21

Do to me? Do to me? It's nothing done to ME! It's this fucking book, this goddamned place, these people. It isn't me . . . Reading is harmless, reading is fun, teaching is good for you and good for students and good for society: good like vegetables and quitting smoking and exercise and safe sex and working on "interpersonal relationships" . . . Oh, yes, so fucking good, so to speak, and it's not just that I'm an academic, it's that I can't read, I can't write, and I feel like killing this whole beast: drop out of this academic scene and into a warm pool of blood . . . and it's ugly, too, ugly as hell and not getting better . . .

This is an ugly scene: running through the streets of University, shouting at the top of my lungs, the torn, bloodstained pages of the text still in my trembling fingers . . . what? What was it? A book. No! Not just a book! I was supposed to read the book, they said: just let it "work" on me . . . But did I have to write a response to the book? Who said that? Who? What--more voices? Maybe--but fuck it. It's all academic now. All the voices have those tones, all of it . . . and where's my dignity now? Shit! I run past the butcher's window with a sneer: bloody meat and that's all? No pages to turn? My balls are climbing into my intestines now, I'm ready to--what? What's left? I can't read anymore since I've smashed my glasses and gouged out my left eyeball . . . who are these people? Why are they staring at me? I jump into the car stuttering at the crosswalk: stab the red-eyed bitch in the seat, she's one of THEM, jab her in the soft left temple with my Cross pen--the one mom gave me for graduation. "Die, slut!" I shriek, as I scatter the pages into the dusty wind behind her car . . . Stop. I've got to think . . . what pages? Ah, yes, but surely this was supposed to be a good book, one that--Who? Harry? The dean? Somebody--anyway, it was supposed to be therapeutic: Academic Addictions. But only twenty pages into it--only twenty--and I felt the ripping sound in my cortex, right there in the limbic cortex there was a shriek from some reptile trapped in a dopamine vesicle, the sound of a tiny pteranodon moaning for its mother after a nasty slashing fight with a, a, a . . . fuck! A professor! I'm supposed to know these things! I can't live this way, not any more, not after this--this searing, stabbing, tearing night of groveling and gore, it's too much, I can't teach, I can't reach, my glasses smashed, molasses gashed, I'll wreak destruction on this whole fucking academic world, the University and everything in it, everything around it, town and gown to shreds, I'm dead, I'm dead!

The dean, yes, the dean, that flipped-out shithead who gave me the fucking book in the first place, here read this ha ha ha! He thought he could do me that way, well little did he know I'd do him, offed him in his office, yes indeedy, my good deed for the day, Doris Day, the Te of the Tean, Sweet Seventeen! But no, that's wrong, his daughter lives, that sweet smiling little Barbie doll, bouncing on daddy's lap, can't have that, I know where that lying weasel lives, lived, sorry, can't keep my fucking tenses straight any more! Get in there, shoot up the place, rip the face off his wife and children, then they'll only have one face, his! the twofaced bastard! Let the cops come, I don't care, shootout at the whitepeople's corral, and death on toast to them all! Therapy! Therapy! I'll give them therapy! Dangerous book! Danger! Book! I'll give them danger--

(Doug, this is shameless. Here we are writing this book, and we're making out like it's ruined this poor fucker's life or that it could make somebody see the error of their ways and change something about their miserable life-- come on. Are we strung out or what? BK)

(Don't think about it, Bill. You think too much, live in your head too much, let it go, let it flow. Your thinking addiction is getting in the way of this book's success. DR)

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