Spanking Shakespeare Read Online Free Page B

boyfriends over the years. What she needs is a nice, sensitive guy like me.

    MORE REALISTIC
    Celeste Keller:
    The day Celeste heard my obituary was the day our relationship took on new life. We sit together in class now, and I smile when she makes references to novels I haven’t read and wonder if this is how literary people flirt. I missed a great opportunity the other day. She was talking about a battle scene in The Iliad as an example of Homer-erotica, and it wasn’t until later that I realized Homer rhymes with boner.

    Katie Marks:
    If you look closely enough at Katie, you can see that she has a pretty face and a nice body, even though she plays down her femininity as much as possible. Sometimes I fantasize about her ripping open her oversized army coat and being completely naked underneath. The way she curses, you know there would be a lot of dirty talk. The way she drinks, you know she would be wild and uninhibited. Neil says he is going to try to sleep with her, and I tell him it’s lame to talk that way about your closest female friend.

    SAFETIES
    Jane Blumeberg:
    Jane Blumeberg is a sweet, shy girl a year behind me in school. I am sure she has never had a boyfriend or even kissed a boy. Our families know each other and belong to the same temple. She always smiles when she sees me, and I’ve caught her staring at me when she didn’t think I was looking. She is actually pretty cute, with long brown hair and big doe-like eyes, but I think what she would like is a nice, safe boy to hold hands with. You seethe problem.

    Most any ninth-grade girl with low self-esteem:
    I’m just kidding. Sort of.

    My list of colleges is far more extensive, with at least half a dozen schools I have absolutely no chance of getting into.
    “You never know,” my mother says. “It doesn’t hurt to try.”
    We’re in the living room before dinner, and my father has just finished his second martini.
    “George Bush got into Yale,” he says, looking wistfully at his empty glass.
    “And you’re certainly smarter than he is,” my mother adds.
    Given that she’s a high school guidance counselor, it is remarkable how little my mother understands about how colleges choose their students. Thank goodness she works at a school other than mine.
    “Who wouldn’t want you?” my mother says, giving me a hug.
    Every girl in my high school class, for starters, I think.
    “You’re certainly a better writer than most of the students in my freshman seminar,” my father says.
    This is small consolation. My father is probably the only tenured English professor in the country who volunteers to teach a remedial writing course to incoming freshmen, and most of his students speak English as a second language. His dissertation was entitled
Chewing GUM: Sinking Our Teeth into Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics,
and I’ve caught him more than once salivating over a well-placed semicolon.
    “Well, hopefully I’ll get in somewhere,” I say, because I can’t resist the opportunity to provoke him.
    Sure enough, his face goes red. “
Hopefully
is an adverb. Do not use it to mean ‘I hope.’”
    And now the farmer example.
    “The farmer looked up at the sky hopefully,” my father says.
    I smile.
    “You scoundrel,” he says, and goes off to fix himself another drink.
             
    Mr. Parke often begins class with a free-write. When we come in, he has us take out a piece of paper and make a list of the things we are most preoccupied with.
    “Don’t spend a lot of time thinking,” he says. “Just write down whatever is on your mind.”
    To demonstrate, he quickly scribbles his own list on the board:
    BEAUTIFUL WRITING, BEAUTIFUL WOMEN , 100- YEAR-OLD GRAND MARNIER, ALIMONY PAYMENTS, MARQUIS DE SADE .
    He points to the last item. “That’s the name of my Saint Bernard,” he says by way of explanation, “though the original’s not bad either.”
    “Are we going to have to share this with the class?” Eugene Gruber asks. Eugene is