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."