in that haunting poem of yours, “The Death of Little Boys.” I am that pale boy tripping shyly across the lean years…sinking and rising/Thinking himself the one preferred,/Claiming his alone your intimate effusions. I had expected college to be one long, narcoleptic limbo (I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, how’s that for a joke?), a soul-crushingly endless procession of textbooks and forgettable faces in front of the blackboard. That creative- writing class made me feel how it was to be a real student once again. “Student” is too weak a word. Perhaps this was how kung fu apprentices felt like when coming under the tutelage of a wizened master—that sense of obligation not quite toward the source of authority but to one’s self, a deeply selfish agenda for which the apprentice would be willing to suffer and sacrifice. I never thought I’d get all buzzed up over words like “theory” and “defamiliarization.” But I remember that class. Not the exact date and time—but I’m sure it was 1992—and I still remember vividly all the details of that first day. That room was sandwiched between the first- floor lavatory and the faculty center. Compared with the other classrooms, it was big—and had infernal ventilation. Even the acoustics sucked—if you were seated at the back, all you’d hear would be Viper-car alarms accidentally set off and the chatter of passersby outside. Instead of individual desks, we had long wooden tables with iron edges that were pure torture to the elbows after 30 minutes. You were always impeccably garbed. Nobody this stylish has the right to weave such impossible poetry. I was under the impression that the number of graduate degrees is normally inversely proportional to one’s sense of fashion. Back then, they called you “Dean D” or “Dindi,” either of which didn’t really matter because nobody actually bothered to spell it out anyway. Nobody spray-painted hateful and obscene slogans
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