Primordial: An Abstraction

7

The Student Union is full of writers.

They all graduated from the University with B.A.s in creative writing, and M.A.s in creative writing, and M.F.A.s in creative writing, and some of them procured Ph.D.s in creative writing, despite the fact that an M.F.A. in creative writing is a terminal degree.

The writers come in all shapes and sizes and types. They are old and young. They are wise and naïve. They are grizzled and smooth. They are expectant and skeptical. They are rotund and withered. They possess countless varieties of crooked, yellow teeth.

Nobody will hire them. Nobody will represent them. Nobody will publish or buy their books.

Security tries to relegate them to the basement and the old wing. Technically they aren’t allowed inside the Union. But they get inside no matter what anybody does.

One of the writers brushes up against me as I collect my mail.

Usually I don’t care if people touch me. Students always liked to touch me, as if, somehow, it gave them access to my traumatic kernels.

In this instance, I get mad.

The writer senses it. He tries to run away.

I grab him by the neck with my strong hand.

I take a deep breath.

Pounding his face into the aluminum grid of mailboxes, I say, “Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me! Do not fucking touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!”

The writer squirms and thrashes and blubbers and cries out for an administrator.

Nobody comes to his aid.

When I can’t hear the writer anymore, and when he stops moving and wilts like an exorcised flower, I let him go.