I’ve spent the last three days searching for former professors of mine. I need their recommendations to apply to a PHD program in English because I can’t just take a night writing workshop, I have to be in the program. But I think they’ve fallen off the face of the planet. One has apparently written a book from the astral plane, as I can find evidence of her book out there, but no evidence of her actual person. I’ve thought of writing to her publisher but at that point, I just think I’ve put too much effort into it entirely and there must be another person I could find who has letters after their name to write me a goddamned recommendation to take a night writing class.
Grrrr.
That’s my trauma today.
When I was in seventh grade, I became obsessed with sex. Not obsessed in a pubescent boy kind of way, in that I wanted to be actually having the sex. I just had an almost scientific curiosity about it. Like Jane Goodall, observing the chimps. I’d wonder about anything having to do with sex. Smells, sounds, reactions, length of occurrence, anything measurable.
I’d sit in classes and watch my male teachers, watch their fingers, think about what I had heard, that finger size was somehow indicative of penis size. I’d dare contemplations, wondering not if my classmates were having the sex, but if the pharmacist at the corner drug was having the sex. I was certain that the pharmacist was schtupping the cashier. I got a serious sex vibe every time I walked into the pharmacy. Perhaps I felt that with the presence of all of those condoms, beckoning gently with their pictures of couples, walking hand in hand, on golden beaches during the sunset, not to mention Playboys and Penthouses, sealed in plastic but always surreptitiously sliced on the top for closer examination, made for an irresistible environment for the hot and heavy sex. And green Skittles, which were said to have mystical Spanish fly properties. No, not the green M&M thing, that was just a myth. It had to be a green Skittle. Plus, the pharmacist always skeeved me out.
Then, a strange thing happened…
I remember distinctly sitting in the band room. I had just placed my books under my chair and was reaching down for my flute case when suddenly I had a strange moment of second sight. Valerie Bertonelli and Eddie Van Halen were having sex at that moment. Even though it was 10:32 on a Tuesday morning, I knew that Eddie was having the hot sex with Barbara from “One Day At A Time”.
I do not know what mystical presence decided that I should bear witness to the Van Halens sexual habits. I do not know why Eddie and Valerie were the lucky couple. Why not Alex? Why not the effervescent David Lee Roth? Perhaps the Powers That Be felt that any second sight of David Lee Roth’s sexual antics would have been too much for me to bear and I would have become the world’s first Lutheran nun. I dare not question the Fates. I only know that at that moment, they were doing the deed.
I continued, for about two weeks, to be very in-tuned with their sexual habits. They had sex 8 times. Once was while I was sleeping and I knew that the deed had gone down upon waking in the morning. Once was while I was watching Putting On The Hits.
Then one day I got a psychic flash of Eddie eating some Fruity Pebbles, dry out of the box, his feet slapping on the cold tile floor, crunching some errant Pebbles betwixt his toes. And then I was done. No further visions were to come. Not of the hot sex. Not of any other rock stars. Nothing.
I didn’t even really like Van Halen, nor Valerie Bertonelli. I was sitting quite happily in the Thriller camp, humming the soundtrack from Footloose.
It is still, to this day, a mystery. Maybe if it hadn’t stopped, I could be another Miss Cleo. Although I could only tell you who was having the sex and who wasn’t. Actually, that’s really not worth paying $3.99 a minute.
But… I stopped being obsessed with sex. Well. Mostly. And I stopped going to that corner pharmacy.
That had nothing to do with finding my former professors or getting into that program. I just felt like sharing that.
After my entry yesterday, I remembered that I had written a poem about being a weasel and I went in search of it, through Computer Room #1, #2, and #3. I finally found my three undergrad writing notebooks, an angst-filled love letter from Esteban circa 1990, and an atrociously bad short story I wrote, circa 1989, which made me doubt the value in paying for more education in this art. I did not, however, find the weasel poem. I think the weasel poem was a victim of a spectacularly bad hard drive crash sometime during my junior year, in which Esteban had not backed up my writing drive and I lost everything that wasn’t on hard copy. I seem to remember a folder, somewhere, which contained some scribbled upon workshop copies of some poems, but that is my only hope that my spectacular weasel poem was not surrendered to the void.
I’m still miffed about the recommendations. I’ll bet if I had that weasel poem, I wouldn’t even need recommendations. They’d just take one look at the weasel poem…. ok, probably not.
