Page 266 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK254 Jack Fritscherbooks. You told me you loved words. You told me you love movies.%u201d She handed me a sheet of screening dates and times, with photos, and titles like Little Stabs at Happiness and Fireworks and Scorpio Rising. %u201cWonderful films by artists, not studios. Flaming Creatures and The Sin of Jesus...%u201d%u201cYou can%u2019t scandalize me.%u201d%u201cI%u2019m practically on the selection committee at the Cinematheque. You%u2019ve seen Second City? Yes? No? Oh. In fact, I%u2019m polishing up shooting notes, as an appendix to my dissertation, for an improvisational film of Orlando, a novel by Virginia Woolf...%u201d%u201cWho%u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?%u201d%u201c...that%u2019s something else again, that play, but my film, I mean, will this graduate faculty ever catch up? I want to direct, but a film, even an underground film, takes money. Do you have any money?%u201d %u201cMe?%u201d%u201cYou look rich.%u201d%u201cI just spent $480,000.%u201d%u201cDon%u2019t kid a kidder.%u201d %u201cWhy are you at this school?%u201d I asked.She sipped her wine. %u201cVirgins.%u201d%u201cVirgins?%u201d%u201cCatholic boy virgins. Like you.%u201d%u201cI%u2019m not a virgin. Stop trying to scandalize me.%u201d%u201cI have a fetish for Catholic boys.%u201d%u201cI%u2019m not a virgin.%u201d%u201cHow does it feel to be a fetish?%u201d%u201cWhat%u2019s a fetish?She went ha ha ha. Her mouth went ha ha ha. Her hair went ha ha ha. %u201cYou reveal yourself in your writing,%u201d she said. %u201cYou must be careful ha ha ha.%u201d%u201cWhy? Writers are, like, strippers, revealing themselves ha ha ha.%u201d I said it, but her mouth and hair made me say it, revealed me saying, Hemingway was, and was not, The Old Man and the Sea.%u201cTrue.%u201d She pretended to weigh her words, trebling wine on her tongue. %u201cUnless a writer comes out and says, I mean, really makes the personal explicit, %u2018this is me%u2019 or %u2018what happened to me,%u2019 well, the reader can hardly know what is an autobiographical act, or what is manufactured.%u201d%u201cFiction.%u201d%u201cYour essay exposed you ha ha ha as an ex-seminarian.%u201d%u201cA former seminarian. I%u2019m a former seminarian.%u201d%u201cWhat%u2019s the diff?%u201d