At this point Ellis grabbed his own balls, hopped up and down.
Ellis looked at Morgan, waited for commentary.
The class sat in dead quiet. Dumbstruck. Morgan went pale, his lips squeezed tight and bloodred like wet paint.
Belinda paled, hugged herself in her seat.
Lancaster tugged at his collar. “Well…” He looked at his copy of the poem, made useless scratches with his pen. “Well, yes. Okay then. I think it’s very brave of Sherman to embrace certain clichés and stereotypes in an attempt to… uh… explore the dangers of…” He shook his head. “Look, I don’t really know
DelPrego’s mouth hung open. “Jesus.” He barked a hard laugh. “I mean… Jesus.”
Morgan shuffled the stack of poems, stood slowly. He turned, walked out the door. The students waited a minute, looked at one another, but their professor didn’t come back.
Ginny waited on Morgan’s porch. She was there smiling coyly when he arrived home.
He froze when he saw her, looked around.
“I thought you’d call me,” Ginny said. That’s how it was supposed to work. She cast her spell, and the poet wouldn’t be able to live without her. But he hadn’t called.
“I didn’t think you wanted me to.” He unlocked the front door, and she followed him in.
“You hurt my feelings,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“No, I was being dumb.” She put her hand on his hip. Tentative. This would be the test. If he shrugged her off, then she was barking up the wrong tree. “Can we go in the bedroom?”
“Sure.”
He stood stiffly, let her unzip him, strip him clean. She unbuttoned her blouse, wriggled out of her too tight jeans, white breasts spilling over a red lace bra. She peeled off thong panties. They moved to the bed and didn’t talk.
When she was on top of him, Morgan tilted his head back into the pillow, closed his eyes. Ginny ground into him, bit her lower lip hard. Even if Morgan never helped her writing career, she still liked this part. Liked it a lot.
seventeen
Harold Jenks slumped at the bar between his new classmates Timothy Lancaster III and Wayne DelPrego. They’d just started their fourth pitcher of beer.
When class had ended and Morgan had walked out, Jenks had just stood there with his balls in his hand. His first poem hadn’t gone over so well, so he’d really tried to sell this one, put everything into it. Make it one righteous, kick-ass performance. But by the time he’d finished reading, he’d found himself in a roomful of truly terrified white people.
Most of the class had filed out, carefully not making eye contact. But Wayne DelPrego had approached him, shaking his head, a smart-ass grin crooked on his face.
“Christ Almighty,” DelPrego said. “You’ve either got some jumbo, supersized testicles or you’re high.”
Jenks told DelPrego to fuck his mother.
“Take it easy, man,” DelPrego said. “The poetry thing’s a tough gig. Let me buy you a beer. Timothy and I get one after every workshop.”
Jenks thought briefly about busting DelPrego in the mouth, but decided a beer would be more helpful. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t even noon.
Time flew by at the bar, and Jenks found himself deep in meaningless conversation with Lancaster and DelPrego.
“Have you seen the statistics on college binge drinking?” Lancaster held his beer mug up for inspection, wiped a smudge clean with his napkin. “This is dangerously stereotypical behavior we’re engaging in.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jenks said. “Well, you just ended your sentence with a preposition.” Dr. Grayson had just drilled him on prepositions yesterday in the Writing Lab. She was one hard-core bitch.
“Touché.” Lancaster sipped beer, but it had gotten warm. He frowned, pushed the mug away.
“Shit,” DelPrego said. “After Morgan’s class, we need a few belts. That guy doesn’t like anything.”
“I hear that.” Lancaster had told Jenks his poem amounted to little more than predictable rhyme and juvenile posturing. No imagery, little attention to the intricacies of language. Jenks wasn’t totally sure he knew what that meant, but he was sure it wasn’t good. But at least Lancaster hadn’t walked out of class looking like he was about to puke.
This shit was going to be harder than he thought.
“Yes, well, he wasn’t totally without a point,” Lancaster said. He waved the bartender over. “Take this away,” he said, indicating the beer mug. “Bring me a chardonnay please.”
The big bartender scowled down at him. “This ain’t exactly a chardonnay-type place.”
Jenks chuckled. It was true. The place was pretty rough and backwoodsy. A long unpainted pine bar, mismatched stools, seats, and tables. DelPrego had told Jenks that the noise coming out of the jukebox was some shit called Vince Gill. But the place had pool tables and cold beer, and right now that was enough. DelPrego had convinced Jenks and Lancaster to enter the place on the grounds the drinks were cheap.
“You don’t like my rhymes?” Jenks asked Lancaster.
“Just a second, Sherman.” Lancaster turned back to the bartender. “Do you have any wine at all?”
The bartender bent behind the bar, came back up with a screw-cap jug the size of a Volkswagen, half-full. “This. It’s red.”
“Dear God. No, I can’t drink that. Just a glass of water with lemon.”
The bartender rolled his eyes and walked away. It didn’t look like he was in any hurry to bring Lancaster his water.
Jenks tapped Lancaster’s shoulder. “I asked you a question.”
Lancaster sighed. “Frankly, I didn’t care for it. Perhaps I’m too traditional.”
“Fuck you, man.”
DelPrego snickered.
“Fuck you too,” Jenks said.
“That’s another thing,” Lancaster said. “You don’t seem to get the idea of the workshop. Perhaps they do it differently where you’re from. But essentially, we’re supposed to say whatever we think about the work. You’re not supposed to take it personally. I mean it’s about focusing on the work, not the person.”
“Fuck you anyway.”
“Like you can talk, Timothy,” DelPrego said. “Professor Morgan didn’t like your shit either. Or mine for that matter. He hates us, man.”
Jenks slapped the bar with an open palm. “That’s what I’m talking ’bout. That motherfucker can’t be pleased
