“What? No. Look at that rack. It adds three points. She’s at least a seven. Maybe even a seven point five.”
This statement was deserving of an eye-roll. Thus, I rolled my eyes.
Barely functioning, hormone-addled cretins were my punishment for putting off first year English until my third year at university. I ought to have CLEP-ed out of the class—which was where one takes a proficiency test in lieu of three credit hours spent weekly in a classroom. This approach hadn’t come to fruition for two reasons.
First, I got drunk the night before the exam last summer and failed it. I fell asleep halfway through the essay portion.
I’m not a drunk, not yet at any rate, but I do enjoy a night of oblivion from time to time. I’m haunted, mostly by ghosts of blokes I used to know. Watching other people die requires turning off a switch within oneself. When everything was illuminated and yet still dark—shadowy with regret and the knowledge of true pain, true suffering—my ability to live and function in the present was compromised.
How I longed to scream at people, how I longed to wake them to the world around them, and not their petty concerns of TV dinners and the cancellation of their favorite TV shows . . .
But alas, no one likes a harbinger of truth. So I opted for infrequent periods of drunk debauchery in an effort to curb my killjoy proclivities.
The other reason I’d enrolled in English 101 was because I needed a boost to my grade point average. My humanities teacher had given me a C last semester. Note the distinction: It hadn’t been deserved. It had been given. Like a present. Or a sexually transmitted disease.
I’d had the audacity to call him an insufferable twat. He was an insufferable twat. But then what did I expect from a ponytail-wearing pacifist who spent five dollars on a cup of coffee, yet complained daily about his paltry adjunct stipend?
Also, he was a philosophy Ph.D. candidate. The most pretentious and worthless of all college degrees, where nothing was made or produced or accomplished, except endless discussion of feelings and thoughts. So, again, nothing accomplished.
In retrospect, I ought not to have called him an insufferable twat in front of the entire class. That was on me. My bad.
English Composition 101 was my penance.
Apparently the hormone-addled cretins behind me were part of that penance.
“She’s a six point five and no higher. Butterface. Put a paper bag over her head or fuck her from behind and she goes up a half point.”
I gritted my teeth.
Lord, give me strength.
“What about her?”
“Which one? The fat one?”
“No. The short one; she just walked in. I’d totally fuck her face to face.”
My attention flickered to the side, to the young lady at my left. She wasn’t the subject of their objectification, but she had obviously overheard their comments. Her youthful face was flushed and stricken, clearly horrified. From the looks of her, she was in her first year, likely fresh from some corn farm in Iowa.
And now she was going to think all men were insufferable twats. I felt sorry for her. But mostly, I felt sorry for the nice boy who would one day want to court her attention, only to find her prejudiced against all men, and living with a flannel-wearing lesbian.
Then again, I considered the matter and concluded, flannel-wearing lesbians are pretty awesome. I decided the wankers behind me might be doing her a favor.
“Whoa . . . I see her. Christ. I’d let her suck my dick.”
I gripped the edge of the desk. Where the hell was the professor?
I hadn’t checked to see who they were speaking of. It didn’t matter. No one deserved to be subjected to such filth and degradation. If the next statement out of their mouths wasn’t in reference to their cherished mother, I would have no choice but to ruin their day.
“I would come all over her face.”
“She has small tits.”
“But that ass.”
“Anal, with a mirror.”
That’s it.
Straightening in my seat, I glanced over my shoulder at the boys behind me, eyed them up and down, then laughed lightly. They were as I imagined they would be, barely out of diapers.
Wait for it.
One of them, a pale-complexioned fellow with nostrils betraying his pig-nature and pockmarks betraying his juvenile mind, smirked. “You see her too? She’s got a sweet ass.”
“No. I smelled your desperation. It stinks.”
His smirk fell.
“What?”
“Your desperation,” I repeated. “You stink.”
His vanilla cheeks flushed red. “What did you say?”
“I said you smell of callow youth and masturbatory semen, also known as desperation. And I’m not the only one affected by the stench.” I lifted my chin to the young girl at my left, some seats away. Her eyes were fastened to the front of the room, though I knew she was listening to the exchange. “Perhaps save your infantile babble for someplace more appropriate, like a play yard, or your crib.”