Double Tears
Chapter 139
“You’re a storyteller. Dream up something wild and improbable.”
—Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
INDIA INK
Those words you found on the written page
That sounded so wise, the thoughts of a sage,
They weren’t really mine; I confess to deceit.
They just came from my pen as I sat in my seat:
The words and the thoughts of someone, I think,
Who works in a lab mixing India Ink.
I know each bottle I buy at the store
Is filled with great words of wisdom and lore.
Great poems, a novel, a play and short story,
Fantasy figures and tales of glory—
Thought up in front of a stainless steel sink
By the chemist who mixes India Ink.
Ms. Faber, our creative writing teacher, liked my ditty. I got an A on it. She wasn’t quite so fond of my narrative poem.
“If you decide you’d like to submit this somewhere for publication, talk to me first,” she said. “I can show you how to cut half of it and not lose the sense.”
Okay, so it was a little repetitive. That was part of the point. But the new assignment was going to kill me. We were supposed to write a personal essay based on a life experience. I couldn’t even think of a life experience I wanted to write about. Ms. Faber wasn’t Ms. Levy. If I wrote about my amazing sex life, I’d be put on detention and recommended for counseling. I could write about music or running but it seemed I’d used those topics for nearly every class I’d had. I didn’t know enough about fame yet to draw any conclusions.
It was going to be a long week.
Everyone wants something for nothing. I suppose that’s true of me, too. But I also have respect for the worth of things. I tried to let that show Tuesday afternoon when Cindy and I met with the string quartet to rehearse.
“How loud do you want us in this section?” Darrell, our violist, asked.
“Um… Why are you asking me?” I had no idea how loud he should play.
“You guys are the soloists. We’re accompanists. You get to choose how it’s played.”
“Just don’t give us some weird tempo that will make us look bad,” Rhonda, the cellist, said.
“I… uh… don’t know.” I looked desperately at Cindy. She looked like she wanted to crawl in a hole. She took a deep shuddering breath and stood up.
“Mr. LeBlanc has been rehearsing us on this all year,” she said. “Changing from full orchestra to a sextet shouldn’t change any of the markings or tempos he’s given us. Carol, you’re in first chair now,” she said looking at our violinist. “Please tune us and give us the beat to get us started.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. Cindy cringed a little. Nonetheless, Carol gave us the note we needed to tune to and then tapped out the tempo with her bow. We were a little ragged coming in and she stopped. “If I have the tempo, you have to follow me,” she said. “Let’s take it again.” She waved her bow and we actually all made the entrance. We ran straight through and stopped. I think we were all breathing kind of hard.
“I think we let the tempo creep up on us,” Cindy said. “I’m out of breath.”
“Yeah. It was like a race to the finish,” Rhonda said. “Without a conductor, how do we hold the tempo?”
We worked for an hour and ran sections with Carol sometimes counting the beat out loud. The last run-through wasn’t bad. In fact, I liked it a lot.
“I love working with you guys,” I said. “It was hard work but we really made progress. Thank you for your leadership, Carol.”
“I only did what our boss asked,” she said, looking at Cindy. I smiled at that.
“Hey, we are going to get this pulled together for the Spring Preview Concert in six weeks. How would you all feel about performing it a week before that?” I asked.
“Really? Where?”
“My church has asked Cindy and me to perform for Easter sunrise service and has left it up to us to determine what we play,” I said. “We could do this and have a real performance under our belts before the concert.”
“Sounds cool,” Jack said. He was bagging his double bass to put in the storeroom.
“Sure. It’s not like we’re ever going to get paid for something like this,” Rhonda muttered. “I don’t know why I waste my time.”
“Wait!” I said. “I forgot we were planning to do a live stream of the performance that morning for our patrons. If you are willing to do the stream with us, we could pay… a hundred bucks apiece?” Everyone looked at me like I’d just grown another head. Shit! I hope I didn’t offend everyone. “Is that not enough? We’re not experienced in paying performers. Everyone who has done something with us has been part of our pod.”
“You two are…?”
“I say we do it,” Carol said. “We’re going to rehearse this two afternoons a week for six weeks regardless. Getting a hundred bucks for it makes it almost okay.”
“I agree,” Darrell said. “Thanks for offering to pay, Jacob. I think we would have done it for free—at least I would have—but being treated like our contribution is worth something really helps.”
Bruce Sandusky came up to me Wednesday morning. From what I’d put together out of pieces of V2 memory and things my parents had said, Bruce must have been my best friend in grade school. Since V3 came to life, we haven’t spoken more than a half-dozen sentences to each other. But suddenly Wednesday morning, we were old buddies again when he caught up with me in the hall after third period.
“Jake, me lad, how’s my man?”
“Oh, hey, Bruce. Good. You?”
“Never better. My Janice is so hot my cock is about to melt. I made her shave so we didn’t start a brush fire.”
“Oh… uh… interesting.”
“Hey, she’s a real big fan of Marvel and Hopkins. How about doing me a fav and shooting me the link to your latest performance? She’d go apeshit if she got to see it before anyone else,” he said.
“Oh. I’d like to, but I can’t do that.”
“Why, man? I told her I’d get it for her.”
“Um… sorry but until we release it on the thirteenth, it is exclusively for members of our Patreon community.”
“Man, you going to screw me on this for five bucks? You sure have gone mercenary.” He was getting a little huffy and I was getting PO’d.
“It’s not about the money to me. It’s our contract with patrons. They paid for exclusive viewing rights until it’s released to the public. Giving out the link to non-patrons is cheating the patrons who paid for it.” Not only that, once the link was out it would get posted, probably on Bruce’s girlfriend’s Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.
“Yeah, whatever. Don’t let your head get so big it doesn’t fit through the doors.” He stormed off. I felt pretty strongly about dealing honestly with my patrons but maybe I was being too uptight about it. I was going to check this out with the pod to make sure we were all on the same page.
We were all over at Donna’s studying Wednesday night. Cindy’s mom had sent over a huge pan of lasagna for our dinner and we were all moaning about how full we were. We got the table cleared and were sitting around it with open computers and pads of paper. Desi and Beca were sprawled on the sofa with books open and Livy and Rachel were moaning about their class in business law and ethics. It was a dual credit class at Ivy Tech and was their first class in the morning. At least they were taking it together.
I’d finished my English assignment and sat with a blank screen in front of me, trying to figure out what to write for my creative writing personal essay. Every time I wrote something down, I backspaced it until it was gone.
Donna was sitting across from me, working her way through a pile of literary review essays. It didn’t look like she was having any fun, either.
“I’m sorry pod mates,” she sighed. “I need a glass of wine. I seem to have a class of illiterates this term and I need to dull my senses.” Nanette already had a bottle and three glasses on the kitchen counter and was removing the cork.
“Trade you,” I said. “I’ll grade your illiterate essays if you’ll write me a literate one.”
She tossed a pile of papers in front of me.
“What’s your subject?” she asked.
“Seriously?”
“No, not seriously. You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m willing to brainstorm with you, though. It would be a good break.”
“We need to get home,” Rachel said. “Who’s riding back with me?” Livy, Desi, Brittany, Cindy, and Beca all raised their hands. “Jacob, trade cars with me, please. I need six seats.”
“Sure. I think I’ll stick around and brainstorm this paper with Donna. Thanks for taking care of our girlfriends, sweetheart,” I said. I kissed Rachel and she whispered in my ear.
“With Donna, Nanette, and Sophie all drinking wine, I wouldn’t hurry home if I were you.” I kissed her again and then worked my way down the line of girlfriends as they headed out the door.
“Let’s get more comfortable,” Sophie said. With that, she did that Houdini thing I’ve discovered women can do where she pulled her arms inside her shirt, wiggled a little and thrust them back out of the sleeve holes holding her bra.
“If you get much more comfortable than that, I’ll never get this essay written,” I sighed. On the other hand, given the choice between writing my essay and watching Sophie get really comfortable… Nanette shoved a glass of wine into my hand.
“Relax,” she said.
“Hand me a few of your essays, Donna. I can read,” Sophie said.
“Same here,” Nanette said. She didn’t bother with fancy tricks. She just pulled her shirt and bra off and flopped back in a chair with her glass of wine.
Donna distributed a few essays to our girlfriends and then stripped off her own top.
“I don’t know why we bothered to keep our bras on so long this afternoon. I don’t think any of the other girls were wearing them,” she said. The dynamic really shifted when it was just the older girlfriends and me. They did have a whole different level of life experience than the rest of the pod. I wondered where Emily would fit when she finished her service. “Tell me what’s got you upset about your assignment, Jacob. Maybe I can help.”
“Well, I survived the poetry assignment. Barely. Ms. Faber liked my ditty, as she called it, but wasn’t enthused about my narrative poem.”
“Can we read them? You know, I still love getting stories from you.”
“Sure.” I pulled the two sheets from my backpack and handed them to her. She read the short poem about India ink and giggled before handing it on to Sophie. By the time Donna had finished reading the narrative poem, Nanette was giggling over the ditty. Donna tapped her fingernail on the paper she still held. She was nodding.
“Can I make comments about it without having to revert to being a teacher?” she asked.
“Donna, my love, I think we have all been teaching each other different things. Sophie teaches me to dance. Nanette teaches me to run. Even Cindy teaches me music. We are lovers. You can still be my mentor,” I said.
“I guess that works. What did Ms. Faber say about this?”
“She said that if I thought about getting it published, she could suggest a way for me to cut the length by half,” I snorted. “I guess I got a little repetitive.”
“Yes. But that’s not the point. This isn’t really a narrative poem in the way English teachers think of them. Oh, it has most of the elements, but it really goes into a different genre.”
“What?”
“I’d call it beat poetry. Back in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, a generation of what was called beatniks arose.” I remembered that. They were known for being drug addicts and never editing anything they wrote. “Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, and lots of others. They were rebellious against the establishment and wrote poetry that didn’t fit into the common mold.”
“You’re saying it sounds like I was high when I wrote it?” I joked.
“No. But it wouldn’t hurt. The thing about beat poetry is that it wasn’t really meant to be read in a book. It was written to be performed. People were meant to listen to beat poetry, not read it. Often to the accompaniment of bongo drums and hash. This poem was meant to be heard. Here. Please read it to us. And don’t read it flatly. Read it like it sounded when you wrote it. Tap on something if you need to set the rhythm. And don’t be afraid to use your full vocal range—both pitch and volume.”
“Really?”
“Try it. Let’s see what your girlfriends think.”
“Okay, I guess.” I put the poem in front of me and read through the first few lines. She was right. I heard my own voice and the rhythm of my feet tapping. I started reading.
The Angry Young Man
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
Come see! Come see! Come see!
The angry young man,
The angry young man,
Come see! Come see! Come see!
His hair’s come back
His beard’s full grown,
Who slew the masses
With an ass’s jawbone.
Come see the angry young man!
Come see!
Come see the angry young man!
He’s regained his strength;
The temple comes down.
He’s made himself
A martyr’s crown.
Come see the angry young man!
Come see!
Come see the angry young man!
His arms were strong
But he watched with blind eyes;
With deaf ears heard not
His destruction’s mute cries.
Come see the angry young man!
Come see!
Come see the angry young man!
He’s Samson for a new age
Blind but strong.
He’s a man filled with rage
But his vision’s not long.
Come see the angry young man!
Come see!
Come see the angry young man!
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
Come see! Come see! Come see!
Give three cheers for the angry young man:
Come see! Come see! Come see!
I finished and just sat there, waiting.
“Wow!” Nanette said.
“Yes. Wow!” Sophie echoed. Donna jumped from her seat and settled herself in my lap to kiss me. With those beautiful bare breasts right there beneath my fingertips, the temptation was much too much.
“You see, there is nothing wrong with the poem,” Donna panted as she kissed me again. “It was the style that Ms. Faber reacted to—possibly not knowing precisely what she was really reading. How did it feel?”
“To read it? It was almost like hearing it for the first time myself. I mean, I know I could hear it when I wrote it, but I never spoke it out loud.”
“What inspired you to write something so critical of youthful anger?” Nan asked. “There’s been a lot lately to be angry about. I don’t blame anyone for getting on edge with the national emergency, National Service lockdown, and attempt at stopping the inauguration. I was plenty angry.”
“It was kind of a response to our GBU video, I guess,” I said. “We’d all been pushed in the halls by the jingoists. Wearing a black shirt was an announcement that you were anti-American. The colored shirts were angry because they… I’m sorry, they were just stupid. And the more things heated up, the angrier we—the black shirts got. Before John showed up to talk about what we could do with that video, I was near exploding.”
“You did well not to show it,” Sophie said. With Donna and Nanette both topless, Sophie had pulled off her blouse as well. There was something in my mind about how when drums beat, people stop thinking. Or when tits wave. All I could think, though, was
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through the doors—burst like a force of armed men,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace plowing his field or gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
“I’m impressed you could recite that,” Donna said.
“Walt Whitman was one of the poets we studied leading up to having to write our own. He’s easy to memorize,” I said.
“Especially if you recite him aloud. His poem, written at the beginning of the Civil War, could just as easily have flowed from Ginsberg’s fingers post World War II.”
Reluctantly, I let Donna extract herself from my embrace and return to her grading. I picked up my laptop and looked again at the blank page.
“So, tell us about this assignment that has you frustrated,” Sophie said. “Now that I’ve heard your poetry, I’m excited to read your other stories.”
“It’s an essay. Different from the ones you’re grading, I guess. Those are supposed to analyze a literary work and demonstrate how it fits into a series of criteria that Donna has set out for them.”
“Harsh!” Donna laughed. “But you’re right. The student can show positive or negative associations, but the criteria by which they are to judge has been set. Something most of these students failed to understand.”
“Well, I’m supposed to be writing a personal essay. It should have opinions and conjectures or beliefs, but the factual details have to be true. I can’t just make up a story and say it’s true,” I said.
“I’m familiar with that assignment. You’ll have more of them in senior English. You’re getting a head start on the process in creative writing,” Donna said.
“Yeah. Only everything I start with sounds like a ‘what I did this summer’ report. I can write down an experience but it’s the opinion and conjecture part that I don’t connect with.” I sat there with my hands on the keyboard and realized I’d typed nearly an entire page of ‘z’s.
“Maybe it’s time you told your story, Jacob,” Donna said softly. I jerked my head up and looked at her with my breath held. Surely, she couldn’t mean what I immediately jumped to. I’d just managed to tell the story to Beca and Rachel. We’d all agreed it didn’t need to go any further. Did one of them tell Donna?
“What?”
“Last year, you wrote a short story about a child who died and was revived. We talked about it a lot and it was one of the many things that made me decide I was going to make myself available to explore joining this pod,” Donna said.
“Yeah. It was a short story. This is supposed to be an essay.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “When we talked, I asked you about how much of it was true and you told me. There are, I believe, few people living in our world who have died. Instead of writing it as a short story, write of your experience and what you learned from it. It might touch someone else as much as it touched me.”
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