Your Princess is in Another Castle (8 page)

“
So it does,” says Montana.  “Not too many people catch onto that, although I heard you talking with your friend about Kilgore Trout earlier, so you must be Vonnegut fans.”

“Yeah,” I say.
  “My friend Seth, he thinks I’m like Kilgore Trout.”

“Are you a writer?”

“No.  But then neither was he.  I’m a wannabe at Northwestern majoring in English and minoring in creative writing.”

“Really?  That’s where I’m doing my thesis
on Vonnegut.  I don’t write any fiction myself, I just criticize other peoples’ work.”

“You ever think about just hiring Vonnegut to write your thesis for you?”

Montana laughs.  “Vonnegut understands his own work quite poorly, remember?”

“I’m looking forward to having my own work grossly misinterpreted
by critics some day.”

“Well, maybe I’ll run into you one day on campus and you can show me
something.”

“I’m just an undergraduate.”

“Still, I might see you.  And you can also come back here soon and take me for another ride.  Do you like the cowgirl theme I’m sporting?”

“Absolutely, though you might want to try a
southern accent to complete the motif.”

“You know I used to, but I just got
so sick of saying
ya’ll
all the time and how fake it was.”  She glances at her chest.  “I hope the irony of that one isn’t lost on you. Well, I’d best go back out there and see if I can earn any more tuition money.  It was nice to meet you, anonymous young man.” 

“
It was nice to meet you, Montana.”  She kisses my cheek.

Montana
had to go and humanize herself.  She’s real to me now, someone more like Jessica than a fantasy like Montana Wild or Power Girl.  I try not to dwell on Jessica as I head back to the table and fail.                   

“Hey, you get yours?” asks Chris, finally emerging from his own room and slapping me on the b
ack.  “I spent a little more than I should have, but it was money well spent, let me tell you!  I think I just about sucked Beth’s toenail polish right off!”

I walk with
Chris back to our table, glancing behind me and seeing Montana sitting on the lap of another guy.  I paid twenty-five dollars to buy her affection, now he will.  I imagine Jessica being affectionate with me.  And I wonder what it costs to not have to pay for it.

I must say something.  Last semester my writing professor told me that I should participate more during story workshops.  Since then I’ve attempted to make at least one substantial comment per class session.  The problem is the quality of the stories written by my classmates.  Being discussed now is the tale of a lad who at a fraternity party enters a completely darkened bedroom and engages in sexual intercourse with a girl whom he knows to be under the false impression that she’s actually having sex with her boyfriend.  Post-coitus the truth comes out and ramifications follow, all presented in a humorous fashion.  The author may well have a future writing direct-to-DVD National Lampoon Presents sex comedies, but if that’s the niche he wishes to carve out for himself he really shouldn’t be seeking constructive criticism from me.  But I have a participation grade to consider, so I must say something.  And since I have no comments, I decide on asking a question that I admittedly wouldn’t mind having answered.

“I find it
odd that people at a fraternity party are playing Pong
on page thirteen,” I say after raising my hand.  “I mean it’s described as beer Pong, but what does that mean exactly?  Did they take a Pong system out of the attic, dust it off, and then take shots while they play?  These guys aren’t really described as being overly geeky, either.  I think this concept either needs to be made clearer or dropped entirely.”             

The room becomes completely silent
and everyone stares at me, as if an unwelcome stranger had just pushed open the doors of the town saloon in a western.  Of the dozen or so students, half appear baffled, the others wondering if I’m being serious. My professor covers her mouth with her knuckle to keep from laughing.

“Are you for real
, man?” I hear someone ask.

“You’re c
onfusing your pongs,” says the professor, composure regained.  “You’re thinking of the old videogame where the ball bounces off the left and right paddles.  Beer pong is a drinking game where you throw ping-pong balls into plastic cups filled with beer.”

That Professor McMullan
was able to refrain from breaking into hysterics is to her credit.  Michelle, another student who has also written of raunchy escapades at parties whispers something to her friend Amber and they both laugh.  Dwayne, the story’s author, who happens to be wearing a Budweiser hat stares at me as if I were a creature from myth, questioning whether one such as I could actually exist.  

“I also found some of the dialogue a little unbelievable,” I say.

Sittin
g in the office of my professor awaiting her return, I imagine myself as a young boy being told by my father to solve The Riddle of Pong.  “No one in this world can you trust,” says Dad.  “Not men, not women, not beasts.  But this,” he says as he hands me an ancient joystick, “this you can trust.”      

I journey
through life without ever having solved the riddle until one day in college I manage to stumble upon an Atari-brand Pong
console at a yard sale.  Grabbing it with both hands I raise it triumphantly towards the sky, believing I have my answer.

An invitation to a fraternity party follows, given to me by Seth.
  The invite speaks of a thousand full kegs, girls making out with each other with reckless abandon, and a personal bong for every reveler among many other promised wild party wonders.  “Be there or be square,” Seth urges as he traces a square with his hands. “Oh, and there’ll be beer pong, so come prepared.”

Ready to party, I put on a red t-shirt,
Oshkosh B'Gosh overalls, and a The Amazing Spider-Man backpack that I’m not even cool enough to sling over just one shoulder.  I knock on the door of the fraternity house and I’m reluctantly admitted after stating that I’m a friend of Seth’s.  “I’m here for beer pong,” I proudly declare, and boast of my skill.  A tall jock wearing a letterman’s jacket imprinted with a large S leads me into the basement.  Inquiring about his letter, he responds that they are the Fraternity of Set.  “We worship the great serpent,” he says coldly.

The basement has a huge ping-pong table covered
with red and blue plastic cups filled with beer.  On either end of the table two fraternity brothers toss ping-pong balls into the cups with perfect aim.  Each brother has a topless woman next to him who dances with a snake coiled around her body. 

On the other side of the room are two TV trays
, each displaying a television.  I remove the Pong console from my backpack and attempt to connect it to the first television.  But I fail.  The set is too modern, a nice flatscreen with two HDMI connections, incompatible with my console’s ancient switchbox.  The second TV is older than the first, predating HDMI, a heavy relic from the past before the dawn of the lightweight flatscreens.  It features an RF switch connector, but even this is too new.  I break into a cold sweat, search frantically around the room for a compatible television, but find only kegs and plastic cups.  “What of Pong?” I yell.  “I was told there’d be Pong!”

The women laugh maliciously
.  Two brothers leap and seize my arms, forcing me to drop the console which then smashes into thousands of pieces.  Thulsa Doom then steps out from the shadows.  He stares into my eyes.

“
The Riddle of Pong,” I murmur.              

“
Yes!  Would you like me to tell you, boy?” Doom asks.  He materializes a joystick out of thin air.  “A joystick isn’t strong, boy.  Flesh is stronger.  What is a joystick to the hand that wields it?”  The joystick morphs into a ping-pong ball that Doom effortlessly tosses into the cup at the dead center of the beer pong table.  Impressed, two of the dancing women flock to Doom and he places his arms around them both. 

“Cont
emplate this on the Tree of Woe,” says Doom.  “Crucify him.”

My professor enters and calls me back to reality.  A woman of perhaps fifty with curly red hair, I find her quite attractive.  Her eyes are always wide open, as if she had forever written off sleep in order to be more productive.

“Sorry abou
t that.  A grad student caught me in the hallway,” she says. 

“That’s all right, Professor McMullan.”
  I wonder if she was talking to Montana Wild and think about asking, but remember I don’t know her real name.  And asking if she were speaking to a buxom blonde with a bob seems inappropriate.

“Didn’t I tell you not to call me that?  Call me Mary. 
Professor
sounds so formal and just makes me feel like I should have a PhD instead of an MFA.  Mary.  My name’s Mary.”

“Sorry.”  I like Professor McMullan, though I’m
reluctant to address her by her first name.  While I’m appreciative that she’s so friendly, I prefer the title Professor McMullan because of its formality.  I am her student and she is my teacher, which makes my harmless fantasy of being with her all the more enjoyable.  If she were simply an older woman named Mary, she would likely laugh at my sexual inexperience.  But as a professor there exists both a professional obligation to mentor me as well as her innate desire to help me advance along the path.  At least that’s how it works in my daydreams.

“It’s all
right.  Now, what can I do for you?” asks McMullan, placing her leather jacket on the back of her chair and swiveling around to face me.

“I’m having trouble comin
g up with a good story to write,” I say.

“Ah, you’ve got writer’s block.  That can be a real pain in the ass.”

True, but I’m simply unmotivated.  “Yeah,” I say.  “What do I do about it?”

“What do you usually write about?”

“I don’t know.  This, that.  To be honest I don’t write all that much, really.”

“Well, if you want some generic but useful advice, tr
y writing something autobiographical.  I’m sure that a guy who reads the words
beer pong
in a rape story and instantly associates them with the old-school videogame could write a pretty good comedy of errors.  Just fictionalize some truth and begin writing.”

“No.  I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“I wouldn’t want to read any story that would have me as a character.”

McMullan laughs.  “Why is that?”

“Because then it wouldn’t have a happy ending.”

“I see.  So are you just a cynic like me or eight months from now am I going to look back on this moment as a missed warning sign of an instability that eventually consumed you and drove you to climb our bell tower with a sniper rifle?”

I laugh. 
“I’ve always seen myself more as the mad bomber type.  And I don’t think we have a bell tower.” 

“We don’t.  That’s probably
why we don’t.  Sorry.  I needed a little gallows humor after discussing that rape story.  The version you read was even toned down after I suggested some revising.  Anyway, happy endings belong in fairytales and cap off erotic massages in places of ill repute.  Who says you need a happy ending?  If I were to name you my top ten favorite authors, half of them committed suicide, and at least one attempted it.  Now, that isn’t to say that life cannot have a happy ending.  It can.  And a good story helps the reader see that.  Stories should be didactic.  A troubled protagonist who comes to a bad end can serve as a model to readers of what not to do in their own lives.  Look at Aesop’s Fables. 

“So don’t go thinking your story has to have a happ
y ending.  But also don’t think it can’t either.  Let your story decide where it needs to go, but at the same time remember that a story does eventually need to end.  I can’t begin to tell you how much I now loathe Robert Jordan and how much I once adored him and The Wheel of Time series.  What was supposed to be a six book series at present encompasses eleven volumes, and it still isn’t finished.  I’m not certain he’ll actually live to finish it, either.  But I stopped reading several volumes ago anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”  McMullan looks at me and chuckles. “Sorry, I went off on a little tangent there, didn’t I?  I do that sometimes.”

“That’s okay.  I have a friend who feels as you do and have heard much l
onger lectures than that on the evils of Jordan.  Plus it’s hot that you’re into fantasy.”  That last sentence was not meant to be spoken aloud.

“I like you,” says my professor. 
“Sometimes you say funny things out of ignorance, sometimes you’re just ballzy.  Either way it’s entertaining.  And I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way about Jordan.”

“
So which of your favorite authors attempted suicide?” I ask.

“Kurt Vonnegut, several decades back.”

“I’m a Vonnegut fan myself.   Actually, his name came up a few days ago when I was chatting with a girl who’s doing her thesis on him here.”

“How do you know
Abby Burke?” asks Professor McMullan.

Abby
Burke.  Was that Montana Wild’s real name?  I don’t know.  It must be.  I shouldn’t have brought her up.  Why’d I bring her up?  Now I know her real name.  One more thing I know about the real her.  But my professor has asked me a question.  A simple question, asked innocuously enough.  Last year another writing professor of mine had seen me talking to a fellow English major in the hallway, an extremely attractive girl named Danielle. 

I had a conference with the
same professor later that afternoon.  The first words out of his mouth were
how do you know Danielle Strauss
? He placed great emphasis on
you
.  As if he found it absurd that
I
could possibly be socializing with such a hot girl as Danielle.  Never mind that we both had the same major at the same college and likely had a few classes together, which we did.  That was the obvious answer and yet the man remained perplexed to the extent that he was actually compelled to ask me how I knew Danielle.

But
the question now before me lacked an accusatory tone or expression of disbelief, although ironically enough it’s this answer that is illicit.  I know Abby only because I paid to grope her breasts.  As she appreciates irony, I wonder if Abby would find this amusing.  I still need to give Professor McMullan an answer.  “Abby, uh, yeah, I think so.  Blonde with a bob, right?” I ask.

“Yes,
that’s Abby.  How do you know her?”

I paid her for
a lap dance.  “A friend of mine and I were talking about Vonnegut and she joined in on the conversation.  I wouldn’t really say I know her.” All of that was the truth.  Professor McMullan may not even know what Abby does to pay for her tuition.

McMullan
looks at me and grins, and I know that she does know.  She knows exactly how I met Abby. She senses my discomfort and appears amused by it.  Or rather she is amused by the fact that I am feeling uncomfortable when I really shouldn’t be. Professor McMullan likely finds it humorous how I met Abby, nothing more.  If she does not judge me for my definition of beer pong, she will not judge me for this.

“Abby
’s someone to talk to if you like Kurt Vonnegut,” says my professor.  “But to get back to your problem I really think that-” a knock on her door cuts her off.  She opens the door a crack but I can’t see who she’s talking to.