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Show Anting Alone Page 2 57 living. This dead hippy's prototype of pain was amphetamine withdrawal - because there can be no greater physical or emotional pain, really. But it is a hideous, synthetically produced pain, with no relation to other people, springing only from the addict's own petulant self-indulgence. You see? An absolute, hideous waste. And that's why this dead speedfreak had ail the character and integrity and spine of a wet slug. If you ever wondered what happened to the human lice, the needle-punctured hippy slime who seemingly vanished with the sixties, simply look in the MFA programs in sixth-rate state universities. They've all hooked themselves into these places like slugs with crispy talons. This guy would fairly regularly make himself available to Sam's sermonizing impulses. He always hung around the GTA's communal office, holding his latest batch of rejections (or are-jays, as he called them), just received from whatever pitiful "learned-journal" or quarterly he'd sent something to most recently. Almost crying, he'd go, "Du-u-uh?" and threaten to stop writing if he got any more of these standard form are-jays. Everybody knew this needle baby was the TA who had placed himself at the service of that secret agency which had recently visited the department in order to invesitgate Sam. Sam wondered what price this guy had charged to type up the slovenly glossary of poetic terms included in Mama Mae Bell's dossier along with the beautiful photos of the blasphemy on the bulletin boards. Probably the spooks tossed him a bag of crystal meth. But Sam was too full of the fresh and energetic magnanimity of the newly-published author, too beneficent this morning to bash the guy's papery face in. |