Loveless

To me she was the vision of devine perfection. An angel sent from heaven for, who knows what reason, maybe God was bored. "Hey, man', I heard Brother Man say through my one good ear, the other had been damaged by listening to him play too much heavy metal, "did you see that girl up there, she's a total pixie!" By that I knew what he meant. Brother Man was always ascribing to women the characteristics of various fairy folk. If she wasn't a pixie she was a sprite, or dwarf, or in worst case scenarios, a zombie. "Hey you should totally "pixelate" her if you catch my drift!" Unfortunately, I did catch his drift. I scooted up to the front of Dr. Mengle's freshman English class to get a better look. She was dressed in an orange tank top, with khaki shorts, and matching orange flip flops, each toe was painted orange to match the ensemble. I will forgive her for her fashion sense, because when you're in the presence of an angelic pixe, you do such things.

I had been assigned to this class because I had fallen outside of the testing guidelines for the regular writing course and now, St. Joe's Community College was about to experience it's first real artist. Well, that's what I thought anyway. Look out Shakespeare, look out Hemingway, Mr. Barker (Kyle Barker, my friends, if I had any, called me "Bark" for short) was about to set the literary world on flame, it's ear, and any other quaint, folksy maxims I could think off. Mr. Mengle was an old hippie type with a deep baritone voice that offset his shoulder length and increasingly receding hairline. I liked him immensley. This, after all, was the guy who would usher me into my experience as a writer. Much like the ephemeral beauty now just two rows to my right would usher me into my first experience with manhood. As I watched her shift in her seat and turn around I saw the bespectacled round face and a glint of sunlight on the cover of her textbook. It was love at first, casual glance.

The first assignment in Writing For The Creatively Advanced, as I was now calling the course, was to compose a short play. This was exciting, as I had never attempted dramatic literature before and was awash in ideas, all involving my pixie. I had learned secondhand that her name was Bethany and that she was a first year drama student at the nearby arts academy, my heart immediately went out to her. I had always wanted to be an actor ever since grade school's "Fairy Tale Revue '89" lit up the marquee at Crockfort Elementary School's annual Spring Fling. My play short was 'The Princess and the Pea" I played the pea. In fact, I still have the green tights to prove it. Anyway, Miss Eggles was so impressed with my performance that she gave me a silver plaque, a "C" for effort, you might call it. The gold one went to Ned Ealan for playing the dashing prince. I always dreamt of "dashing" his crown jewels if you know what I mean.

The first part of the assignment was really fun. It could basically be done on your own. I had to come up with a story idea and develop it into a workable play format. I worked long and hard at this. It took me about ten minutes. I hear Shakespeare took twenty to compose the outline for "Romeo and Juliette." Then we had to present it to the class. It took some stumbling but i finally got up there. "It's about a pixie see," I could tell Brother Man was really into this, 'and she falls in love with this handsome prince who rides a motorcycle, only it's a magic cycle, that can take her anywhere in the world she wants to go. Except space. Because there's no air in space. So when the pixie and the prince go to space, she decides not to put a suit on, so she dies." Besides Brother Man, who seemed really into it, I could tell the rest of the class was less than amused. Also Mr. Mengle was clearly trying not to laugh. Well, fuck him.

 



  It was two weeks later. I just couldn't get excited about this class anymore. This pixie thing was a chore. Because of the spontaneous outburst that was my play pitch, everyone thought I was either weird or incredibly ironic. I like how college students just think you're weird or ironic. In high school, if I had found myself in this mess, I would have gotten the poops knocked out of me. Yes I just said, "poops", because that's what I say, "poops." Deal with it.