One: Introducing Jon Macklem, Star Professor, Acclaimed Author.
Jon is writing. Heâs struggling to focus on his work. After a pause, he closes his laptop or pushes papers away. He looks up and without hesitation speaks to the audience.
Jon: Well, he was agitated: he didnât know why, nothing came to him.
Jon stands and picks up his Thermos of coffee, lifts it to his mouth, then hesitates.
A few weeks ago, the janitor forgot to unlock the menâs washroom before office hours, so heâd had to urinate into his Thermos. Then heâd opened his door, and met with students, and discussed their essays with them, with a hot Thermos of his own urine sitting on the windowsill.
Jon looks down at the Thermos. He looks back at the audience.
Urine was, he knew, dissolved salts with a little organic yellow colouring in it. You just rinse it out and itâs fine.
Jon hesitates, then forces himself to drink from it, forces himself to swallow, and then he puts the Thermos back down on his desk.
Heâd been trying to jot down lecture notes, but heâd been too agitated so heâd switched to grading papers and now he couldnât even fucking do that. What the fuck was wrong with him?
Pause. Jon considers. Then realizes:
And, huh, a dim image came to him. It was of a girl in a red coat . . .
Pause. Jon sees the girl in his mind . . . Then:
Could it be a fragment of . . . ? His publishers were waiting on a novel about turn-of-the-century lumberjacks, so hopefully this girl was a part of that, or . . . could be shoehorned into it? Because also: come on, a girl? A young girl? Wasnât there something deadly about the âyoung girlâ as an object of fiction? Wasnât it where writers went to expose their mediocrity? Because wasnât it so often the âyoung girlâ who was grossly underwritten, a cipher, a sex object, reduced to a clichĂ© by lust-addled men?
Jon looks at his watch or device.
Nearly two oâclock.
Perhaps Jon gets out an earpiece (a microphone) and puts it on.
Which meant a lecture on the death of postmodernism and the rise of transrealism with its adjacent mainstreaming of genre fiction to some ninety or so second years, so, that should really meet them where they were at.
Jon regards the audience, to see if his joke registered.
That was a joke.
Beat.
Lately heâd had to point out to his students when he made jokes, as in, âThat was a joke.â Maybe his delivery . . . ? Was too dry . . . ? That or he was getting old.
Pause. He takes a last look at his notes before putting them away. Then to explain, still taking a last look at his notes:
He uhâheâheâhe liked to lecture without ...
