Night Classes
a semi-trustworthy memory from the 80s, perhaps
There was a time in my life i was taking night classes. It was at a commuter school, a long drive from my parents’ house where i was staying between jobs, but i had a good car, a ’66 Impala with glasspaks, that made a noise idling like the sound a 2000-pound leopard would make purring, & the car had an 8-track player. So i didn’t mind that much.
Creative writing class vexed me, & i didn’t want to take any more after that. I hated having to explain myself, & i hated even more the way people who didn’t want to understand would just pick something at random to criticize. To me that was bad faith, & in the arrogance of my 25-year-old self i would tell them so.
It was a good class. Because it was an hour’s drive i would often eat on the run. There was a Taco Bell near campus, where I would always order a burrito with extra hot sauce “to kill the bacteria” as i would smilingly add. I can’t eat them anymore, but my memory gives those giddy days of long summer nights the flavor of Taco Bell hot sauce.
As i think about it now, rather than imitate Joyce, my project was to imitate one of several of Joyce’s disciples: Djuna Barnes, John Hawkes, William Gass. But to me i was breaking new ground. I was trying to turn my experiences into gnarly prose & far-fetched vocabulary. It was a good feeling, even when none of the students (& especially the teacher) liked it. Most of my energy went into trying not to give away what i was writing about too directly.
My thouhts roamed widely as i drove. I knew the route well & there was barely any traffic. I never took the freeway, & going the long way involved cresting a succession of rather taxing hills, three in number, which in my perversity i liked to accelerate strongly at the start of, let the momentum carry me over the top, & coast on down to a regular sort of speed. The car, whose previous owner might well have put some of that fancy muffler money into fixing the shocks, rose perceptibly at the peak, then sank back seriously coming down the hill.
Some of the 8-tracks i had: Fragile by Yes, Freak Out by the Mothers of Invention, The Magician’s Birthday by Uriah Heep, & Passion Play by Jethro Tull.
One night like any other i was starting up the first hill. Suddenly the strangest thing happened. My pulse accelerated out of the blue. It was like i’d just gotten a shot of adrenaline, or maybe four espressos. But all around me nothing had changed. It was early indigo night & i was the only car on the road.
Came down the hill, wondering madly all the way. Puzzled briefly whether i was too young to have a heart attack. Dismissed the thought. Climbed the next hill. And the next.
Near the top of the last hill, blinding headlights swept my face from an onrushing car in the same lane. But my reflexes, sharpened by intense expectation, made me shift the wheel just enough to slide by that other car, that supremely careless driver, & in an instant avoid what would have been a terrible collision. And then the car was gone forever, & i was left alone with my heartbeat & the emptiness of a song i’d heard a hundred times before. I never had a chance to use the horn.
My whole life long i’ve been a hard-headed materialist. I can’t say this experience even made me change my mind. I didn’t write about it. I never told the people i told other things to. And nothing like it’s happened in the forty-two years since.
4-12-25