is
your name, anyway?"
It took the guy a while to say, "Sullivan."
"What's your first name?"
"That
is
my first name. I'm Sullivan James. My ditzy parents stuck me with this moniker."
Vanessa considered for a moment. "I like it. It's very unusual." She got up abruptly. "Well, I'm going to submit this. You'd better give me your cellphone number so I can let you know if they take it."
With very bad grace, Sullivan passed on his number to Vanessa.
"See ya later!" she cried happily as she rushed out of the cafeteria.
Sure enough, when she typed up the poem and sent it in, the
Forum
accepted it immediately. She called Sullivan at once and told him the good news.
"You have any other poems I can read?" she asked.
"Maybe," he muttered.
"Well, can I read them or not?"
"I guess so."
"I figure you haven't typed them up. So maybe I could... come by your place and look them over?"
There was a dead silence on the phone, and she wondered whether she'd been too "forward." Well, for God's sake, this was 2021! And she wasn't even asking the guy for a date.
At long last he gave her his address--a rooming house just off campus. They set up an appointment for her to come over the next evening.
When she got to the romming house that night, Vanessa got a better look at Sullivan and a better idea of what kind of person he was.
As he shyly let her in, she saw that he was of moderate height (five foot eight), but quite stocky--not exactly the image of the starving poet! He had shaggy black hair that seemed resistent to combing, and beneath his superficially aggressive and brooding exterior she sensed a tenderness and sensitivity that he might have been reluctant to reveal except on paper. She learned that he was, like her, a senior--and, interestingly enough, not majoring in English (he professed great disdain for the English Department) but in history. He was leaning toward going to graduate school, although perhaps with a year or two off to get a taste of "real life," as he called it.
As she talked to him, she wondered how much "real life" he had really experienced. His parents lived in Pasadena, but he didn't seem all that close to them. In fact, he didn't seem all that close to anyone: he put on an act of being a crusty old recluse (at the age of twenty-one!), but Vanessa felt that that was just a cover for extreme sensitivity. He didn't want to associate with people because he was afraid of being hurt by them.
After some idle chatter, Vanessa got down to business, asking Sullivan to show her more of his poetry. He adopted his usual air of sullen self-contempt and shuffled over to a little two-drawer file cabinet. Pulling out a thick file folder, he dumped it on the tiny desk situated along one wall of his room.
When Vanessa opened the file folder, she gasped at what she saw.
"Good Lord!" she cried, flipping through what looked like an entire ream of paper containing impeccably neat handwriting. "There must be hundreds of poems here!"
"Yeah, but most of them are rubbish," he said lugubriously.
Vanessa was now getting angry. She actually punched him in the arm and cried, "Don't say that! They're probably all really good!"
Sullivan was taken aback at her physical violence, gaping at her open-mouthed. But of course he was too much of a gentleman to respond in kind. All he did was to mutter, "They're not
all
good."
"Well, you wouldn't have taken the effort to write them out so carefully if you yourself didn't think they were worth keeping. But why haven't you typed them up?"
Sullivn shrugged and made a sour face. "Poetry and computers don't mix."
Vanessa nodded briefly. "Okay, I get that. Writing them out in longhand first is probably for the best. But if you're going to submit them somewhere, you'll have to type them up."
"I'm not submitting them anywhere," he said in glum defiance.
She looked at him keenly. "Well," she said with intense determination, "if you're not going to,
I
am."
Another gape. "What?"
"There's a whole book's worth of stuff here--maybe
several
books. We're going to get these ready to send out to some publisher if it kills me."
"That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard!"
She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "That is what we're going to do. I'm going to read all these, and I'll hand over to you the ones I think are really good. You're going to arrange them in some fashion or other--you know, by theme, subject-matter, whatever. Then I'll type them up and get them ready to submit."
Vanessa got right down to work. She had to sit on the bed, as the desk wasn't really suitable for the task. As she handed sheet after sheet to Sullivan, he took them with a blank, almost stunned expression and tried to make some tentative organizational scheme. It was obvious that no one had ever taken an interest in his poetry before--maybe he'd never shown it to anyone before.
At one point she held up a page, read it, frowned in disapproval, and put it in the "rejected" pile.
He pounced. "Hey, what's wrong with one?"
"Look, Sullivan, a lot of your poems are pretty tough and grim and even pessimistic. But this one"--she picked up the paper and waved it in front of his face--"this one's just cruel and mean-spirited. It's not a good poem."
The poem was about a man who fell in love with a woman who turned out to be some sort of demon or succubus who ended up sucking the guy's blood and killing him.
As he lapsed into a sulk, she said, "Is this based on anyone real?"
Grudgingly he said, "Kind of. Sophomore year I asked this girl out, and she said no."
Vanessa waited for him to say more. "That's it? That's what led you to write this nasty poem?"
"Well, she hurt my feelings!" he cried.
"Sullivan, everyone gets turned down in situations like that. That's just part of life. You don't have to take out your vengeance on her by writing something like this."
And yet, Vanessa found the poem reassuring in at least one sense. If he'd asked a girl out, he couldn't be gay, could he? No problem if he was--but she was already getting hopeful that he wasn't.
They worked for about two hours, then Vanessa shook her head and stopped. "I can't read anymore--this stuff is too intense. Anyway, we've gotten through about half the material. We can do the other half some other time."
Sullivan seemed relieved that this nosy girl wasn't going to read any more of his precious poetry. He gathered up the poems from both the "accepted" and "rejected" pile, along with the file folder of unread poems, and dumped them on his desk.
"I can put on some soothing music," he offered.
"That would be wonderful," she said.
To her surprise, he put on a CD of some classical music--Schubert's
Nocturne in B flat
for piano, violin, and cello. It was an extraordinarily simple but beautiful piece, and its soft, dreamy tones were just the thing to settle them down after the intense literary session they'd just had.
As both of them lay back against the headboard of the bed, taking in the music, Vanessa sensed something peculiar. About ten minutes after the piece began, she heard some snuffling from Sullivan. She looked over to him.
He was crying.
The piece really was lovely--but what man cries over music? The tears were actually flowing down his cheeks, as Sullivan kept his eyes closed. Inches away from her as he was, he seemed--mentally and emotionally--a million miles away.
Well, that's not going to last very long!
she said resolutely to herself. And so she rolled over and ended up on squatting on Sullivan's lap. Then she took his head and pressed it close to her bosom.
Somehow he didn't seem surprised at her act. He instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist and started crying more unrestrainedly. It had been a warm day, and Vanessa was wearing a clingy nylon blouse without a bra and a low-cut neck. Again, almost without realizing it, Sullivan brought a hand up and pulled the blouse down so that her breasts were exposed. She now felt the tears bedewing her chest, and every so often he sucked gently on a nipple, as if seeking nourishment from his mother.
When the music came to an end, he seemed to snap out of his reverie. Startled by the small but exquisitely shaped breasts exposed to his gaze and touch, he looked up at her and said, "I--I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said--and peeled off her top over her head.
He now brought both hands to take hold of her breasts, kissing them reverently. Almost to himself he whispered, "They're the most beautiful things I've ever seen."
