I am planning a novel full of excellently witty characters that can speak French. They will be top society, these people, and will lift their extraordinarily arched eyebrows and frown upon anything not "haute couture", which actually means, "high cut�, translated literally. I even dress French now, (I am wearing this fabulous beret I found at a flea market - isn�t it quaint?) So I am writing lingua franca while I plan this great work of art during my history class because, quite frankly, I don't care about the illiterates in Chicago who don't vote. Between sentences, I drum my nails on the desk; these are, of course, painfully short, because I play the piano, so I never get to do them up. It�s a pity because I�ve seen quite a few of those ravishingly beautiful palm scenes or Middle Eastern geometric patterns for nails that I have fallen in love with. It helps that in France, women have the most artistic nails I have ever laid eyes on. Someday, I will get them done and quit the bloody instrument. My mother would never let me, though, so I drum my fingers while pretending that I have nails. It�s not helping me keep awake. The lesson is so boring even my exquisitely humored and fast-paced French characters are falling asleep on their respective pages.
The door opens, and I hear abrasive footsteps. I hate the sound of them because they are so dissonant; if I wanted sandpaper rubbed together in my ears, I would have gone to vocational school and learned carpentry with the other chimpanzees. Although it might be quite interesting to masquerade as a carpenter (baggy overalls? a sturdy man of muscles as eye candy on the job?), it doesn�t fit my self-image. Instead, I see myself as a sleek woman, a CEO, donating lavishly to worthy causes. I will walk in stilettos and figure-hugging skirts that move ever-so-delicately back and forth while I catch eyes, turn heads... and so forth. I HATE that phrase, "and so forth..." My history teacher uses it all the time, but he is silenced for the moment by these masculine footsteps that would have been remotely bearable except that they belong to a girl. (These footsteps -- I HATE them!)
The intrusion to my history class is courtesy of Morgan. She is squat and possesses gluttonous curves that meld into an amorphous glob underneath her large, purple jacket. Her walk is crooked because she carries a backpack, which I am sure is filled with bricks (her intelligence would never allow for books); she clasps a bottle of lemonade loosely in monstrous hands. My history teacher is so pitiful that even when he reprimands others, he sounds jovial. He merely asks her where she has been and if she has lost her way around the unfamiliar building she visits twice each week. Morgan raises her untamed eyebrows.
"The soda machine was jammed," she explains. I wait for the windows to shatter because of her sickeningly sweet voice. "I had to kick it, which explains my limp. See?" Morgan explains herself as the class laughs, but she does not seem to realize they are not laughing with her but at her, and her pathetic leg. Morgan now lumbers toward her seat with her crippling backpack and the fellow who sits behind me mutters, "What a waste of space."
"I know," I empathize.
"Who does she think she is, being in this class?" My neighbor is a rather dour faced and has a sullen expression. He reminds me the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine one week. I remember it so well because it was my favorite issue. It fascinates me, really; I hear that the technological gadgets invented in Silicon Valley can, perhaps leave our legs as vestigial organs. (Can I picture myself so sinfully lazy?) I am fond of the cutting edge; it seems much too far away when I sit in this classroom, unable to do anything else but sit and stare. I only wish Morgan wasn�t here; the scenery might be slightly nicer.
"She is so inept," he begins. I like his use of language. Inept. How concise. "I can't believe her head is still attached to her neck. Her brain evaporated long ago." My history teacher babbles on about nothing; I�ll resort to bulldozing through the material to yield my usual perfect grade. I cannot help it if I am unable to listen to him, but it is also apparent that my doing so will yield nothing. "Morgan is incapable of thought," my companion continues. As subtly as possible, I turn around to look at Morgan as she passes a piece of paper to her neighbor, a bohemian-looking girl who wears many artful piercings in her ear. The neighbor laughs and writes something else down and passes it back to her.
�A refrigerator?� Morgan�s friend whispers.
�Yeah, isn�t that what she looks like?� Morgan laughs softly, and the sound is so strange that it sounds evil. Personally, I wonder what this girl's inferior intellect would deem funny,- most possibly everything, because she lacks the mental faculties to discriminate. The fact she has managed to survive as long as she has almost cracks me up. I can only hope that one more year will be enough to finish her off.
"Oh, yes," I tell him, "People like her should be euthanized. One less animal in the universe should not be a problem."
"Exactly."
"Do you know her?" I ask. I immediately regret my curiosity getting ahead of me.
"I knew her three years ago," he tells me, "and she was eccentric then. One assumes an eccentric to possess some intelligence."
"You were wrong," I say, lifting up my pen. "She has not a shred of hope."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious!" he says with scorn, but I do not mind. I am at home with pride. In fact, my best friend has always told me that I should tone it down. �You come on like a ceramic oven,� Celia told me, once, in one of her nonsense analogies that she is fond of. �What right do you have to be so bitter?�
�Morgan,� I had said, �has lowered the class average so much on our last history test that she gave the class an incredible curve that they did not deserve.�
�How the hell does that bother you?� Celia asked, slurping on her lollipop. Unlike Morgan, Celia�s laidback style was not crude but extremely refined, actually. We were at my home, and she was finger-painting with mauve paint; some of her miraculous patterns turned out to be almost pagan symbols which, when I pointed them out made Celia giggle so much that her fingers flew all over the paper and ruined them. �You get the same curve as anybody else.�
�It bothers me because everyone is getting a grade that they don�t deserve, which should mean that the teacher should just hand out A�s, therefore not teaching at all.� I said, exasperated. �Does my hard work mean nothing at all?�
�But why get angry at Morgan? I don�t think she scores so badly ALL the time.� Celia said, wrinkling her nose, �She talks all the time in the history class and she seems to know what she is doing.�
�Her grades--�
�Grades, shmades,� Celia said, mockingly, �Remember Einstein?�
�Einstein did not play floor darts and have kung-fu fights between his pencils.�
�Creative genius!� Celia cried. �She�s a creative genius!�
�Do you say that what that Japanese guy did- the one who had two brushstrokes on canvas and sold it for twenty million bucks � was art?�
�No,� Celia conceded, �Creative genius is to be able to write poetry and to paint things and to appreciate the beauty of life.� She looked at the table for a moment, and ripped her finger-painting masterpiece to shreds.
�That�s what Morgan is,� I told her, �She�s the worst of the pseudo-artists. Why can�t you see her for what she is? She craves attention � not perfection.�
�Why can�t YOU see her for what she is?� Celia countered, before dropping the subject in favor of macadamia chocolate-chip cookies.
All right, Celia, I think, now, while I still drum my fingers on the desk. What is Morgan? A haiku is on the tips of my fingers as I write on the lined edge of mechanically written notes. Creative genius, I thought, arises from immortalizing even the most undeserving of subjects.
