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
Harry sips his beer. Dread is a lead bib. Loudermilk is a gas-happy dental technician. They have been playing this modified game of fort/da on and off for the past month. Harry tries a different tack. He asks, Has he not been writing the poems? Has he not graciously upheld his end of the bargain?
Loudermilk, behind glassless glasses, grins. “That’s very touching, Harrison. And, to remind you, it’s so far been just one poem. Which went over very well, spank you very much, and by the way I know you’ve been trying to milk that shit for all it’s worth. However, you and I both know there’s another side to this project, which involves me getting you up off of your veal-like caboose from time to time.”
“Not interested.”
“Harry, dude, I know you’re not, as you put it, ‘interested.’ That is the whole mother-loving point. Your lack of ‘interest,’ as you call it. It’s worrisome. It’s abnormal. It’s going to ruin your life. We’ve been through this.”
Harry’s stomach is beginning to bother him.
“I am trying to help you. You comprehend that, right?” Loudermilk withdraws and returns in seconds with a white sheet. “Here, for you, you fucking crazy diamond,” he says, flourishing the bedding. He goes into the kitchen and gets a steak knife and rips a pair of crude holes in the material. He drops the sheet over Harry’s head. “Shine on.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“I find zero humor in your predicament, Harrison. Thus I’m one-hundred-percent honest-to-god serious, and non, non, non this is not my idea of une très funny joke, as the Frenchies like to say, right before they go off to do something esoteric and cowardly. This is, like, the ideal. I’m a fucking genius and I’m cooking with lava. Now, let’s get a move on. Party’s at butter-face Christy’s, and I want to be drinking her liquor before I’m back around here having”—Loudermilk pauses—“whatever I’m having.”
Harry doesn’t say anything.
Loudermilk, in a mechanical rage, drags Harry outdoors.
Only on the street does Harry cease resisting. It’s dark out, very dark, and Harry realizes that this is because the streetlamps in the area have been covered with heavy-duty black contractor’s bags and duct tape. The lawn of the neighboring frat has blazing tiki torches in it.
As Loudermilk and Harry come to the end of the block they hear behind them the unmistakable smacking, popping sound of Evelyn’s shack-shaped source of retirement mad money being mercilessly egged.