Eight. Neighbors
  13. Nine. Prospects
  14. Ten. The Lucky
  15. Eleven. Instruction
  16. Twelve. Same
  17. Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
  18. Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
  19. Fifteen. The Reason
  20. Sixteen. That Person
  21. Seventeen. Predictably
  22. II: Writing Teacher
  23. Eighteen. Early Poems
  24. Nineteen. Motivation
  25. Twenty. Allegory
  26. Twenty-One. Grief
  27. Twenty-Two. A Portrait
  28. Twenty-Three. Veils
  29. Twenty-Four. Soft Power
  30. Twenty-Five. Lists
  31. Twenty-Six. A Break
  32. Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
  33. Twenty-Eight. Custom
  34. Twenty-Nine. Parity
  35. Thirty. Fortune
  36. III: Volta
  37. Thirty-One. Images
  38. Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
  39. Thirty-Three. Letters
  40. Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
  41. Thirty-Five. Love
  42. Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
  43. IV: Your Best Reader
  44. Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
  45. Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
  46. Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
  47. Forty. Détente
  48. Forty-One. Worlds
  49. Forty-Two. Recognition
  50. Forty-Three. Persistence
  51. Forty-Four. And Then
  52. Forty-Five. Mingling
  53. Forty-Six. You
  54. Forty-Seven. Persona
  55. Forty-Eight. Est et Non
  56. Forty-Nine. The Author
  57. Epilogue
  58. Afterword: The Libertine
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. About the Authors

Loudermilk is seated, hunched over what appears to be the discarded top of a water-warped Ping-Pong table, which is awkwardly supported by a stool and a cardboard box balanced on a plastic crate—though, Beans notes, there’s a perfectly serviceable card table shoved off to the side of the room. For hours now, Loudermilk has been reliving, via recorded audio, the secret history of his own inhumanity. Anton Beans now knows well what it sounds like not just to be made love to by Loudermilk but to be surveilled by him, and it’s starting to be difficult, most distressing of all, not to take Loudermilk just the littlest bit seriously, particularly given the fact that among the horde of anonymous co-eds, Beans thinks he can make out the whimpers and obscene requests of one or two female poets whose unthreatening competence in sestina and pantoum composition had previously led him to consider them as potential reviewers for his next book. There’s been some maniacal laughter from the desk, too, some cries of, “Stellar!” and “Fuck, yes!” which presumably indicate moments at which Loudermilk has astonished himself with his own intellectual prowess, or maybe the activities of his own dick, it’s so tragically challenging to tell the two apart. Beans isn’t, by the way, sure what Loudermilk is getting up to here, but the athletic lout does actually appear to be writing, drafting something Beans is afraid may well be a Loudermilkian take on the Great American Novel, which Beans supposes is probably just what the Great American Novel is supposed to be, anyhow.

Now Loudermilk mutters, “‘A golden statue with long, swift arms; cheeks like beaten metal, gleaming and enticing, since expensive. Her braless tits were plums.’” He pauses. “No, fuck me. ‘Her sweet, tart tang was . . . plum’? Fuck.”

Beans begins dry heaving.

Loudermilk shakes his head. He is crossing some things out, chuckling and sighing. He replays a recent visit to Marta Hillary’s office hours.

“You may sit.” Marta is alert, formal.

There’s the sound of a zipper, movement of stuffs. The recorder is relocated.