My current main project is a novella tentatively titled “Bloom”. It’s about a straight man, Ben, who falls in love with his gay best friend, David. This is a short excerpt from the novella. It occurs in the last third of the novella, when Ben has begun to “come out” about his relationship with David. The fact their relationship has evolved into a romantic (and sexual) one is still not common knowledge to many people in their lives.
There’s some sexual content in this, and there might be typos and errors.
At least it never bores me. Everyone else, including the graduate students (who I spoil rotten) whinge and moan about having to teach it. What was it she said last week?
“Freshman creative writing makes me want to kill myself.”
But I love it. More accurately: I love the students. I love watching the students bounce and slouch and lumber and pirouette into the classroom, burdened with staggeringly heavy, overpacked backpacks, still smelling vaguely of the vegetable stew the dining halls served a few days ago because freshmen and showering are not natural allies. These are not earthly creatures. These are creatures underaware of proper hygiene, scruffy, blinking sleepily at one o’clock in the afternoon. Creatures who write three pages of unbroken prose about cabbage just to see if they can piss me off. And I annoy them right back by putting smiley faces next to my critiques.
All of these run-ons are not appropriate for this story. They add nothing to it. 🙂
Ah, well. They have to learn somewhere. I too was a grubby college freshman. And before my American Lit professor introduced me to Jack Spicer, I was thinking maybe I’d be some kind of piping designer. I was dopey, dull, and doomed to a life without poetry.
How’d that poem go?
People who don’t like the smell of — vomit . . . ?
