Rocker Dead in Writing Class

IT COULD have been the first day of any Harvard creative writing class.

"I'm Dick Wordsworth," said the rugged, corduroyed, craftsmanlike writer-teacher. "Give your name, shoot your questions."

"My name's Charles Doorite," said a young man with half glasses and full smirk. "I've been working seriously with prose since I was five. Recently, I've become personally acquainted with many New York writers through my mother and internships at The Paris Review and The Atlantic. Kanopf is bringing out the first of my three completed novels next year."

"Do you have a question, Charlie?"

"Are the assignments graded?"

"No. I prefer to make arbitrary assessments at the end of the semester," said the professor, flashing a writerly grin into the chest of an Edwardian gown above a pair of purple hightops.

"My name's Betty Sue," said the young woman in the gown.

"What's your question, Betty Sue?"

"I can't compose one. I've had writer's block since I broke up with the drummer for Gary U.S. Bonds after the Cleveland concert."

SUDDENLY THE classroom door flew open. The tapping of a heel was heard. Then a tune: "I'm the type of guy, who likes to write a line/Yeah, I'm a writer/Ooh, ooh, a writer I write around, 'round, 'round, 'round..."

A black boot came through the door, then another, followed by the unmistakable odor of grease and grenadine. The black tweed jacket, the streak of slick-backed hair, the 10-pack of black, Bic ball-point pens. "Who is this kid?"

"I think he's cute."

"Yeah, but can he write?"

Professor Wordsworth didn't care to know. There was only room for one anti-academic-writer-type in his classroom. "What's your name, boy?"

"They call me Johnny Writer, sir."

"You sure you be wantin' to take this class, boy?"

"If there's writing to be done, sir, I'm the one to do it. Uh one, uh two, uh one-two-three-four. `I'm the type of guy, who likes to write a line, I'm a writer, huh! woah, woah, a writer..."

"Oooooooh," swooned a chorus of soprano literati.

"I wonder if he always write alone?" wondered the Edwardian from between the earphones of her walkman.

Jill made the Virginia Woolf tattoo on her bicep dance, brushed her crew cut and said, "I thought you were planning to get seriously into writing this term, Betty Sue."

"Maybe I am," Betty Sue replied, watching Johnny pen a love poem on her ankle.

"He's just another macho lowlife, Betty Sue. Kick his teeth in."

"But he's so anachronistic," swooned Betty Sue.

"We've just been doing introductions, boy," said Professor Wordsworth. "Tell the class, Johnny, just what kind of writing do you do?"

"Rockin' roll writing, sir," said Johnny.

"Rockin' roll writing, boy?" said Wordsworth.

"Rockin' roll writing, sir," Johnny said again, climbing onto a desk and singing into an unsheathed Bic ball point: "You should of heard them modernist poets writin' rock/ Everybody let's rock/ Viva Cambridge, people!..."

The class cut loose and began surfing on the desktops, spreading beach blankets and drawing deuce-coups on the blackboard.

Wordsworth's cry pierced the air: "Any publication credits?"

"Eh, no sir," said Johnny, a pelvic narrative frozen in midtwist. "Not yet."

The class solemly returned to its seats. Between cracking jokes to Charles Doorite about the hopeless slush pile awaiting most young writers, Dick Wordsworth delved into the problems of creating well-wrought margins.

"Mr. Writing Teacher Man," said Johnny, drumming his ballpoints. "I have a question."

"And I have a career, Johnny. Every man needs something."

"HOW ABOUT if we start a band?"

"This is a writing workshop, you cur."

"I mean a writing band, sir. We could get all the kids together and then our writing would really rock. You and Mr. Do-rite could write lead."

"Why don't you suck down a case of liquid paper, son. We don't want your kind here."

"I think we should ask the kids," said Johnny, waiting for an interlude of rebellious teenage behavior. Nothing.

"You're dead meat, you illiterate punk," said Wordsworth. The class moved, en masse, menacingly toward the cornered rocker-writer.

"It wasn't meant to be," said Betty Sue, erasing the poem from her ankle. "I'm a real-life, mature woman; you're a fictional, adolescent male."

"You can't even make it in the patriarchal establishment, you impotent scum," said Jill, ramming a pencil through Johnny's bleeding heart, which was now only difference.

Johnny attempted a final pelvic thrust but fell to the ground, singing in tongues and bleeding India ink. He grabbed blindly at Betty Sue's blank ankle. "Once more on the printed page," he cried. "Write me, baby. Write me."