Castration Celebration Read online

  “Who is it?”

  Max shook his head and flipped open his phone. “Hey, Dad…. Yeah. All good, all good, you know….” He held the cell phone away from him and made funny faces at it, cracking Zeke up. “Hey, Dad,” he said, putting the phone back to his ear, “we’ve got some people over, you know, so I should run. I’ll call you tomorrow…. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye.” He closed the phone and flopped back on his bed.

  “You’re a freak,” Zeke said.

  “Did I sound totally fried?”

  “Not at all. Why did you even answer, though?”

  Max sat up and leaned against the wall. “I told my dad I’d call, and I forgot. I didn’t want him freaking out and calling the program director or police or something.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Who knows? I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “What’s his deal?” Zeke asked.

  Max shrugged. “It’s just him and me, so he’s always been all overprotective and shit.”

  “What happened to your mom?” Zeke asked.

  Max held his hand in front of his face again and began to wriggle his fingers. “She left when I was five.”

  Zeke watched for a moment without speaking. “That sucks, man,” he finally said, getting up and pulling a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos from a shopping bag on the floor. He opened it and held it out to Max. “They didn’t have any Pringles.”

  “Fuck Pringles,” Max said, reaching out and taking a handful of chips. “I like these better.”

  Zeke popped a chip in his mouth and crunched. “So do you ever see her?”

  Max shook his head. “We never really knew where she was. My dad says she called a few times, but never from a number we could call her back.”

  “That’s rough.”

  Max nodded and chewed on a chip. “She was hot, though.”

  “Jesus,” Zeke said, grimacing. “That’s your mom.”

  Max laughed and savored the nacho cheese goodness in his mouth. It was amazing how delicious things could taste when you were high. He thought about the fact that this morning he had woken up in his bed in New Orleans, and now here he was sitting in a college dorm room at Yale, fried out of his mind, eating Nacho Cheese Doritos. It was crazy.

  “We’re at fucking Yale University,” he said.

  Zeke smiled. “You sound like Trish. She’s totally obsessed with this place.”

  “Oh, yeah, what’s the deal with you guys anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Max reached out and took the bag of chips. “Did you guys ever go out or anything?”

  Zeke screwed up his face. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Would you go out with her?”

  Max tried to picture her in his head. She had been a little overweight, maybe, but not bad. “I don’t know,” he said. “She’s got big tits.”

  “Well, if you’re interested, go for it.”

  He remembered with a pang what had happened with Olivia.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said. “At dinner, didn’t you think Olivia was kind of flirting with me?”

  Zeke ate his last chip. “I don’t know.”

  “Seriously,” Max said. “Didn’t it seem like we had a connection?”

  “Yeah, you were both annoying,” Zeke said, getting up to change the music.

  Max smiled and gave Zeke the finger. “It was weird. After dinner, when I tried to talk to her, she totally blew me off.”

  Zeke scrolled through his iPod until he found Blood on the Tracks. “Whatever, man. There are plenty of girls here.”

  “What do you think her problem is?” Max asked.

  The opening strains of “Tangled Up in Blue” came on and Zeke stood by the desk, gently bobbing his head to the music.

  “Well,” Max said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s the first night,” Zeke said, sitting back on his bed. “What did you think would happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They sat listening to the music, but Max’s head was filled with Olivia, how he had taken her hand, and how she had pulled away and walked off. Had he really only met her this afternoon? What had he been thinking making a pass at her so soon?

  “You know what I think?” Zeke said, as if reading his thoughts.

  “What?”

  “I think we should smoke the rest of that joint.”

  Max laughed. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Dude, it’s summer vacation. You’re at Yale. And sitting in that shopping bag on the floor, waiting to be eaten, is an entire bag of Funyuns.”

  “You’re out of control.”

  “Funyuns, Max. Do you understand?”

  Max nodded slowly, like someone in a trance. “I do. I do understand.”

  Zeke took the joint from the windowsill, relit it, took a drag, and held it out to his roommate.

  “Unbelievable,” Max said, shaking his head and taking a hit. He blew out the smoke and looked at Zeke. “I’m going to get Olivia to go out with me, you know.”

  Zeke reached for the joint and inhaled deeply.

  “I mean, it’s only the first night, right? We’ve got the whole summer ahead of us.”

  Zeke passed the joint back to Max and blew out a tremendous cloud of smoke.

  “Jesus,” Max said with admiration, “you’re like a professional pot smoker or something.”

  “Stronger than a bird,” Zeke said.

  “Stronger than a fucking plane,” Max said, laughing. He took a hit and dissolved into a fit of uncontrollable coughing.

  Olivia’s playwriting teacher, Maxine Zbotsky, had experienced her fifteen minutes of fame three decades earlier for her inflammatory musical, I Came, I Came, I Came Again. Since that time, she had married and divorced twice, become a devotee of several Eastern religions, dabbled with astrology, temporarily changed her name to Artemis Moon Goddess, lived on a commune in Northern California, hiked the Appalachian Trail, bungee jumped in Australia, and purchased 187 Elvis figurines on eBay.

  Olivia did not know any of this. All she knew was that her teacher was already seven minutes late to class on the first day and people were starting to get antsy.

  “What kind of teacher shows up late the first day?” she asked Trish, who was sitting next to her in the U-shaped arrangement of desks.

  “It’s a summer program,” Trish said. “Everything’s probably looser and more laid-back than at school.”

  “The amount of money they’re charging, you’d think they’d hire teachers who show up on time,” said a boy on the other side of Trish.

  There were only ten students in the class, and all around people nodded in agreement.

  “I hear she’s a total freak,” a mousy-looking girl chimed in.

  “Now what would give you that idea?” said an amused voice. Resplendent in a silky wrap of purple, bracelets jangling on her wrists, graying hair in two long braids, silver sandals on her feet, Maxine glided from the doorway into the room. The students in the class smiled, laughed, and sat transfixed, and the mousy-looking girl tried to disappear into her chair.

  “Lesson number one,” she said, her eyes moving from face to face. “You’ve only got one chance to make a first impression, so make sure you start with a bang.” She clapped her hands together loudly. “Now open your notebooks and let’s begin.”

  Olivia rushed to comply, charged by her teacher’s dramatic entrance. All around her students were opening notebooks and sitting expectantly, pens poised, eyes fixed on the purple-clad woman up front.

  “Okay,” Maxine said. “I want each of you to think about something really disturbing, and then write down whatever it is. Two minutes. Go.”

  People seemed slightly stunned, and a few hands rose tentatively in the air.

  “No questions,” Maxine said. “Just write whatever comes to mind.”

  Some students, including Trish, were already going. Others sat with troubled expressions, trying to figure out what to put down. Aft
er a moment, Olivia began to write, though with a lack of conviction.

  Men are in charge of everything in this world. That’s why we’re so screwed.

  She had just finished writing when Maxine called time and asked for volunteers to share. People looked around uncomfortably, but nobody raised a hand.

  “Nobody?” Maxine said, surprised. “Wow, you must all have some really disturbing thoughts.”

  The boy sitting next to Trish raised his hand. He struck Olivia as the kind of boy who liked to talk a lot in class but probably didn’t put much thought into what he said. Maybe it was the fact that he had broad shoulders and almost no neck.

  “Fabulous, a volunteer.” Maxine clapped her hands. “Your name?”

  “Bruce Ackerman,” the boy said.

  Bruce. How perfect.

  “Okay, Bruce Ackerman, shock and disturb us.”

  Bruce looked down at his notebook and started to read. “More people vote for the American Idol than for the American president.”

  A few people chuckled. Olivia decided that maybe he wasn’t quite as much of an idiot as she had thought.

  “Well, that certainly is disturbing,” Maxine said. “Thank you for sharing. Anyone else?”

  Trish raised her hand.

  “Your name, dear?” Maxine asked.

  “Trish Aiken.”

  “Okay, Trish Aiken, the stage is yours.”

  “In Imperial China, to be a eunuch, you had to remove your penis, testicles, and scrotum, and then preserve them in a jar of alcohol to be buried with you when you died.”

  There were a few exclamations of disgust, and several boys moved their hands protectively over their laps. Olivia laughed and whispered, “Cheater.”

  “I don’t think the boys liked that one much,” Maxine said with a chuckle. She looked for other hands and, when there were none forthcoming, said, “Okay, let’s try this one more time, but change the rules a little bit. This time, whatever you write has to be about you in some way.”

  Shocked looks and nervous laughter filled the room, and this time nobody began to write right away.

  “And I want more volunteers to share this time, too,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

  Slowly, tentatively, people began to write. Olivia took a deep breath and then wrote furiously in her notebook the one thing that was bursting to come out.

  Bruce was the first to raise his hand to share.

  “Mr. Ackerman,” Maxine said. “I’m beginning to think you’re enjoying this.”

  Olivia laughed along with everybody else, and Bruce smiled good-naturedly before beginning to read. “Sometimes I have dreams about having sex with Hillary Clinton.”

  The class erupted in laughter.

  “And that’s disturbing to you?” Maxine asked when the noise had subsided.

  “I’m a Republican.”

  “Interesting,” Maxine said, losing herself in thought for a moment before snapping back and asking for another volunteer.

  Olivia raised her hand, introduced herself, then looked down at her notebook and read, “I once walked in on my dad having oral sex with one of his students.”

  People muttered under their breaths and shook their heads. Even Maxine seemed momentarily taken aback. She looked at Olivia sympathetically. “That’s disturbing.”

  “He teaches seventh grade,” Olivia said.

  Cries of disgust rang out in the room, and Maxine seemed completely at a loss for words. Trish turned to Olivia with a disbelieving stare.

  “I’m kidding,” Olivia said.

  Maxine shook her head. “That’s quite a thing to kid about. You might be even more twisted than I am.” She chuckled and gave Olivia an approving glance. “Anyone want to follow that?”

  After a moment, a boy across from Olivia raised his hand. He introduced himself as Chuck Garrett, which prompted Maxine to say, “You’re up, Chuck,” and then apologize immediately. “Totally uncalled for,” she said. “Please, go ahead.”

  Chuck was a rather innocuous-looking boy, the kind you might pass a hundred times and never really notice. Looking down at his notebook, he read, “I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have sex with a sheep.”

  Bruce laughed out loud, but mostly there was just uncomfortable silence. Was he kidding? Olivia wondered. She exchanged looks with Trish, who seemed to be wondering exactly the same thing.

  “Well,” Maxine said, with a little smile, “I’m glad you weren’t feeling too sheepish to share.”

  Chuck gave a little smile, and Olivia decided that he was either very disturbed or else a complete genius.

  “Now, why did we do that?” Maxine asked. “Why spend the beginning of our first day together reveling in the muck of our deepest, darkest, most depraved thoughts?”

  “Because you’re a sadist,” Bruce said with a smile.

  “I’ve been called worse. Why else?”

  “It’s a more interesting icebreaker than the human knot,” Olivia offered.

  “I love the human knot,” Trish said.

  “And well you should,” Maxine said. “Other ideas?”

  More answers followed.

  “To build community.”

  “To push us to take risks.”

  “To generate writing topics.”

  “To take up time because you forgot to plan for this class.”

  “Because genius and suffering are inextricably linked,” Olivia said.

  Maxine’s eyes twinkled. “Indeed. Which is why you will all now line up and prepare to be flogged.”

  The irony of the situation was that nobody seemed to be suffering. Certainly Olivia was feeling better than she could remember having felt in a long time. Publicizing her misfortune had been cathartic; she couldn’t wait to begin writing her play in earnest.

  “I knew you were a sadist,” Bruce said.

  “You enjoy saying that, don’t you, Mr. Ackerman?” She smiled at him. “Well, maybe you have something worth exploring—a psychological drama that examines the relationship between a sadistic teacher and her masochistic student. It has potential, you know, even if it has been done before.” She turned to the class. “Finding a subject that’s worth writing about is the key to producing anything worthwhile. I can’t tell you what that thing is, but I can tell you this. If it’s not something that occupies your thoughts for a good portion of each day, then you should probably look somewhere else.”

  “So basically you’re saying we should write about sex,” Bruce said.

  Most of the students laughed.

  “If you feel like you have something deep and penetrating to offer,” Maxine returned with a smile.

  “I love this lady,” Olivia whispered to Trish.

  “A lot of writing teachers will tell you to write what you know,” Maxine said. “Who can tell me what that means?”

  Most of the hands in the class went up, and Maxine called on a girl who had not yet spoken.

  “It means that you should write about things you know a lot about because you’ll probably have a lot to say and it will be believable.”

  Maxine nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Your writing should be rooted in your own experiences,” Chuck said.

  “Baa, baa, black sheep,” Trish began to sing under her breath, until a laughing Olivia shushed her.

  “How many of you already have some idea what you’ll be writing your plays about this summer?”

  Most of the hands in the room went up.

  “And how many of you are planning to write plays that in some way are drawn from your own life experiences?”

  Now about half the students, Olivia included, raised their hands. She had not fleshed out all the details, but the premise of her story had been taking shape ever since she had walked in on her father, and she had a title she loved, Castration Celebration.

  “Here’s the thing about writing what you know,” Maxine said. “Sometimes you can get so caught up in trying to stay true to your experiences that you start to feel
trapped when your story wants to go in another direction.” She paused a moment to let this point sink in. “Remember. We’re writing fiction in this class, not memoir.”

  “But isn’t art supposed to imitate life?” Bruce challenged.

  Oh, shut up, Olivia thought.

  “In its broad strokes, perhaps,” Maxine agreed. “But art is also a form of creative manipulation.”

  “I’m confused,” the mousy-looking girl said.

  “Let’s all try something,” Maxine said. “Instead of focusing on what we already know, let’s take a few minutes to think about what we want to find out. In your notebooks, go ahead and jot down one or two big questions that you don’t have the answers to, but that you wish you did.”

  The first thing Olivia wrote was Why is my family so dysfunctional? She stared at her page, trying to think of something else. Everything that came to mind was essentially an offshoot of what she had just written. Come on, she thought, what was something else she might want to figure out? The answer popped into her head, and it took her a little bit by surprise. True, she had brooded about the situation with Max since she had left him the night before, but she had convinced herself that her mind was made up on the subject. Was it possible, after all, that she wasn’t so sure? She hesitated, because putting the words on the page would be an admission of something she didn’t want to admit. Her pen hovered over her paper, and at last she wrote a single word. Max?

  “Okay,” Maxine said after everyone had finished. “We’ve done a few things this morning that I hope have gotten you thinking. Now it’s time to write. You can use what we just did as a springboard, or you can go off in your own direction.” She looked at her watch. “It’s ten o’clock. We’ll write for an hour and come back together at eleven. If you want to stay here, that’s fine. If you want to wander off and find a place outside to work, that’s okay, too. Wherever you’ll be most productive.” She looked around the room. “Questions? Comments? Snide remarks?”

  People jumped up and shuffled out of the room. Olivia and Trish walked out into the courtyard. Fifty yards away a group of students was moving around in crazy formations, changing speeds, using their bodies in overly expressive ways. One of the acting classes, no doubt.

  “You want to go sit on the stairs?” Trish asked.