Don Mann: Focusing on my Craft

Thursday, Jun. 03, 2004 - 9:10 p.m.

Each day is a new experience, but it all cycles down into monotony when looked at on a larger scale. Lately, I've been using my intense power of influence on my colleagues to stimulate them into existential conversation. Yesterday I coaxed my painting partner Alex into broadening his views on our college's "art content" policies. More interesting than that, however, was our conversation on gender roles in modern society, as well as the perception and intuition of our instructors concerning our written material and whether or not it is truly indicative of our own mental stability. Well, I figure I'm boring you by now, so allow me to explain the latter in greater detail.

He forced her down onto the filthy, stain-smeared mattress, her face falling in a dried and crusted puddle of semen. The blade changed from his left hand to his right with a brief glimmer against the low-watt bulb's rays which fell from the ceiling of the low basement like muddy rain. A malodorous stench of human decay reeked in the damp air, so thick it almost suffocated her.

Her eyes were open wide until this point, but when she saw the sadistic grin on his face and the motion he was about to make with the knife, they clenched shut, and the first cut tore her deeply. She cried out in anguish as she felt the hot, wet flood of her lifeblood leaking out from her right breast pouring down her shirt. A fire burned in the place from where this flow issued, numbing her mind to anything put pure pain and shock. He slashed again, more fire, more shock, pushing her to her limits until her brain collapsed inward on itself and smothered her in darkness.

He toiled in the dim room for another 15 minutes, the blade and skin making a sick slurping sound as each run intruded deeper into her organs. With a large tear now running across her entire abdomen, he anxiously watched as the pink of her intestines peeked out from beneath the blood-smeared tan of her belly-flesh.

This is an example of writing which should not attract the attention of an instructor or professor. It's obviously the work of a crying-for-attention mentally stable person. So many people use this kind of work to attract negative attention to themselves in order to feed some unconscious dominance issue, the type exhibited by the young and impressionable. I explained this in detail to Alex, because he'd submitted a work similar to this in his english class in some attempt to increase his social status. Predictably, his work became a small topic around the dorm rooms for a time, ultimately accomplishing his selfish goal. I feel this is a sort of flaw in the system, when an instructor can't recognize these cries for attention and instead feeds them with their...attention. He then demanded I give an example of what true attention-deserving writing of this disturbing caliber was like. So, I'll sum it up here.

It felt so good, being close to her, as if a piece of her essence was rubbing off onto me, absorbing into my flesh and cleansing me all of my faults. Once I touched her, her soft skin brushing against my forearm and making the nerves tingle like an orgasm just beneath the surface. The more I saw her, the closer I wanted to be. No, not closer, I wanted to be inside her. Her virginity screamed my name, the innocence that pulsed between her thighs called to me and the love I wanted to bring her.

There were times I would sit alone in my bed, covered in hot sweat and imagining what her skin tasted like, imagining her supple curves being caressed by my probing tongue. This was right around the time I began to follow her. I stood in the bathroom stall beside hers, knowing exactly when she would come walking in after lunch to brush her teeth-she was SO meticulous. Meticulous, just like I had been, my love throbbing all through my body as I snuck into the bathroom thirty minutes before lunch had begun, carefully planning each step until I finally came to rest in this dull pink stall.

I gasped, the door of the bathroom opened, and I heard the jingle of her keychains which hung from her schoolbag, "Remember, you are unique, just like everyone else.". Thinking about that one always made me smile...so witty! I began to wonder if she wrote it herself.

I snapped back into reality as I heard her enter the stall beside mine, and I quivered at the images which flooded my mind of what she was doing.

JUST A PEEK.

I had to look. My hands moved without any conscious effort to the walls of the stall, and I gently stepped up on the seat of the toilet, my body still shaking in anticipation. My eyes peeked over the top, and I saw her golden blonde halo of hair protruding just into my field of vision. I nearly fell as I heard her fluids leaking softly into the water below her, muffled by her body. I think I must have let out a dull moan at this point, because her head tilted slightly and I ducked quickly back into the safety of my stall. To think, this tiny inch of wall was all that seperated us-I stepped off of the bowl and rested my head against the dull pink, imagining it was her flesh. I heard her rise, and I panicked again, drawing my tongue back into my mouth. My palms were soaked, and I could barely work the handle of the stall as I stepped out before the full-sized mirror, taking one last look at my ragged figure before her stall door opened.

I think she must have seen my reflection before she saw me, because by the time my hands were around her narrow, fragile neck she had already begun to scream my name.

"I love you."

A groaning gasp.

"I LOVE you."

Her limbs stopped flailing then. She began to slump to the floor.

"I LOVE YOU!"

My words echoed in the room, and again inside of my head. My hands were on fire, and I wondered if she could feel my love flowing through them, through me, into her body. At last, I released my grip, and stood up for a moment. As I stood fully erect, my head began to swim and my stomach turned briefly, this feeling of ecstasy was too much to control, I couldn't stop myself, I came hard, the warm gel spilling against my boxers and down my leg, and I moaned deeply as the convulsions stopped. I loved her more than ever then, because she had taught me what it felt like to make love to one's soulmate.

Delve Into The Past - Onward Into The Future