I thought I was going to have a heart attack and die. Right here, in class, in front of everyone. I was trying so hard to not burst out laughing at this joke of a classroom...
In the previous session of this Creative Writing class, we had just turned in our latest assignment to the instructor and now today, after he had graded them, he selected a few of the better ones for the class to read aloud as a group. There were about 10 or so stories the professor had chosen for group review. Mine was one of them.
He picked students round-robin-style to read one of the stories out loud. This group was a classic example of the community college "lowered expectations" standard. Most of these stories were either boring and formulaic or just sublime re-adaptations of "what I did last summer" fare. Snooze-ville to say the least.
So when it came 'round for my story to be read, I wasn't sure how it would be received. It was definitely not your usual pablum.
The girl picked to read it seemed barely literate to begin with, and, throw in the fact that the story was written in Cockney-ish slang in the first person perspective, she, of course, fucked it up.
"Hey, there's a lot of misspelled words in here.", complained one of my classmates to the instructor. Each student had been given a mimeograph copy (yes, that's right, those purple-inked moist, smelly pages) of each of the stories so they could read along. I could almost see my professor's eyes roll in condescension. But he was too professional for that. Instead, I let my eyes do it for him.
"It's meant to be misspelled. It's in the vernacular of the character.", he tried to explain to the dim wit who protested that I got away without negative points for my "bad" grammar.
The giggles were welling up in me, and the unbearable urge to outright roll on the floor with laughter was coming on strong.
"...blow the fuckin' lacto-sacks off the skanky cunt.", the bubble gum chewing girl read out loud in stuccatoed speech.
"Do you know what he means by "lacto-sacks"?", the professor asked the room. No one answered. I gazed around and saw on their faces a mixture of confusion and revulsion. It took every fiber of my powers of self-control to keep a screaming belly laugh from ripping out of me. How no one noticed my face as red as a beet is beyond my understanding. Thankfully, they all seemed to be staring down at their copies of my story, trying to wrap their tiny heads around it's simple, but twisted plot.
"Breasts. The character is shooting the woman in the breasts with his AK-47, a Russian-issued assault rifle.", said the instructor with a totally straight face, not a hint of censorship or hesitation in his voice. Bravo! I thought. This guy is cool. I was a little concerned over how he'd receive the assignment. Not so much for the subject matter, but perhaps he'd object to the violence and the language. But as I expected, this guy was a free-thought hippy type so I'm sure he loved it when a student had the 'nads to write with no expected boundaries. I was only happy to make his day.
I eventually held it together and didn't embarrass myself by bursting out laughing at everyone. But it was tough, let me tell you. After all, this community college had recently changed it's name from Rhode Island Junior College since it had become notoriously referred to by it's acronym as R.I.J.C. = Rejec (as in Reject). You can change the name, but the student body remains true to form.
Here is the story, BTW, my little Cold War inspired homage to the famed Burgess novel. Well, actually, it's a re-write that I just did. The original was lost years ago. But it's fairly close.
Interesting and true side-note: I chose the name of the car they drove, a future-model-year 1997 Durango as a fake car name that sounded similar to other contemporary durable all-terrain vehicles. Totally by chance, Dodge chose Durango years later as a real SUV model name. Weird huh? Maybe one of my former classmates became a designer for GM and thought back to my story when they had to name their new car design? Uh, very unlikely. :)
A Clockwork Red-Orange
By Michael Chausse
I was drivin’ me ’97 Durango along the dusty highway with me comrades, crusin’ ‘round lookin’ for to make some mookie-mookie and bust in a head or two.
Outs the corner of me eye, I spy a dirty bloke wit one ear, crouched in an alleyway beside an ol’ rusted fridge, swiggin’ from a half empty bottle of Stoli. Cribbed the Joy-Juice he musta ‘cause, you know they ain’t makin’ the good shit no more, for sure. And even if they was, this guy didn’t look the sort to have the scratch to buy it, even if he put up every ration card he ever got.
“Where’d ya get the grog, brotha?”, I says in English to our new comrade as we pull up to ‘im and gets out the car.
“Fuck off ya filthy Blatnoys!”, answers he.
Wrong answer.
Before we slit the smelly ‘Merican swine a pretty ruby necklace, we give our Spetznazs a lil’ workout and kick ‘im ‘round a bit, makin’ ‘im all bloody-bloody. After we grab ‘is bottle from ‘im, that is. We can’t let this primo hooch goes to waste now, can we?
Back in the Durango, we finish off the booze and follow it up wit hits off the ol’ Methy-Pipe as we roll through the dark city ruins towards the brightly-lit camp. The sign above the gate says “The People’s Center for Re-Education of New Los Angeles”. But to us, it says here be our proving grounds.
“Hey brotha!”, I greets me comrade Vlad manning the guard house.
“Ivan! My man, how’s it hangin’?”, he replies in the new ‘Merican lingo that’s catchin’ on, makin’ me cringe… After all, who’s supposed to be the “re-educators” here?
Vlad whispers to me, “Check it out, man, there be a couple o’ hot new prisoners, er, I mean “pupils” we brought in from the hills yesterday. They’re in Indoctrination Tent E. Real primo sweeties. The kind they used to call ‘Valley Girls’. ‘Member? ‘…gag me with a spoon…’ and shit like that. Ha!”
“Ya, I’ll gag them wit somethin’, but it ain’t gonna be no spoon, if you know what I mean!”, says I as me Johnny starts to come awake, imaginin’ those Barbie bimbos makin’ mookie-mookie wit me.
We gets to the tent and sure enough, sittin’ by themselves in one of the concrete walled intake cells are two blond girls in their tattered and torn pink and green outfits streaks from mascara-laden tears staining their bruised and muddied faces.
Bein’ the gent I am, I let me comrades have at ‘em first…never been one afraid to gets me sloppy seconds.
Finally, I takes me wench up the back door and I scream out “Mother Motherland!” as I drive home me payload. But as I’m pullin’ up me trousers, the bitch pulls out a makeshift blade that was hidden under the bench and tries to plunge it into me heart. I step aside just in time, grab her arm as me comrades pounce on her and we force her to release her shiv.
“Hold her!”, I exclaim to me buds as I go outside the cell to where we stowed our gear. Me comrades have the naked bitch pinned with her back to the grey cinderblock wall as I raise me AK-47, take aim, and blow the fuckin’ lacto-sacks off the skanky cunt.
After we off the other one, we joke with Vlad and tell him that it was unfortunate, but these two Bourgeois Capitalist Dogs could not be “re-educated”.
“Hey, bro…you want this?”, Vlad says, pointing to a small cage holding a little white poodle. “Those bitches had it with them when we captured, er, “rescued” them.”
So that’s how I came to own me little Zasha. She reminds me of Vanya Jin-Jin, me little doggie I had back home before the war. Before the nuke blast that incinerated her along the rest of me family.
“Who’s me pretty girl?”, I coo to Zasha, me mates crackin’ up at me bein’ all lovey-dovey. I join in on their laughter as we tear down the dusty desert road in our ten-year old car headed for some new heads to crack and fresh pussy to mookie-mookie.
“We’re gettin’ closer, Comrades!”, I shout to me buds as we make our way towards Vegas and pass a sign on the side of the highway: “Welcome to Nevada SSR”.
In the previous session of this Creative Writing class, we had just turned in our latest assignment to the instructor and now today, after he had graded them, he selected a few of the better ones for the class to read aloud as a group. There were about 10 or so stories the professor had chosen for group review. Mine was one of them.
He picked students round-robin-style to read one of the stories out loud. This group was a classic example of the community college "lowered expectations" standard. Most of these stories were either boring and formulaic or just sublime re-adaptations of "what I did last summer" fare. Snooze-ville to say the least.
So when it came 'round for my story to be read, I wasn't sure how it would be received. It was definitely not your usual pablum.
The girl picked to read it seemed barely literate to begin with, and, throw in the fact that the story was written in Cockney-ish slang in the first person perspective, she, of course, fucked it up.
"Hey, there's a lot of misspelled words in here.", complained one of my classmates to the instructor. Each student had been given a mimeograph copy (yes, that's right, those purple-inked moist, smelly pages) of each of the stories so they could read along. I could almost see my professor's eyes roll in condescension. But he was too professional for that. Instead, I let my eyes do it for him.
"It's meant to be misspelled. It's in the vernacular of the character.", he tried to explain to the dim wit who protested that I got away without negative points for my "bad" grammar.
The giggles were welling up in me, and the unbearable urge to outright roll on the floor with laughter was coming on strong.
"...blow the fuckin' lacto-sacks off the skanky cunt.", the bubble gum chewing girl read out loud in stuccatoed speech.
"Do you know what he means by "lacto-sacks"?", the professor asked the room. No one answered. I gazed around and saw on their faces a mixture of confusion and revulsion. It took every fiber of my powers of self-control to keep a screaming belly laugh from ripping out of me. How no one noticed my face as red as a beet is beyond my understanding. Thankfully, they all seemed to be staring down at their copies of my story, trying to wrap their tiny heads around it's simple, but twisted plot.
"Breasts. The character is shooting the woman in the breasts with his AK-47, a Russian-issued assault rifle.", said the instructor with a totally straight face, not a hint of censorship or hesitation in his voice. Bravo! I thought. This guy is cool. I was a little concerned over how he'd receive the assignment. Not so much for the subject matter, but perhaps he'd object to the violence and the language. But as I expected, this guy was a free-thought hippy type so I'm sure he loved it when a student had the 'nads to write with no expected boundaries. I was only happy to make his day.
I eventually held it together and didn't embarrass myself by bursting out laughing at everyone. But it was tough, let me tell you. After all, this community college had recently changed it's name from Rhode Island Junior College since it had become notoriously referred to by it's acronym as R.I.J.C. = Rejec (as in Reject). You can change the name, but the student body remains true to form.
Here is the story, BTW, my little Cold War inspired homage to the famed Burgess novel. Well, actually, it's a re-write that I just did. The original was lost years ago. But it's fairly close.
Interesting and true side-note: I chose the name of the car they drove, a future-model-year 1997 Durango as a fake car name that sounded similar to other contemporary durable all-terrain vehicles. Totally by chance, Dodge chose Durango years later as a real SUV model name. Weird huh? Maybe one of my former classmates became a designer for GM and thought back to my story when they had to name their new car design? Uh, very unlikely. :)
A Clockwork Red-Orange
By Michael Chausse
I was drivin’ me ’97 Durango along the dusty highway with me comrades, crusin’ ‘round lookin’ for to make some mookie-mookie and bust in a head or two.
Outs the corner of me eye, I spy a dirty bloke wit one ear, crouched in an alleyway beside an ol’ rusted fridge, swiggin’ from a half empty bottle of Stoli. Cribbed the Joy-Juice he musta ‘cause, you know they ain’t makin’ the good shit no more, for sure. And even if they was, this guy didn’t look the sort to have the scratch to buy it, even if he put up every ration card he ever got.
“Where’d ya get the grog, brotha?”, I says in English to our new comrade as we pull up to ‘im and gets out the car.
“Fuck off ya filthy Blatnoys!”, answers he.
Wrong answer.
Before we slit the smelly ‘Merican swine a pretty ruby necklace, we give our Spetznazs a lil’ workout and kick ‘im ‘round a bit, makin’ ‘im all bloody-bloody. After we grab ‘is bottle from ‘im, that is. We can’t let this primo hooch goes to waste now, can we?
Back in the Durango, we finish off the booze and follow it up wit hits off the ol’ Methy-Pipe as we roll through the dark city ruins towards the brightly-lit camp. The sign above the gate says “The People’s Center for Re-Education of New Los Angeles”. But to us, it says here be our proving grounds.
“Hey brotha!”, I greets me comrade Vlad manning the guard house.
“Ivan! My man, how’s it hangin’?”, he replies in the new ‘Merican lingo that’s catchin’ on, makin’ me cringe… After all, who’s supposed to be the “re-educators” here?
Vlad whispers to me, “Check it out, man, there be a couple o’ hot new prisoners, er, I mean “pupils” we brought in from the hills yesterday. They’re in Indoctrination Tent E. Real primo sweeties. The kind they used to call ‘Valley Girls’. ‘Member? ‘…gag me with a spoon…’ and shit like that. Ha!”
“Ya, I’ll gag them wit somethin’, but it ain’t gonna be no spoon, if you know what I mean!”, says I as me Johnny starts to come awake, imaginin’ those Barbie bimbos makin’ mookie-mookie wit me.
We gets to the tent and sure enough, sittin’ by themselves in one of the concrete walled intake cells are two blond girls in their tattered and torn pink and green outfits streaks from mascara-laden tears staining their bruised and muddied faces.
Bein’ the gent I am, I let me comrades have at ‘em first…never been one afraid to gets me sloppy seconds.
Finally, I takes me wench up the back door and I scream out “Mother Motherland!” as I drive home me payload. But as I’m pullin’ up me trousers, the bitch pulls out a makeshift blade that was hidden under the bench and tries to plunge it into me heart. I step aside just in time, grab her arm as me comrades pounce on her and we force her to release her shiv.
“Hold her!”, I exclaim to me buds as I go outside the cell to where we stowed our gear. Me comrades have the naked bitch pinned with her back to the grey cinderblock wall as I raise me AK-47, take aim, and blow the fuckin’ lacto-sacks off the skanky cunt.
After we off the other one, we joke with Vlad and tell him that it was unfortunate, but these two Bourgeois Capitalist Dogs could not be “re-educated”.
“Hey, bro…you want this?”, Vlad says, pointing to a small cage holding a little white poodle. “Those bitches had it with them when we captured, er, “rescued” them.”
So that’s how I came to own me little Zasha. She reminds me of Vanya Jin-Jin, me little doggie I had back home before the war. Before the nuke blast that incinerated her along the rest of me family.
“Who’s me pretty girl?”, I coo to Zasha, me mates crackin’ up at me bein’ all lovey-dovey. I join in on their laughter as we tear down the dusty desert road in our ten-year old car headed for some new heads to crack and fresh pussy to mookie-mookie.
“We’re gettin’ closer, Comrades!”, I shout to me buds as we make our way towards Vegas and pass a sign on the side of the highway: “Welcome to Nevada SSR”.