Short Stories

It’s weird sometimes how when you think back about things that happened to you 10 or so years ago, you wonder how you would react if the same sort of thing happened to you in the present day.

I don't think I actually ever wanted to become a writer, but it was a hobby I enjoyed when I was in college, and I happened to attend Boston University, which has a serious Creative Writing department. They offered an intensive workshop class taught by a famous novelist, and the competition was fierce to be accepted for this course. You had to submit writing samples, and then only 10 students were selected each semester. I thought I would give it a try, and submitted two short stories (I think that was the minimum requirement) to the professor. (Both of the stories were semi-autobiographical—one was about a high school girl bickering with her pothead boyfriend about nothing of particular importance; the other was about a girl in college who had procrastinated about writing her Art History paper until the evening before it was due, and then when she finally got to the art museum to work on it, the security guard there insisted on hitting on her until closing time.)

The evening of the first class, you had to show up at the professor's office where he had posted a list of students who'd been accepted. When I arrived, there were dozens of students hanging around a small piece of paper hanging on the wall. As I approached, I thought might be hallucinating, but was pretty sure I'd glimpsed my name on that list. As I got nearer, I saw that my name was indeed on that list...I was number 11..."alternate,” which meant that if anyone should decide to drop the course (fat chance), then I was in.

I got to attend the first class, however, and it was an odd scene. You could tell that the students in this class, for the most part, totally worshipped the professor. I’d heard of the guy before, but I wasn’t really familiar with his work. However, I thought it was only appropriate to pretend to be as in awe of him as everyone else was. There happened to be one guy in the class who I actually knew a little bit…but not very well. He was in Choral Club with me (we both liked to sing), and I really only recall a few things about him—he wore cool T-shirts, mostly from bands that I liked, but his favorite was one for the famous Boston "underground" club, The Middle East—another thing was that he was shorter than I was. (And I had specific height requirements for men at the time...I was rather shallow in college).

The professor went around the classroom discussing and critiquing the stories each of the students had submitted, and he was not afraid to be brutally honest…so more than anything else, I dreaded when my turn came around. But since I was the “alternate,” he didn’t say much about my work besides, “I like your stories a lot. They’re very funny—especially the one about the girl in the art museum. But I could only pick 10 students. Sorry. Try again next semester.” (I did try the following semester, and was accepted—however, a different professor taught that class). He told me I could collect my stories from his graded-box later if I wanted some more feedback. I went back to his office a few times trying to get back my short stories, but for some reason, they were never there.

Well, several weeks went by, and I’d pretty much forgotten about the class and my short stories, until one night. On a typical Friday evening, if I wasn’t going to hear a band play, I’d go to a hockey game with friends, and then we’d go to several off-campus parties (my best friend prided herself in always knowing where at least 7 different parties were being held on any given weekend—but thank goodness, there weren't many fraternities at BU—these were normal parties). I didn’t usually enjoy going to the parties, but I’d go anyway in case there happened to be anyone interesting at any of them. On this particular evening, at the last party we arrived at, I happened to bump into the guy I kind of knew who was selected for the Creative Writing class. He was kind of shy, but then we started talking a bit. The first thing he told me was that he liked my singing voice—he told me that he normally sat in front of me at choral rehearsals, and he could hear my singing very clearly. (I don’t remember which part I was singing that semester, because I liked to switch around and try them all…except for bass, that is…and probably my favorite semester was when I learned the Tenor part for Handel’s Messiah).

Anyway, then we started talking about the Creative Writing course. He told me that the professor was a harsh, horrible prick who had brought more than one student to tears in front of everyone. He said I should consider myself lucky that I didn’t quite make it into the class. I, too, was glad...because I could easily imagine myself being the sort of student who would cry in his class. He also told me that one girl had fled the room in tears and they didn’t see her for a couple of weeks, so everyone thought she had dropped the class. Then he said something that didn’t strike as odd at first, “By the way, you’re a much better writer than half the people in that class.”

I thanked him automatically, and then had sort of a delayed reaction as I wondered how exactly he would know how good of a writer I was. At first, I imagined the professor reading my stories aloud in class, then cutting them up while I wasn’t there to defend my work. I could feel all of the blood in my body slowly collecting in my face.

“How do you know about my writing?”

He stammered, “Uh…well, I must have seen some around somewhere, I guess…”

I eventually gathered that he was the reason why I hadn’t been able to find my short stories in the professor’s graded-box, but he wouldn’t actually admit he’d taken them until I was leaving the party. He came after me apologizing and saying that he hadn’t really thought he’d stolen them because surely I had copies saved on my computer. I explained that I’d wanted to read the professor’s comments, and that I couldn’t understand why he believed he had a right to just take someone and read someone else's work without their permission.

The he said, “….If you come back to my apartment, I’ll give you your stories back.”

I suppose I should have been flattered that someone liked me or my stories enough to have swiped them from a professor’s box in the English Department. But naturally, I was weirded-out by the whole thing, and at the same time, felt somewhat violated. I did end up getting my stories back from him. He wanted to go out with me, but as I said before, he was shorter than I was…that and I couldn’t help but to think of him as some sort of stalker from that point on.

I suppose there is a lesson to be learned here about admiring someone from too far away.