the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

I had two Spanish exchange students in my composition class this semester, Alvaro and José Davide. They're seniors here, but commissioned lieutenants in Spain (some countries commission their cadets before they finish their military schooling). From the beginning of the semester, they struggled. Writing a foreign language is quite different from speaking it. Each skill is different--reading, writing, understanding the spoken word, and speaking--so this isn't surprising. I've always been much better at reading French, for example, than understanding it when spoken.

Anyway...from the beginning of the semester, they poured their time and effort into my class. They spent countless hours at the Writing Center and working on their projects and getting fellow cadets to read their papers, and of course, just about every week each of them was in my office talking about their papers and asking questions. Their papers, over the course of the semester, improved by leaps and bounds. They continued to work closely with me. 

Today, they turned in their final papers (the rest of the class submits theirs on Thursday, but Alvaro and José Davide aren't required to come to class on the last official day; I think they're expected to be packing and saying their goodbyes). They asked, nonetheless, if they could get feedback on their final papers. It's rare for any student to be that invested, but this didn't surprise me. I promised to grade their papers immediately and set up one final meeting with each of them to discuss their work. 

They came in after the last period today, José Davide first. As always, we went through his paper line by line and discussed the grammar and content. He'd made an A on it (up from D's at the beginning of the semester). He thanked me for how much I'd helped him and how much it meant to him, told me he felt that this class was probably the most valuable one he'd taken this semester, and bade me goodbye. I shook his hand and wished him well. 

Then Alvaro came in. Four months ago, he'd been in tears after the first two (minor) assignments in my class because he had worked so hard and still not met the minimum standard. He was making F's. Now, we went over his paper briefly. He'd made a higher A than José Davide on the final. Then he said, "I want to thank you for everything. We come up here every week, and you're always here to help--all we need." He paused, then: "I feel like I haven’t actually studied English before now. I’ve been studying English for 18 years and you’re the first person who has actually taught it to me. I will always remember you. Thank you." 

I cried. I said, "I'm deeply honored. It's been an honor to work with the both of you. Thank you." I gave him a hug and wished him well. 

I've rarely felt so at peace with what I do, so vindicated for my work, and so happy. 

***

In other news, I had my students write and present stories as their final project in my literature class this semester. Of course, they wrote a final paper, but there was still a matter of an oral presentation worth 10% of the final grade. I decided that we would spend the semester talking about how a good narrative should be written--how writers manipulate POV, what details they include and exclude, how they arrange the plot, how they use language--and my students would try their hand at it and present it to the class. The threat of public humiliation is a powerful motivator for most, you know. ;) 

Here, by permission, is the best story I've gotten so far. The writer is a sophomore named IainJames Armitage. I've taken the liberty of "cleaning up" the writing, also by permission (in his words, "Please feel free to sculpt it with your literary hands"), as the story was written to present, not to turn in. I hope you enjoy. (Disclaimer, just in case you think you need this on my blog: There's a lot of vulgarity in it, but it isn't gratuitous.)

It’s funny what fame does to a man.... Fame will pick you up… it will cradle you. It will hold you in its arms like the newborn child that you are. It will give you everything that you ever wanted. Fame is a rush….

Fame is 42 shows in 14 weeks, coast to coast…. Fame is being backstage and having the crowd chant because they're nothing more than hungry dogs and boy, you’re their dinner. FAME is killing your set, murdering your rhymes, and leaving the audience trembling in the hot sweat of ecstasy.... Fame is walking into the club with nothing more than a gold plated iphone and leaving with every bitch in the house. Fame is night after night of turn up. It’s drinking until the world turns black and the lights stop flashing. Fame is a house party at some rich promoter’s mountainside home that you didn’t want to go to because you haven’t slept in two days but your manager said you have to because its all about the appearances. Fame is fucking everything you see because you can even though you know you shouldn’t. Fame is wondering how the fuck you're going to explain all this shit to Sam.

“Tommy! Tommy! Is everything all right?”

“Huh? Oh...yeah, yeah, Baby. I'm fine. You know what, actually...I really…I really need to go find Danny. I just fucking remembered him saying something about about the concert or some shit.”

“But Tommy, I was gonna try out my special move on you tonight, Baby.”

“Yeah, I know, Baby. How about this--you, uhh, you hang tight. I’ll go find Danny, grab us some more drinks and then I’ll be right back. How about that?”

“Uhhh, yeah that sounds alrig…..”

The door slams shut...Ha, I didn’t even let that bitch finish her sentence. Jesus, how the fuck did that happen? I have to stop drinking Jack Daniels. Definitely… I swear that shit just makes me crazy for those blonds. Speaking of blonds, wait…what color was her hair again? Ha! Who am I kidding? I'm too drunk to remember this shit anyways. Hell, I'm too fucking drunk to walk.. Oh...ope yupp...there’s the railing.

I grab ahold of it and pull myself straight. C’mon buddy, use two hands. Ahh...there we go. I find myself staring out over the valley in Southern California. By this point I'm half leaning, half standing. My legs feel like the pasta that my mom used to make when she was in too much of a rush to get to her night shift on time to cook it all the way through. They’re soft yet still have enough rigidity to keep me up right. As I stand there, trying desperately to hold back the raging typhoon of liquor, shrimp, Red Bull and God knows what else I fucking consumed in my drunken state, I wonder.

How the fuck did it come to all this, Tommy? I mean, Jesus Christ. Looking at it all, its crazy to think that I made it. Ha! I fucking made it…. I remember being that scrawny extra-large-white-tshirt-wearing motherfucker standing on the corner on my way back from work and looking up at the lights on the hills. I remember feeling like those lights might as well have been the stars in the sky for all I cared. Hell, I never saw any real stars anyway. With all the street lights, billboards, and just dumb old motherfuckers who didn’t give a shit and left their lights on I never saw the night sky. But those lights on the hill? Man, those were the stars that I’d count at night and I knew one day I’d climb in a brand new Ferrari rocket ship and I’d make it there. It all happened so fast, I went from staring at those lights to staring back at where I came from.

Drake described this shit as "started from the bottom." But that’s the truth, I started from nothing. My mom was a single mother working two jobs at the hospital to support me and my brother. I worked my way through high school and spent every dime I had on recording equipment. All my money went to my bedroom studio that me and my friends dubbed The Lair. The cost of The Lair left me piss broke every month but it's all right. I never liked the smell of that money anyways. It stank like that greasy-ass Mexican food truck I worked in. You know the kind of food I'm taking about. It’s the kind that gums up your stomach and just sits there in a bubbling, brewing, gassy mess for a day and a half until you can finally shit it out. I didn’t want that shit in my wallet anyways. The money I wanted smelled like champagne and cocaine.

Work, school, and dedicating every waking second to my craft was my grind in high school. Its two AM on Friday nights and there I’d be sitting at my desk. Headphones on and my face being bathed by the soft blue light of my laptop while my friends spit their mediocre ass rhymes into the mic. We didn’t care. When it’s two AM and there’s clouds of skunk weed from four feet off the ground up to the ceiling, row row row your boat might as well have been Kanye’s new mixtape. Oddly enough, that’s when I wrote my first rhyme about the only girl I ever thought I loved.

Her name was Samantha Bjornstead. She was a hard-bodied daughter of a lawyer dad and a stay at home mom. Her legs and ass were fit and toned from years of beach volleyball. Her breasts weren’t anything to write home about but they did fit comfortably in my hand. Her hair was a bright red but it carried a depth within its strands. It sometimes reminded me of a crimson tide as it swayed back and forth brushing across her back where her bra strap lay. Her skin was naturally fair but it had been turned a beer bronzed brown by the California sun. It reminded me of one of those perfectly toasted marshmallows. She was average height for a girl, I guess. By the time I stopped growing at 6-1, she could comfortably rest her head on my chest while we wasted nights standing in the illumination of a street light. On the outside, she was perfect.

It’s funny though, the SoCal lifestyle did not provide much in the way of parental love for a little girl. Her dad came home late, she told me that he always said it was because of some big case he was working on, but she really knew it was because he was plowing his secretary in some hotel room downtown. Sam’s mother wasn’t the greatest role model, either. When Sam was two her mother got rear ended and slipped a couple vertebrate in her neck. Her valley doctor gave her some prescriptions for the pain and it had been downhill ever since. Anytime Sam came over she would always be quick to share her mother’s prescription-fueled drunken escapades with me. Sam knew her parents were nothing more than children with money and in a way, I guess she was okay with that.

I guess that’s what drew me to her. She was everything that I tried to capture in my music. Perfect at a glance but when you really take a look, you notice the cracks behind the façade. We dated off and on throughout high school. Our relationship felt like we were walking towards each other from opposite ends of a tight rope. The air between us was filled with everyday bullshit like school and money or our family and friends. The bullshit could have knocked us off the tightrope and left us hanging in the wind. But we both knew that in order to be together, we had to take a step towards each other and hope the wind wouldn’t take hold of us. We’d each take a step closer and wobble there for a while. We would doubt if we would make it, both not wanting to fall into the abyss below and lose the other person forever. We’d take a breath, regain our trust in the rope that we shared and take another step forward. One day we made it; all the things that came between us like worrying about money or living under our parents' roof was gone. Fame had come for me and I made sure I didn’t go alone. I had the money and I had Sam. I thought we’d be together forever. Then something happened. I can’t remember what it was. It’s like I’m trying to look at a bathroom mirror just after a hot shower. Something’s there but I can only make out a blur.

It doesn’t matter. All that matters now is that I’m home.

“Shit, I’m home! Oh fuck, I need to call Sam. Shit! Where’s my phone?”

“Wait, what the fuck am I doing? Don’t call Sam, you idiot.”

“Don’t worry I got this, I got this.”

“Oh yeah? What’s she gonna think about that blond you just left in that bedroom, huh? Or better yet, what is she gonna think about you fucking everything that moves from coast to coast?”

“I just won’t tell her bro, it’ll be fine. Shut the fuck up.”

“C’mon, don’t give me that shit, Bro. You know Sam, you think she doesn’t already know what you’ve been doing at the after parties? News flash: she know, Dumbass.”

“Oh shit, you’re right, oh fuck oh fuck. Shit, (*hurling noise*) I’m gonna be sick.”

I take off as fast as my spaghetti legs will carry me in search of a bathroom to puke my guts out in. I bob and weave between bros, blonds, and brunettes. It’s funny…everyone at this party looks the same. Everyone looks like Sam.

HUUUUUUUUU. 25 minutes later my body is bathed in the warm yellow light of the bathroom. Ha! The last time I had dry heaves like that I was in junior high drinking 40s with my crew. Glad those days are behind me.

*knock at the door* “Tommy! Hey Tommy! Are you in there? C’mon, Man, there's a couple people out here I’d like you to meet.”

“All right Bro. Just a second. Lemme finish up with this chick real quick.”

I haul myself off the bathroom floor and take a look in the mirror. “Oh shit,… I can’t go out there like this. I look like I just got hit by a fucking truck.”

All right. Daddy's got something to make me good as new. I frantically search through my pockets until I find the golden nugget that I’m looking for. It’s a little clear white vile with a black screw top cap. I twist off the cap and dump the whole stash on the counter top. It makes a little mound that resembles the snowcapped peaks in Tahoe. I quickly mash the pile into the two little train tracks that’ll carry me back to heaven’s door.

*Snorting sound* “Oh fuck, that’s good stuff.”

I feel my brain going a mile a minute and look back at myself in the mirror to see if my increased mental state makes me look any better. I barely recognize the figure staring back at me but I know it’s me. Then without moving a muscle, he smiles and says, “What’s wrong, Tommy?”

“You know what’s fucking wrong, Man. You know I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“Oh but Tommy, my boy, you did. You asked for it all. You wrote those rhymes and they got you here.”

“I’d take it back, you know I would fucking take it back if I could. Where is she, where’s Sam?”

“Sam’s gone, Tommy. She left you and good riddance. You can have any woman in the world now, Tommy. You don’t have to settle anymore.”

“Hey fuck you, Man! I wasn’t settling.”

*knock* “Hey Tommy! You all right, Man?”

“Huh? Yeah...yeah. I’ll be right out.”

“You’d better go, Tommy. The life you made is waiting.”

I turned to leave but as I did I heard a bing. I guess it was my mother’s timer saying the pasta was done because my legs buckled and I hit the floor.

It’s funny what sex, drugs, and alcohol can do to you. The right combination and you can find yourself waking up in an LA county hospital with your mother and manager at your bedside. The right combination can do more than put you in the hospital. It can help you forget that your fiancé and best friend drank herself into a stupor, got in her car, and drove herself into a tree at 100 miles per hour because she was tired of your fucking bullshit.

As I step out of the hospital, I don my Raybans to protect my eyes from the California sunlight. I hear someone down the street scream my name. I turn and can’t help but crack a smile.

Isn’t it funny what fame does to a man?

***

When he finished the performance, the class just sat there stunned for a long moment before applauding. I asked, "Why the hell aren't you an English major?" He just shrugged. I swear...if I could, I'd have this young man leave the Academy, get himself into a proper liberal arts college, develop his talent, and write. Those metaphors! Damn.

Jane--my colleague and good friend--asked me how I get my students to write such amazing papers. I smirked and said, "Well, I'm an amazing teacher." Then I told the truth: "I have incredibly bright students." 

And I really believe it. 

d