Will a classmate win literature's prized Golden Fist Award?
The Dirty Muse
Two weeks ago, I began attending a weekly writing class. My motivations were many, but simplest among them was that I wanted to become a better writer. I figure I'm not going back to real school at this point in my life, but I want something better than your standard community-ed workshop, so I ended up here.
It's a fiction class. There have only been two classes so far, meeting on Monday evenings. There are fifteen of us, and our instructor Ellen. The first night, we all went around the room and said some brief words about ourselves, and why we were there. Blah, blah, blah, usual stuff. The class makeup runs the gamut from maybe 24 to 60, male and female, punk rock to auto mechanic to housewife.
The only person who really has anything interesting to say during this introductory phase is one of the two punk rock chicks in the class (they are friends). Her reason for attending the class? "I want to write dirty stories." Hey, who doesn't? Nobody reacts much to her declaration of debauchery; we move on around the table.
So the next class, she and I are the only two people who volunteered to turn in our work. I figured I usually write my stuff in an hour, so with a week to write I'll be a Shakespeare. Well, maybe not. But I get something turned in, and so does she.
The way it works is, we hand copies of our stuff out to the class, and they take it home and write their comments all over it. Then, the next week, after the author reads a portion of their story to the class, we have a long discussion about the piece.
So I'm looking at her piece as she hands it to me in class, and then I remember she's the "dirty girl". I start to browse the front page. BAM! Not 100 words in, I see the word "fisting". Oh, you mean that kind of dirty story. I looked up to see how other people are reacting, but I think I was the only one who had forged ahead.
Now, the piece isn't exclusively about fisting, thankfully. You can only read so many of those. In fact, that's really just a passing moment. There's some other stuff. A truck that either is or isn't a metaphor. Some odd genderbending that is either the result of a prosthetic device, or perhaps the presence of a hermaphrodite in the story. I can't be sure, but I'll clear it all up on Monday, in what I'm sure will be a very interesting class discussion. I think there's a reasonable chance that some of the people in the class won't know what she's talking about with the whole "fisting" reference in the first place. Now that's going to be a fun thing to watch people explain.
3:24:18 PM 
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