You Never Get Any Good Head Wounds

A fiction student’s your history professor. You tell him you may be late for class sometimes because of certain, you know, “obligations,” and he tells you we’ll be studying the American Enlightenment today, and to sit; and then you’re in his home and he’s shooting a Steve McQueen drama and Steve’s all handsome and dressed in purple silken robes and you’re an extra and you never get any good head wounds, you complain, when there goes Steve again like the tail end of a beautiful box kite—a purple silk streamer flying up over your head to land on some bad ugly dude, with a damn interesting head wound, you complain, and I know all these songs, Jack, but why couldn’t you buy the rights? People will notice, Jack, believe me, people will care. “Scabs,” isn’t that what you call them? No, you guess that means something different, but you know the only way to make your mother really love you in a house so full of stupid boys is to eat all her special kettle-style potato chips, so that’s what you decide to do in the bathroom where no one can hear anything, when your father comes to the door and says, I know what you’re doing in there, but you know he can’t know because you’re stealth you tell him, and he just says yeah, yeah and goes back to watching Hill Street Blues.