Chapters (60)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Personae
- I: Early Days
- One. Control
- Two. Doubt
- Three. Fate
- Four. Same
- Five. Fine Arts
- Six. In Loco Parentis
- Seven. Settling
- Eight. Neighbors
- Nine. Prospects
- Ten. The Lucky
- Eleven. Instruction
- Twelve. Same
- Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
- Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
- Fifteen. The Reason
- Sixteen. That Person
- Seventeen. Predictably
- II: Writing Teacher
- Eighteen. Early Poems
- Nineteen. Motivation
- Twenty. Allegory
- Twenty-One. Grief
- Twenty-Two. A Portrait
- Twenty-Three. Veils
- Twenty-Four. Soft Power
- Twenty-Five. Lists
- Twenty-Six. A Break
- Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
- Twenty-Eight. Custom
- Twenty-Nine. Parity
- Thirty. Fortune
- III: Volta
- Thirty-One. Images
- Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
- Thirty-Three. Letters
- Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
- Thirty-Five. Love
- Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
- IV: Your Best Reader
- Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
- Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
- Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
- Forty. Détente
- Forty-One. Worlds
- Forty-Two. Recognition
- Forty-Three. Persistence
- Forty-Four. And Then
- Forty-Five. Mingling
- Forty-Six. You
- Forty-Seven. Persona
- Forty-Eight. Est et Non
- Forty-Nine. The Author
- Epilogue
- Afterword: The Libertine
- Acknowledgments
- About the Authors
They’ve mentioned none of this to Greg, their former college roommate and unwitting chaperone in the world of graduate-level creative writing. Greg, a genuine American poet, was unsuccessful in his own applications to programs conferring the degree of Master of Fine Arts and has returned home to live with his parents and temp at a bank for the next year. They are probably going to lose touch with him.
Six. In Loco Parentis
Six
In Loco Parentis
Loudermilk and Harry wander the gelatinous Cretan afternoon.
The campus should be just a few blocks off, but they don’t really know where they are. Loudermilk has donned a hot-pink trucker hat he found on the floor of the sorority-reject house. Whiteout has been used to write KEEP IT KNOCKIN! across the front of its foam dome. Loudermilk is also wearing a pair of long khaki cutoff shorts and a white T-shirt. He wears green-and-white Adidas. He is six foot three and built like a water polo champion. His face is hard to look away from. His square jaw resolves itself into a gentle cleft above which shapely lips give levity to otherwise chiseled features. His blondish hair has recently been bleached blonder. Beside Loudermilk, Harry is aware that he resembles, by comparison, a half- or subhuman, a hobbit or shaved teddy bear. He also wears shorts, T-shirt, sneakers. He has no hat, and the sun pains his sensitive eyes.
When they first met, during a sophomore-year honors course in feminist world literature at Oswego, they were the only males in the room. Harry kept to himself, deflated in a one-arm desk. Loudermilk pursued a lipstick lesbian, intermittently flicking things at her. Matters would have continued so, had it not been for the instructor’s decision to turn to poetry, since, as she maintained, “You aren’t doing the reading.” Poems were, the professor mused, pinching her chin, mercifully short world-literary items—though it turned out she knew breathtakingly little about them. This was where Harry came in. Or, rather, where Harry’s vastly solitary childhood did, since during one awkward pause he retrieved a line of Dickinson from memory before he knew what he was doing.
People stared.
Harry’s pitch was a little off but not out-and-out alarming. Which is to say, better than usual. Still, he promptly shut up.
After class, Loudermilk lingered. “Loudermilk,” he informed Harry with pastel gentleness, though Harry was already very much aware who Loudermilk was. “What was that stuff?”
Harry, vibrating in place, managed to shrug. Together they went outdoors. Loudermilk didn’t seem to mind doing all the talking.