I’m sitting in the captain’s chair of this classroom. As it turns out, not even the instructor, a published novelist has this seat, I do. But that’s in my mind, so hey, I can make that call. But here I am, captain, king, alpha-male in a room full of Stephen King fan’s and adult women with orthodontic gear. And there’s instructor, he’s been talking for an hour and fifty-two minutes. I’m listening to him talk about a novel written by a young British upstart. He alludes to an argument between the protagonist and her lover as a form of sword fighting. He says parry as he twists his exposed wrist and pale arm in an effete manner, supposedly mimicking a counter draw cross of the saber.
I’m not concerned with this speech my professor is giving though. I’m still in my own world, suspended above a blizzard peaked mountain in my captain’s chair. Just above, slightly higher than my supposed peers. I hear nasal voices and the whistle of hot breath through metal braces with pink plastic bands. We are in a creative writing lecture. And I’ve deemed myself the best. I do this every time I set foot in a workshop. I eyeball, size up, belittle. I am standoff-ish. I daydream myself out of the monotony of style choice lectures and writer’s craft.
When the talk of fleche attacks as word tags and counter attacks as dialogue breaks reaches it’s highest point I find myself counting tiles on the floor. The soiled linoleum has been rolled over and scuffed with the black plastic chairs we are sitting on. Even my captain’s chair. I’m imaging myself doing hopscotch. My right foot is in the third square and my single barrel whiskey with purified water is spilling. The radiant ice cubes frosted over inside my glass tumbler. My dusty sombrero has just fallen off when I reach the fourth square, switching feet (yes, I’m wearing a sombrero in my daydream. It’s normal). I’m drawn from the game inside myself when a classmate brings up an idea for a short story.
A young man dared to interrupt the instructor while he was knee deep in a fencing pose and explaining to us how the character’s discourse is “sharp”. The silence grows in the room as the professor sits down then looks long and deep in to the young man’s eyes. And he says, “I’m glad you asked that.” He’s not glad, nor am I. Nobody is. Now we have to engage ourselves in a discussion about writing.
Mr. Winter (our professor) can no longer enact his fantasies of eloquent duels in front of a group of gawk eyed science fiction worshippers. I can no longer elevate myself in my captain’s chair and watch myself play hopscotch in the bosom of Valhalla. The rest of the students can’t mentally masturbate to images of lush otherworldly planets, visceral red-crested dragons, laser beams and whatever else genre writers think about. Now we must come back to real life. We are harkened from whatever universe we have created for ourselves in the confines of our daydreams. Some are more fantastic than others, but the intent in cerebral escape is the same.
The problem with putting a group of people who have various interests in writing into the same room is that no one really knows how to deal with each other. I can’t fathom having a conversation with my neighbor at our desk table about whatever he claims to read (the book cover shows a desert landscape with two sunken moons) and I can’t understand him from way up in my lavish, velvet captain’s chair. Mr. Winter clearly can’t handle the thought of interacting with a human being in opposition to his invented sword-fight. We are a room of people who don’t know how to deal with other people close but very unlike ourselves. We are all in our respective captain’s chairs.
When I started writing I assumed everyone had read Ernest Hemingway. I imagined we would all sit in captain’s chairs in some smoky Creole billiard’s room having in-depth conversations about an overuse of the word “edifying”. This, however, was not so. I learned that those of us who write acquire and develop very different ideas and creeds of what “good” writing is. We are unlike the mathematician’s who can unify in thought about the plausibility of a cosine function. But we are more unlike the philosopher’s who agree there is no “right” answer. In our minds only we are right, and that’s why we put our opinions on paper.
Now as our lethargic discussion comes to a head I find myself asking about character develop, past trauma, intent of actions and so forth (his story is about a women who is exposed to a flaccid penis in a dance club bathroom). While I listen to the writer, my classmate, propose his solution to the logistical problem of how the flasher snuck into the women’s bathroom I find my captain’s chair is floating away again. It’s taking me back to the empty ashen planes of my mind where I can play c-lo with John Steinbeck and Allen Ginsberg while we listen to the Wu Tang Clan. From the glassy eyed look sweeping across the face and fortified mouth gear of the girl to my right, I can see other student’s are checking out as well.
Even Mr. Winter, with left hand running through his slicked black hair and right hand dimly motioning the gestures of a feint-parry thrust combination with his thought up saber, has checked out.
This is an advanced college fiction workshop, where average human beings are forced to interact for a letter grade. We deal with it in our own ways. Some of us are enthusiastic about third person omniscient tense, some of us became grammar Nazi’s, a large amount (like myself) daydream. When this brief dialogue between the five or six of us who at least want that easy, easy A dies down, Mr. Winter starts back up with his fencing/characterization battle. As he bears down on his fallen opponent (the story’s womanizing antagonist), with his sharpened épée I find myself back in my captain’s chair.
I’ve escaped the girl next to me, punching away at her Blackberry. I’m miles away from the young man to my left nodding off. His spittle splayed across his wrinkled, vanilla colored T-shirt. I’m ancient forests and weathered countryside’s away from Mr. Winter. Apparently he’s still in Great Britain, and he has just cut the ear lobe off his fictitious opponent.
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