TUND by Garcia Thor

Author:Garcia, Thor [Garcia, Thor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2000-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

II

The classes were hard for me, it took me years to catch on. I remember in the Friday class on Chaucer, the professor suddenly yelled at me, “And you, young man, what is a myth!” He was a large stocky man with a white beard and thick eyeglasses, who would sometimes brag about all the different varieties of wine he’d drunk over the weekend. He would stalk around the stage as though in a little rage, every so often blasting a question at the unsuspecting. “What is a myth!” I floundered and stuttered. It hit me that we were supposed to have looked this up somewhere or other, but I hadn’t done it, I was totally unprepared. I stammered and said something about how a myth was perhaps a kind of fictional story, often designed to reveal a greater truth – for example, I said, “like Paul Bunyan.”

A stunned silence seemed to suck the air out of the room. Oh dear, I remember thinking, what would happen now? I was terrified. I looked around. None of the other students were looking at me. They were scribbling in their notebooks, staring at their texts. Somebody behind me breathed loudly through their nose. “NO!” the professor screamed. He paced back and forth, muttering and wringing his hands. Some girl in the front chirped up and answered correctly, I have no idea what she said.

The class was over. I walked out into the late morning autumn sun. My arms and knees were trembling, it seemed like I was about to fall apart. College was ruining me, it was crushing me into a flat, pitiful thing. It had taken only a matter of weeks.

There was a little stand and I went over and bought a hot dog for a dollar. Before I could say anything, the guy slapped on mustard and pickle relish and handed it over. I hate relish, always have, but I didn’t say anything. I sat on a bench, took a bite of the hot dog, and started crying. Tears gathered in my eyelashes. Then a little line of tears started to slide down one of my cheeks. I smeared it away. I could hardly chew the hot dog. I was swallowing it down in big hunks. Bits of it caught in my throat. The sweet relish was awful, cold and bad-tasting. I started to gag. People were walking by, I felt them looking at me. I sat very still and tried to act like everything was perfectly fine, like I was just another friendly young college man eating a hot dog in the sun. Across the way I saw a group of fraternity guys sitting at a table giving away free condoms from a fishbowl. Bunches of girls walked up and took away handfuls. I could hear them giggling as the fraternity men told terrible jokes, awful jokes, the worst jokes of all time, and invited them to parties.

I was supposed to be in another class in about ten minutes. I finished the hot dog and sat until my tears dried.

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