Pound Of Flesh

Quick Update:  I did a movie review for The Greenists.  Please check it out!

Tap, tap, tap…testing 1, 2, 3…is anybody out there?

Well, that was an unexpected and unintended bloggy hiatus! 

The last two weeks of class were a flurry of papers, projects, exams, and grading.  You’d think that once grades were submitted I’d be able to kick back with a beer and revel in the five minutes I have to myself before I begin prepping for the fall.  Oh, Innernetz, how silly you are!  I had to use four of those minutes to catch up on the many things I had let slide during the summer session.  After grades are submitted, my personal life takes over. Among the many joyous tasks I had: calls to my slumlord about the dismal water pressure that had turned my shower into Chinese water torture, involuntary volunteer work, and inventing new miracle diets that magically and effortlessly pack on the pounds.  Yes, I did watch eighteen nonstop hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood, but that indulgence was earned since, even after grades were submitted, I spent a disproportionate amount of time performing cutting edge surgery on students whose heads were so far up their asses that their burps were indistinguishable from their farts

All of the students (and some of their parents) think that if they could just meet with me, they’d be able to convince me that getting that pedicure was much more important than attending the mid-term exam.  And every semester I get one or two students who tell me that they thought all of the assignments were optional.  I tell you what, if they were as creative and diligent in doing the assigned work as they were with coming up with excuses for not doing it, they’d all be A+ students.  But they’re not.  They’re just idiots.  Two seconds after grades were submitted I began receiving phone calls and emails asking, “What can I do about my grade?” My standard answer always starts with, “First, build a time machine....” They don’t think that’s as funny as I do. 

One student failed the course because she missed an entire week of class.  She flounced into my office peeling like a soft shell crab, her tan lines fish belly white against her crocodile jerky skin.  “I told you that I had a family vacation that was non-negotiable!” she shrieked, waving her arms with such fury and drama that she looked like a fight scene from the Matrix.  Layers of baked flesh drifted onto my desk as though I had landed in a dust-mite’s dream.  Flake threw herself into the chair next to my desk and crossed her arms like a petulant child.  “What do you have to say for yourself?” Flake demanded, her face shriveled like an Appalachian apple doll.  What else could I say?  I gently pushed a tube of Aveeno across the desk and held up the garden hose I keep in my desk.  “She rubs the lotion on her skin....”

The last time I saw skin like hers, I was Flake’s age and working at a video store.  (Just in case any of my students are reading: yes, they had televisions and even videos when I was your age.  Yes, the videos were made of wood.) My co-irker was a tall bottle-blonde who aspired to be a supermodel.  I didn’t see it ever happening only because she had a congenital defect that was impossible to overlook: she was butt ugly.  Willem Defoe/Janet Reno love-child ugly. If ugly were a sport, she would win the Tour de Ugly every year and, every single year, the French would accuse her of taking ugly-enhancing drugs.  My co-irker would lay out in the sun every chance she got, but her skin never changed from baboon-ass red to the deep copper tan she so desired.  I called her Chernobyl Barbie.

One day, after being on vacation for almost two weeks, Chernobyl Barbie walked into the video store looking as if she had vacationed on the sun.  Her skin was brown, blistered, and pork rind crispy.  In her red and white sundress, she resembled a KFC Chicken Strip.  Chernobyl Barbie slathered on cheap body lotion throughout the day to soothe her skin and prolong her third degree burn tan.  She scared more children than usual.

By closing time, her chest was an oozing mass of moist, peeling, bubbly flesh.  After returning some videos to the stacks, she came behind the counter where I was counting the day’s receipts, noting the surge in rentals of Nightmare on Elm Street. Chernobyl Barbie went to grab the next pile of unshelved movies from the floor and tripped.  I tried to catch her but my palm landed with a schwack! in the middle of her lubricated chest. It was like sinking my hand into Vaseline covered Tempur-Pedic foam, patented NASA research and all.  I yanked my hand away but, after her twelve hours of regular basting, my hand just slid across her Butterball chest, the skin curling like ribbon candy and encasing each digit like a Chinese finger trap. And the smell!  I gagged and tried to breathe through my nose as her skin gave off the swampy, wet smell of a dirty fish tank.  Where was her filter?  Must change her filter!

“Get it off!  Get it off!” I screamed, snapping my hands back and forth.  But the dead flesh clung on, not wanting to relinquish its hold on living cells.  Chernobyl Barbie was no help.  She was staring in disbelief at the raw white skin emblazoned on her chest in the distinct shape of my palm.  With a final violent shake, the skin came loose and dropped onto the glass counter with a sickening schlock! Imagine the sound you make when you suck Jello right out of the bowl: schlock!

I don’t remember much after that, and neither would you.  But I do remember that, for the rest of that summer, Chernobyl Barbie walked around with my handprint on her chest like a turkey drawing kids do at Thanksgiving, except that, against the crispy pork-rind skin next to it, it looked like a marshmallow turkey.  Still, somehow, she continued to scare more kids than usual.

I thought about Chernobyl Barbie as I watched Flake douse herself with my tube of lotion.  As she sputtered and spewed about her vacation and how I owed her a good grade, her dry skin crackled and threatened to split like a crusty baked potato.  Where was my sour cream?

With the apartment in such a state of disrepair that Dingo Girl and Not a Dingo are weighing the benefits of homelessness and the drama of summer semester just beginning to fade, students for next semester are already starting to contact me (“Do we have to read all the books on the syllabus?”).  I have been too tired and unmotivated to blog, preferring instead to escape my surroundings via the Fine Living channel. But that will change soon.  I’ve scheduled myself for a thirty minute nap on Thursday.  After that, I’ll be Dingolicious all over again.

Leave a comment....

Dingo’s Gambit

Summer classes are like opening Christmas gifts.  You hope for diamonds and car keys but inevitably you wind up with a mug with something moderately funny on it, a coin purse, and a few fruitcakes.  Hell, one Christmas as a child, I got an airgun and a rosary.  That’s summer class, Innernetz.  No tennis bracelets.  All socks, underwear, and talking bathroom scales.

One student showed up on the first day of class wearing a thin see-through t-shirt.  Over his left breast — on his skin — he’d drawn a pocket with lines so wavy that I wondered if he suffered from acute astigmatism or, more likely, heroin withdrawal.  As part of what must have been this week’s art therapy assignment, he’d also drawn a fake nametag on the fake pocket.  There, in bright gold marker under “Hello, My Name Is” was the name “Playa.” Yes, the thirty-ish-year-old student with mutton chop sideburns and a hand-drawn name tag wants to be called “Playa.” Um, no. 

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked him. “Naw, man.  This is my tag, man,” he responded, using his right fist to deliver two weak thumps to his scrawny chest like a consumptive Roman legionnaire. He tried to catch the eye of the class slut woman sitting next to him. She didn’t notice.  She was distracted by her own issues, sliding around in her seat as if sitting on a Spirograph.  I couldn’t tell if she was perfecting the moves for her next lap dance or if she had simply forgotten to take off her NASCAR-grade Mobil 1 pre-moistened panties. 

“Well, my roster says your name is Archie so why don’t we go with that.” He grumbled and frowned.  By exposing his true identity, I had obviously ruined his chances with Miss Fucksalot who, by this time, had hooked her stilettos around the legs of the chair and sat slouched, staring at the floor.

Playa was a stroll on the beach.  I pwned him the very first day.  Check and mate.  But the Gary Busey lookalike who sits behinds Playa is a different story.  Busey wants nothing less than complete victory and every day is a battle for control of the proverbial chessboard.  Busey is a pompous brownnoser whose self-important classroom pontifications make Bill O’Reilly look like a zen mantra.  This alone wouldn’t be so bad if Busey could simply stay on topic.  Instead, every single class he channels Sarah Palin after a pot of espresso.  On top of this, he inexplicably lugs a ginormous wheeled suitcase to class every day.  I don’t know what he carries in that suitcase, but I’ll admit that I’ve cut him some slack just in case it’s money.

Yesterday, as I started taking attendance, I noticed Busey wasn’t in his usual seat.  I sighed a deep, contented sigh.  It was going to be a good day.  I wouldn’t have to cut him off in the middle of a pretentious speech wholly unrelated to the class discussion.  I wouldn’t need to shut down his impromptu poll of the class regarding whether or not I should extend the next paper deadline.  My attendance policy is notably draconian.  If you miss attendance you are marked absent.  No excuses.  Period.  End of story.  I looked forward to marking a giant purple X next to his name on the attendance sheet.

When I was halfway through the roster I heard a door in the hall creak open on its rusty hinges. The sound echoed, bouncing off the grey industrial walls in warning.  The creaking continued.  The sound became the wheels of a mammoth suitcase creaking down my spine.  It felt as if someone was wheeling over my grave.  My eyes whipped to the tiny glass partition in the classroom door.  Busey!  Damn!  I looked at my roster and knew I had just seconds to complete it before he and his Samsonite wife came sauntering into the classroom.  I decided to speed things up a bit.

“Sleeper!”

“Here!”

“Miss Fucksalot!”

“Here!”

I could hear his Bruno Magli’s slapping against the tile.  Closer and closer.  Faster, Dingo, I thought.  Faster!

“Smart Guy!” “Here!” “Clueless” “Here!” “Nice Dresser!” “Here!”

I looked out the partition window again and it was almost my downfall.  I made eye contact with Busey.  He saw me standing there with my gradebook in hand and broke into a run.  Shit!  I called names and didn’t even wait for the students to acknowledge their presence.

“Exchange Student, Emo, Chatty Cathy, Cheerleader!” “Here! Here! Here! Here!”

Busey was racing down the hallway, the wheels of his luggage shrieking, “Here! Here! Here!” I watched as he swam in a panic toward the door, eyes dark and flickering like a shark about to feed, trying desperately to maintain his tenuous grasp on his carry-on, that all-knowing, toothy grin on his face.  Fortunately, his suitcase acted as a wobbly anchor, slowing his arrival by overturning and crashing into a wall.  If I hadn’t been holding pen and paper I would’ve rubbed my hands together with glee and thrown back my head with a hearty “Mwahahaha!” But there wasn’t time.

“Shy Girl!” “Here.”

And DONE!

I scribbled an X next to Busey’s name, a bruise he would wear for the rest of the summer semester, and tossed the attendance sheet onto the desk in triumph.  He dashed through the door two seconds later, his baggage slamming into the doorjamb and sliding to a halt.  “HERE!” he screamed. 

“Awww, sorry,” I said.  “I just finished taking attendance.”

“But Ms. Dingo —”

I put on a sad face and slowly shook my head as I held my thumb and finger an inch apart, “So close, Busey.  So close.” That was when he righted his battered suitcase and began to unzip it.  Fuck.  Was this it?  Is this how I was goin’ down?

He unzipped the suitcase just enough to slide one sweat-slicked arm into the dark opening and pulled out — a Diet Pepsi.  Which he offered to me. 

“But Ms. Dingo, I was late because I stopped to get you a Diet Pepsi.  You always get one during break and I thought you’d like one at the beginning of class.”

The Diet Pepsi was in bad shape.  It was dented and hissing from its perilous ride down the hallway.  His sweaty arm reached in my direction, pushing the battered nectar toward me.  I hesitated for two nanoseconds before accepting his offer.

“Take your seat, Busey. Don’t be late again.”

As Busey made his way to the back of the class, banging shins and elbows with his monstrous bag, I caught the slight glimmer of a smirk.  But I didn’t mind.  After I let the Diet Pepsi settle, I would be basking in glory as the luscious drink burned its way down my throat.

Well played, Busey.  Well played.  But the game has only just begun.

Leave a comment....