Young Writers Society

“Why does everyone in this novel know someone dead of tragedy?” Jeremy said—paperback book in hand—bursting into David’s bedroom unannounced. Heather and Russ quickly followed behind. “A dead mother, a dead father. Dead sisters and brothers. And I, for one, don’t have a single dead relative to mourn.”

“What the hell!” David shouted from beneath his covers.

“All men have dead relatives,” Russ said, his rough face barely containing his laughter over David’s shock. “Perhaps not all are mourned, but they are dead.”

“Yes,” Jeremy said, conceding the point. “I’m just upset why this book has to make me feel so terrible about it.”

David looked at his friends and retreated from their glances. He grabbed his blanket and further covered his nakedness.

“We’re rooted into the network, you know,” Heather said, grabbing the book from Jeremy’s hands and flipping through its pages. “We’re not spontaneously constructed.”

“Only spontaneously combusted,” Russ added.

“Even Jesus had a grandfather,” Heather said. “You may deny genealogy, but we all came from somewhere.”

David was still half asleep when he looked at his alarm clock. It was 8AM. “What? What is going on?”

“Get up,” Jeremy said. “It’s the first day of writing class.”

“Shit!” David stood, bringing his blanket along.

“Are you naked?” Heather asked.

“No!” David lied. “I just want some privacy.”

Russ laughed. “So strange guys can see you naked, but your friends can’t?”

“God, Russ, you’re straight. Get out.”

Russ chuckled before leaving the room, taking Jeremy with him.

David grabbed a sweater. “Good?” he asked Heather.

“It’s like a hundred degrees outside.”

David grew frustrated. How could he have nearly missed the first day?

Heather tussled though his closet and found him a T-shirt. “Here, this will do just fine. Besides, you don’t want to look too pretentious your first day with all of your non-pretentious friends sitting beside you.”

David raised his eyebrows. “Just what exactly does that mean?”

“Oh, you know us, David. We’re not about to let you have all the fun. We want to write with you, swap plotlines, gossip about our protagonists. We are also attending the workshop.”

David let out a deep, pressing breath. This was either the best or worst thing that had ever happened to him.

---

“How the hell did each of you get three hundred bucks?” David asked from the backseat of Heather’s wagon. He was picking at the brown cloth of the interior, the stale crust of an old cigarette burn on the seat.

“Jeremy’s parents were very excited to hear he would be attending a summer writing class,” Heather said.

“They’re happy I won’t be sitting around the house all day drinking coffee,” Jeremy said from the passenger’s seat. “Now I’ll be sitting in some classroom all day drinking coffee. They eagerly handed me the six hundred dollar fee.”

“Six hundred?” David asked.

“A small fib,” Heather said. “I don’t exactly have three hundred dollars sitting around.”

“And you, Russ?”

“I sold a bunch of my extra Adderall.”

David snorted. “You fucking drug dealer!”

“What? That shit’s easy to get. Everyone has an attention deficit these days.”

“And the doctors give it to you. Just like that?”

“They’re not paying much attention.”

David sat back in his seat and played with his seatbelt. It had become a habit, toying with that small strap of artificial fibers. A nervous tic. It was that comforting practice that lent itself to its simplicity.

“When did you buy this car?” David suddenly asked his friend.

“Three years ago,” she answered.

So, it was a relic of past times and past owners, yet the seatbelt may have saved someone in its own past life: impressed itself into the skin and flesh and bone of another. It was the forward and back whip-slap of halted inertia as the nylon band stayed the body from the crush of laminated glass.

And now it served as a series of guitar strings, carelessly strummed, soothing David’s fear of the unknown.

---

“Welcome, future novelists, to the Beleevus Writing Workshop. My name is Barbara Beleevus, and for the next seven weeks we will be embarking on the most exciting and constructive journey of your lives. Right now, I want everyone to take out a piece of paper and pen—if you don’t have those things handy, why, maybe you just don’t belong here—oh, my goodness!—I’m so sorry—sometimes I just can’t help myself—of course all of you belong here.”

Barbara Beleevus looked exactly as she sounded: an over-caffeinated, dark-haired, middle-aged divorcee who had somehow found enough perk to strike out on her own. Perhaps it was the shrill of her voice that had led to her romantic disasters. Or perhaps Barbara had figured out she was better off without him. Whatever the case had been, she was entrancing now. A personality one could not help but keep watching, adoring. One didn’t know what wisdom she held, or if it could be called wisdom at all.

She probably liked hyphens.

“I want you all now to jot down a piece of writing advice you got from someone—anyone—as long as you thought that writing advice was valuable—and I want you to exchange that piece of paper with the person next to you—have we all done that?—okay—now I want everyone to crumple up your pieces of paper and throw them all onto the floor—isn’t it liberating?—we’re free—and now you can learn how to be a writer because we here at the Beleevus Writing Workshop know exactly what we are doing—we can teach you all to be the next Kelsikov—who is that? you ask—well he is only the best up-and-coming Russian novelist there is these days—I can tell you—I have personally overseen his work—better than Tolstoy—better than Dostoevsky—better than Nabokov.”

“Child pornographer!” a voice shouted from the back of the classroom.

“That is one opinion,” Barbara Beleevus said diplomatically, her face solemn and apologetic. “Another is that he is a pornographer of children. Lolita expresses our shortcomings as a society. We have a lot to learn from that little girl and her innocence,” she said with a quirky smile. “Conveniently, this brings me to my next exercise. I think you would all agree with me that we are individuals who can act and speak for ourselves, correct?”

The room grunted in general agreement.

“I thought so. Besides the release that came with throwing those papers, we are going to free ourselves even further. The first thing that holds you back from being your own individual is your parental units. We’re going to cut the cord, sever all ties. Why, you’ve all heard the horrors of daughters becoming their spiteful mothers. We’re going to end that here today, so that you can all be your true selves.”

David, Jeremy, Heather and Russ spent the next hour scribbling furiously in their notebooks, composing soliloquys condemning their parents, how they had fucked them up so badly as children. How mothers and fathers had shown them violent pictures of STDs after school and planted condoms in their dresser drawers so as to have evidence of their sexual proclivities. All parental figures were now despised, all familial authority now undermined.

Every short story was to be read out loud, no exceptions. “You see,” Barbara Beleevus said, “while I know this is a fiction-writing class, I am sure that many of these stories are indeed true. I want you all to think about that when you write this evening. Your next assignment is to flesh out these excerpts into full-fledged stories.”

When the workshop had finished for the day, Barbara Beleevus stood by the door and shook everyone’s hand on the way out as she spoke, “Thank you—you’re free now—congratulations—you’re free.”

---

Argo’s Roast was hopping. There was an influx of authors, plaid-shirted and tight-panted. The next great American novelist. The next great American disappointment.

Jeremy sipped on a new flavor of coffee, a blend specially purchased in anticipation of the workshop. It had the horrendous distinction of being called Grinder’s Block; the authors drank it up. The only mild difference from his old brew, Jeremy had told the group, was that this blend not only tasted like feet, but feet that had aerated a compost pile by stomping all through it.

“I thought we were in Helvetica Springs,” Heather said. “Why does everyone look like a fucking hipster?”

“You’re wearing a beret,” Russ scolded.

“Point taken,” Heather replied, dutifully leaving the table and joining the line to buy a Grinder’s Block.

Jeremy grabbed his paperback. “New York has invaded the Midwest,” he said. “Look at them all, so smug and trite.”

“Maybe they are saying the same thing about us,” David added.

“I bet every single one of them begins their novel with a protagonist reflecting upon the loss of a loved one in the Twin Towers. It’s unconscionable. What kind of an asshole starts off a novel talking about 9/11?”

David sipped on his hot chocolate and watched as an attractive blonde boy sat with his Grinder’s Block a table away. He opened a journal and began writing. Every few seconds, he would look Russ’s way and then back to his work. “I think you have an admirer,” David told his friend.

Russ looked to his left then straight behind him.

“Where?”

“Directly to your right. But as they say, don’t look now.”

“Why do they say that? He has taken the liberty of ogling me.”

David chuckled. “Well, have a peek then. Two fucking gays at this table and he has to pick the straight one.”

“Maybe I’ll give him the kissy face.”

“No!” David and Jeremy said at once, causing a few passersby to give them a short glance.

David set down his cup in earnestness. “You’ll lead him on.”

“Or piss him off,” Jeremy added.

“Or both,” the two said in unison once again.

Russ raised his hands in defeat. “It was simply a joke, no harm meant.”

“It’s salt in the wound,” David said.

“Utter flagellation,” Jeremy added.

“Cruel and unusual punishment,” they said together.

“Whoa. You two are starting to freak me out,” Russ said. “I get the point. Don’t mess with the gays.”

“Good thinking,” David said.

“File that one away,” Jeremy added.

Heather sat down in her seat next to Russ and rested her Grinder’s Block on the table. She glanced awkwardly at David and Jeremy who looked as though they had just paused midsentence.

“Thank God,” Russ said, relieved. “One more time and I think I would have strangled someone.”