I was up till three last night tossing and turning, thinking about everything and so on. The bed makes this godawful squeaking racket whenever you even so much as fart, let alone just turning on my right side, to face the green numbers of the clock. It grates the nerves like nothing else.

I passed out somewhere along the line, because those green numbers told the magic science behind the whole array to send out that noisy alarm so I can wake up and continue contributing my joy and sunshine to the world at 9:10.

Oh hell. A lab.

I’ve got this sense of duty considering my chemistry lab. It’s no fun at all to begin with, but it’s the only class I’m not liable to skip on occasion. Then again, it’s only once a week, every Tuesday, and after it’s over, I can jack off or mug somebody or do whatever the hell I want to with the rest of the day.

That’s another thing. Some black guy’s been mugging people around campus at night. I want to meet him. He’s pulled a gun on somebody. I really want to meet him. I’d hit him. I’d say "Hell no. You want my money, you gotta kick my ass for it."

Then he’d shoot me. I guess I don’t really want to meet him all that much. I mean, I’d give him my money. No skin off my nose. I’ve only got about seven bucks on me anyhow.


Tried taking a nap later on. I was up writing for a few hours. Ate a burger. I’m getting roly-poly again. Then I went over to the B.A.S. and mailed off my first work for some shitty campus literary publication. Worth a shot, gotta start somewhere. Eh.

I laid down in my undershirt and jeans, reading Bukowski. I was tired. He was tired too, in the book. But he was getting pussy. And he was a mailman. In the book that is. He was in real life too. I got up and read about it online. There goes the nap idea.

I’m in college, and I’m sitting here reading about other people’s lives. I should be a damn mailman.

There goes the nap idea. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. I had to have another smoke. I had to put on my vomit-colored flannel shirt (actually my brother’s) and gathered up my "going-out" belongings: a broken multi-tool, my frayed wallet, my cheap phone, ratty keys, the little green Bic lighter. Same routine every time I gotta light one up.

I’m on the second floor of this shithole dormitory, the Honors dorm they call it. But it’s an honest to God shithole. Smells like piss everywhere. And jackasses running around at all hours. Some assholes are always playing their electric guitars as loud as possible, even with their goddam windows open, hoping a girl might walk by. Jesus. Girls. Don’t get me started.

You have to go down a flight of stairs, then through a door, then another door. Just keep hooking rights and lefts. That’s all I do around here, I swear to God.

Then I make it outside, for the love of God, outside. Fresh air. It’s breezy and little people are running all along the picturesque little college campus. Bullshit. There’s nothing here. Just jackasses everywhere. And all the good-looking girls are taken.

So what do I do? I light my cigarette and just stand there. There’s a group of hipsters sitting around my spot, where I usually burn one, right there on the brick wall in front of the entrance and pouring out into the sidewalk sitting astride bikes, guaranteeing the optimum inconvenience of passersby.

I stood along scoping the human panorama of goofy college kids, in their tight pants and scurrying along on their cellphones. No one can go anywhere without getting chatty about something.

I tossed down the cigarette when I reached the Marlboro label, stomped it out. As I turned and prepared to hook a left into the entrance to my dorm, what do I see coming down the sidewalk but yet another chump accompanying two shapely darlings, giving him a freaking campus tour, and probably later a ticket to their pants.

So I decide to change my path. I head straight. I decide I want to go to Subway, which happens to be in their general direction. They pass. One girl’s talking, wrapped up in explaining something trivial about the B.A.S. building. It’s two hundred goddam yards away. But the other girl, just as much a looker as the blabber-mouth, gave me just the tiniest bit of a glance as she sipped from a Quizno’s fountain drink, and I swelled up.

I walked on stone-faced. It got me to thinking about how few good-looking girls there are around here. There are some, sure, but they’re all busy sucking on Sprite or jabbering on about how great a campus it is to their boyfriends, who’re probably there for the same reason as me in the first place: scoping out the human panorama. They just wanna get laid. The girls too. I swear, if I’m not the last living soul looking for simple love. It’s all one big competition.

The competition. Hell. You can have your damn competition. There’s nothing here. God, it’s awful. I’m starved for crying out loud. You should see it.

And everything’s flat. I hate flat. Flat territory. It’s a breeding ground for wind and tornadoes and trailer parks. Or some cock combination of those things. One time they got us out of bed at 2:30 in the morning, just as I was slipping into bed, because of a damn tornado. They shuffled us into the hallway on the first floorm the alarms were going off, all wrath of God type stuff. I heard a guy say "If I see that tornado, I’m gonna punch it in the face." I think it was the smartest thing I’d heard since I started going to college.

I swear. It’s like I’m staring at the sun wherever I go. Suddenly Subway seems like a really good idea. Hell, a better idea than getting some tail. I just want a damn sandwich. A goddam steak and cheese sandwich.

As I walk along I’m thinking about lighting another one up. But, God, I’m trying to stop it. A pack a day. I told myself I wouldn’t get any farther then that. Lately, it gets closer and closer. I’ve already burned through half a pack, and money’s tight enough. I don’t have a job after all.

Maybe I should mug somebody. Apparently it’s a profitable enough scheme. That serial mugger has it all figured out. He’s going to college for all the right reasons. What am I doing here? That guy’s an entrepreneur for crying out loud. He’s making money. Meanwhile, I’m at a school, draining my family’s and the government’s money to fart around, jack off, and eat steak and cheese sandwiches. Education has nothing to do with it, really. This is all status; four years of it, then you get a piece of paper with a seal and some fancy signatures, just so every motherfucker and their dogs can stand to look at you when you apply for a job.

The college years. Give me a break.

I try to cross the street. There’s always a goddam car coming. There’s no outlet to the road they’re coming down, there’s just a parking lot, and even though it’s always filled, even the handicapped spaces, there’s always a goddam car coming around the bend. But never too fast. Just fast enough that you have to wait. Or they stop and signal for you to go ahead across. Then I have to wave back as a compliment to their charity.

But I get across. And I’m passing Gracy Hall coming to the Cyber Cafe where the Subway is, but I can already see that there’s a line. And not just any line. Every jackass at the school wanted a sub, even though there were at least ten different places to get food on campus. The line emptied outside the doors for crying out loud. I just sighed and went back to the dorm. Defeat at the hands of hungry fucks.



So then I figured I’d mug someone. Why not. I’ll try the serial mugger’s tactic. By this time it’s already getting dark, so only have to wait a few hours. My spot in front of the dorm is empty, finally. Those assholes probably went to Subway too. I bet no cars came when they tried to cross the damn street. And if they did, the driver probably got out of his car and licked the mud off their grimy shoes for them.

I stopped off at my room to write this story. Then I found out through a campus-wide e-mail, one of those that’s sent to everyone, that a tornado watch is in effect until one. So I go outside. I can’t even look at the damn stars for all the clouds. I just sat there. This is really just too much.

I finished off the pack of cigarettes, waiting about two hours for a target and gathering my wits about me. The blustery wind kept blowing ashes in my eyes, and I’d have to rub them vigorously. Then they water up and my nose starts running. I feel like I’m in kindergarten or something.

All sorts of goofballs walked by. I kept thinking about which one I should try my game on. What I needed to do was pick someone weak, someone alone, and someone that looks wealthy. But hell. Everyone here’s rich. This is college after all. Status. Money is everything. You can’t be successful if you don’t go to college, and you can’t go to college unless you fork over your humanity. The rest eat shit.

Here she comes. She’s the one. Not much to look at, but she’s carrying an Andy Warhol purse like all the hip girls do, and surely there’s something besides cosmetics and tampons in it. Money. I’m already thinking like a wise businessman.

This is it. She’s alone. As I pounce...

A siren. A goddam siren. There’s an enormous loudspeaker mounted on the Union Building, and it let’s out this godawful noise that my grandparents could probably hear. It throws my game off, and I fall headfirst onto the brick wall.

The loudspeaker proceeds, now that it has everyone on the planet’s attention:

"MGHAAABLE BLAAB GAAAGLE BAHL BERRAH TORNADO WARNING EMBIMNO LUSWUT..."

Or something to that effect. You’d think something so important as a tornado warning would be at least audible, but who am I to judge. We all heard the important words. Figured we’d all seek shelter.

Since the dorm was right behind me, and since I really didn’t care all that much about the goddam tornado, and further, the girl I had targeted was scared shitless, preoccupied with translating the loudspeaker that was still echoing baby talk about "SEEK SHELTER" and "BLUB YELLLPOM," I recovered my sense and gunned for her purse.

But I made a mistake. She had a fucking gun. I should have known that no one walks around that late it night, while serial muggers and wild tornadoes are on the prowl, without a fucking gun. And she was perfectly conscious of my present because she already had it pointed at me when I got to her.

She apparently knew how to use the little bastard, because I got shot. Left side of my chest. And slept like a rock for a month, and woke up at home... well, UT Medical Center anyway.



While I was passed out, off dreaming about being in a courtroom filled with mustard gas or something, I was shipped back to Knoxville for intensive care. It was dark outside the window.

Dad had pulled out all the stops in seeing that I was in good hands. I looked around at three Snoopy cards and a single, that’s right, single, one, balloon. And it was deflating, wouldn’t you know it? Am I really Charlie Brown?

Big whoop. I almost died. But I was still a criminal. Now I’m a failed businessman to boot, and my grades have without a doubt gone to pot over the course of a month in mental exile. Eh. I was failing most of my classes anyway. I had been having serious thoughts about dropping out and becoming a writer, or something whimsical like that.

No one else was in the room. The TV hanging up on the wall was off. There was a little red button beside me to signal a nurse. It had dust on it. Go figure. I guess they didn’t have much faith in my recovery if they didn’t bother to clean the place up, or at least leave the goddam TV on.

I was dazed from all the drugs and painkillers I’m sure they had me on, but I managed to find the remote control after feeling around the nightstand for about two years. I turned the stupid thing on. I mean, I pressed the button. Nothing happened. I took the batteries out of the remote and just started to chew on them. Not sure why. Then I got to thinking, this is the funniest goddam thing in the world. Here I am, chewing on AA batteries, a college dropout that somehow survived a tornado with a gunshot wound, received after trying to pick the pocket of an armed and dangerous girl, just because I was out of cigarettes and there was a massive line at Subway. Now everything I eat comes through a plastic tube, and it ain’t no steak and cheese sandwich.

So I guess I laughed hysterically for about fifteen minutes. Maybe more. Not once did anyone even walk by my stupid room. The door was wide fucking open. What kind of hospital is this? They leave a criminal mastermind alone with no TV, all hopped up on any drug you can think of that ends in -mine?

I recovered myself. I was still chuckling, but I started pulling the IV tubes out. The popped. My blood was thin, and it ran down my arms and legs as I stood up. I sat on the edge of the bed, hit with another quick fit of laughter. Then, steadily, slowly, I rose onto my feet, and instantly fell to the floor.

Linoleum flooring. Always slick and cold. Always unwelcoming. Perfect for a quick clean up when someone tosses their cookies, but not so friendly to a hemorrhaging paraplegic. Under the bed, I spy a VHS tape. A Troll in Central Park. I don’t even remember that movie. But, again, the drugs have taken over, and that is apparently the funniest thing I’d heard in my life.

Somehow, my energy spent and my jaw aching from a half hour grin, blood and applesauce dripping down, I manage to stand. I’m standing for God’s sake. I did it. But I’m still laughing like a maniac, and I stumble to the door.

At that point I realized something particularly unusual. I had a pair of wings. And not some shitty angel wings, but I mean goddam eagle’s wings, with feathers and hollow bone joined right into my skin. Damn. Great idea guys. My dad really did pull out all the stops. I’m a goddam swan.

This put me in a chipper mood. I strutted right out of the room, and straight to the elevator. I left a trail of feathers and blood. But perfectly ready to flaunt my new wings, I gave them a good stretch. It kind of got blurry, but I could see them spreading out. I was proud. Damn, I’m all set up. Who can stop a pickpocket that can fly? I’m the next Don Corleone. Jesus Christ.

As the elevator doors slowly closed, I could see a single man running towards me from the receptionist desk. I waved at him and yelled that I was going up to the roof to try them out. The doors closed just before he got there. He seemed rather unhappy. Angry in fact. Something was bothering him. He’ll just have to wait for the next elevator.