The Writers' Circle

Writing is about skill, not discipline. Devin had thought this all through high school, when he first began to really want to be a writer. The thought continued with him too, through college. It wasn't until after he'd dropped out, on account of a story monster disguised as "artistic principles"-after he'd dropped out and started doing nothing all day with his equally haunted girlfriend, and started binging on the speed he'd been prescribed for "therapeutic purposes" until he was at one period of every week so high on the smell of his own ass he felt he could shit out a book in 3 hours, yet spent every self-loving, power sick second of the happy, speedy day instead hunting teenage girls in chat-rooms to call and jack off to while his own girlfriend was asleep, and then, when his girlfriend was awake fucking her with an expression on his face like she was The One-it was not until the twenty three year old loser saw that at even high times like these he would choose to play with himself rather than write, and would soon have to call his doctor and simply lower his monthly dosage and also perhaps add on an anti-depressant cause no, he could not keep binging like this only to chain-smoke and get off all day thereafter, and yes, depression might be a side-effect of being haunted; it was not until Devin had called his doctor--who out of anger at the confession had refused him anymore speed altogether-and until he knew he could only afford one more binge, and that his life was a train headed up a cliff face, and that writing took more discipline than skill, that Devin finally sat his pathetic ass down and started writing.
"Read a book written on speed?" says one reader. "Well no! I'll stick to the greats-people like Stephen King, or Jack Kerouac, or Robert Louis Stevenson who never told the audience they were on some potent stimulant while writing." "Write a book on speed!" says another reader. "Well what a great idea," he says, just before taking his own and starting to write but finding he still has nothing, or worse, having a heart-attack in the middle of his masterpiece and leaving Devin to feel guilty over the inexperienced copy-cat.
Something should be made clear here to prevent these kinds of misunderstandings. This story is about the effects of speed and that is why it is being "written" on it. Furthermore, the main character's confidence in writing this way comes not so much from its aid than from his over-exaggerated idea of what it's aid does for him. This confidence of his in the confidence that speed brings came to him only after ten years on it. He was a Senior in high school in an A. P. English class and he was being given a timed essay. He hated anything timed yet had an irrepressible need to see himself as a writer (his father was a writer, you see, and never seemed very proud of him). Hence, to solve a conflict of ability he told himself that afternoon in class, in the middle of the timed essay, as he was staring at the clock, "don't worry, you are on your speed right now; you can do anything," and with that he zoomed through the essay, receiving it back a week later with a request from the teacher that she might keep it on file as an example for future classes. From there the superstition went on combating grades until by the year's end he had his first scholarship for writing as well as a full blown, and life-long, psychological-dependence on the drug. The final thing to make clear here, and this will only be said once, is that this is a story about Devin, a fictional character, and not about Evan- me, the writer. Therefore, though the book is theoretically written on speed, whether it has actually been is, and will stay a mystery, though the reader may find arrows to the truth if, as they continue to read, they read closely.
 
Devin dropped out of his University after four and a half years there. He was studying English because his unconscious drive to impress his father was one of the few parts of him, when he began there anyway, that was as strong as his dependence. He was a good student for his first two years there and so, a sucker for the good over the bad, he will have his readers first look at these two years. 
There was a girl. A very pretty, sweet, though much too self-conscious girl named Vatyana Bulenka. She was from Eastern Europe and she had big bosoms and curly white-blonde hair and sensual, predatory eyes that spoke to her lips when they spoke to Devin seeming to say, turned down slightly, "Go ahead, suck me dry. So what if my body signals say the opposite? I'm still talking to you aren't I? Force me if I don't give up right away. Please!" The two had first met in Devin's Japanese class. She was sitting next to him on the second day and he took a chance and started talking to her--about anything really, anything at all because all he wanted was to keep her game-show hostess's body near him, even if the only chance that could come of it all (which Devin saw as the only chance, as it had been the only, since kindergarten, ever granted to him up until then) was that at some minute of some day in the future this foreign sex-queen, and goddess of subtlety would say a word or two to him again, with perhaps a light pat on the arm during conversation. He even asked her to lunch after class that lucky second day, something he had never dared to do, and when she declined after, saying very quickly and nervously, "I should get back to my dorm now probably," her perfectly shaped body with the neck slightly weighted down from the bulk of those wonderful cups of love-that body practically running back to her dorm building; when that happened, Devin felt like a bigger jerk than he could remember ever having felt like before, and he spent the next half an hour in deep, lonely embarrassment. Yet he would learn as the year went on that his bravery with Vatyana would repay with much more than simply one pat on the arm.
As for the Japanese class, it should be mentioned now that this was the special exception Devin had made to his normal curriculum of the forced core classes and his major of English. In each of his three high schools, Devin had struggled through the science and math classes, barely passing some of them, and this was the same even after he had discovered his weapon of psycho-dependency. Languages had been almost the same but for a Chinese class he had taken his Freshman year at Highland Public. Something about the learning of letters through pictures led him to look at it all as almost an art class sometimes, and art was a subject he (of course) liked very much. Also, he had decided (as many English majors probably had, though it didn't occur to him then) that in order to designate himself as an artist rather than just another English major he should have some special, unique side interest other than simply his main subject of study. He knew he could never be the best at it anyway. And so, he chose Japanese, though barely; at the beginning of the year, when Devin had begun to create for himself impossible future scenarios of what might happen to him if he dared start his first semester with the heavy load of four classes (the average number for most students), he immediately went to his academic advisor and dropped one of them, with his initial intention being that the Japanese class would be it.  He went in, told her he was juggling between Japanese  and theology (a course he loathed, and hated that the university, just because it was Catholic, could force all of its students to take) and finally told her to drop the Japanese class.
"Are you sure?" She asked him.
Devin looked at her when she asked, at first surprised that she had, then remembered the happy Chinese class of his early teen-hood, and then the wonderful, sacred shapeliness of Vatyana Bulenka.
"You know what forget it. Drop the theology class." He said it with some relief.
"Okay," she said, now suddenly smiling.
 
Vatyana was only one of the many important people Devin met his first year at the university. Another, unsurprisingly, had been his roommate. This roommate liked most of the things Devin liked, was an English major like Devin, and was more high on the existence and possible immensity of his own cock than Devin ever could be, regardless of how much speed he had taken. The roommate's name was Pretentious Prick-PP for short-- or at least that is what Devin told everyone else it was when PP was not there to listen. PP was a member of the genre of person known to most as hipster. He was a meat eating environmentalist who put only aesthetics above being good to the earth; he wore brown pants, extra short-sleeved t-shirts, and black-rimmed glasses; he participated in the environmental club, worked at the writing center Devin had been rejected from, and spent his free time going to parties and doing "secret" paintings while listening to Radiohead, and, despite that most of the girls at the university would have dated him (a university ranked in the top five by Playboy Magazine for hottest women), and that his parents were still married, he always found something to hate himself about-at the time it was that he still hadn't been accepted for a transfer to the nearby private liberal-arts college where the especially smart kids went. Sometimes Devin thought that something bad had at one point happened to PP; nothing really horrible but just bad enough to make him into a bitter success through his adult-hood-like maybe one time his older sister had given him a hand-job or something. Anyway, though they had many of the same interests, PP had done his best to ignore Devin from the time they started rooming together. This might have been because, though he tried, Devin did not pull off indie very well, or because PP simply didn't like him, but whatever it was, PP became the defining and most useful figure for a group Devin met many from his first year at the university and would eventually learn to label as "useless acquaintances." And so were the foundations of Devin's first impressions of the students at his university: Vatyana and PP.       
 
These were definitely the wrong impressions to learn the true social nature of the university from, but were lucky ones for Devin as both were better than its nature. As Devin continued through that first year, his understanding of the school would only be further complicated. He was not like most of the students there, and didn't attract people-even acquaintances-that were like most (He found out later that even his roommate had been computer picked for him based on what his orientation leaders had told the faculty about him).
The next person Devin met at the school that became something to him, whether that be friend or master or unassigned teacher, was Erin Torme. He was in the cafeteria the first time he saw him, or rather, was seen by him. Erin told Devin the green bean casserole looked like dinosaur droppings and with that, Devin decided he must be interesting. He agreed, and then started talking to the boy and then, both acting as though it was more because the cafeteria had no space, they sat together.
"So then where are you from?" Devin asked him, honestly interested.
"Originally?" The boy looked at him as if testing him.
"Sure," Devin said.
"I was born in Washington . My dad owned a convenience store there. We came to Minnesota when I was about ten because he was offered a job managing a  SuperAmerica." He said SuperAmerica as though laughing it out, showing Devin that he himself knew the job was pretty pathetic. Devin had a suspicion too, though, that part of the boy's choice to mention his father's work so instantly like this came from a need to downplay his own intelligence, and maybe even a shame of it. He didn't know why he sensed this; it was just that behind the boisterous personality; something about the boy seemed very smart and very self-conscious about it.
Devin, therefore, felt from the beginning an almost pity for him matched by an awe. As they continued talking that day, he discovered that Erin , like him, enjoyed running. He suggested they go for a jog sometime and this initiated there short-lived, though for Devin important, friendship.
That's not to say he realized the friendship would be important at the time. The first time the two set up a running date, Devin overslept, and it happened again the second, even the third time. He could not believe his own flakiness towards Erin , continually agreeing to a time to meet and then not being there. Yet every time Devin apologized and offered they reschedule, Erin would act as though he understood while at the same time showing he was a little insulted, and there the boy would be again, knocking at Devin's door, never throwing away the faith that this time Devin might be awake.
The day Devin was finally out of his room and waiting for Erin, he quickly learned that he should have shown effort for this boy sooner; Erin also knew and was friends with Vatyana, though supposedly they were nothing more than friends. How did they meet? Apparently he met her one day in the cafeteria through a mutual friend and they discovered they had, actually, much to talk about. Devin found it interesting that Erin, in fact, never gave any hint of a romantic interest in Vatyana or any of the other many girls he happened to be friends with. At first he was confessedly worried Erin might even be gay, but when the two stopped at one point to look at the river-their course that day had been a jogger's path alongside a piece of the Mississippi that was near campus-when they stopped to look, Devin realized that was not it.
"Look at the river's reflection of the sky there," Erin told him. And Devin looked to indeed see something not just beautiful but miraculous; a convergence of light and cloud over dirty grey water that seemed so everlasting in its stillness-before someone from the bank threw a rock at it, that is--that Devin felt himself honestly moved; a momentary photograph, a message from God and an almost new color seemed all to breathe through that reflection at once, as if Erin had the ability to see magic and point it out to other people.
"Wow" was all Devin could say.
"It's really pretty isn't it?" Erin said.
After another minute when the rock had hit the water, Devin snapped to life and said "Ya." 
"Ya, I love the water. I used to watch the river all the time with my sister back in Washington ."
"Wow," Devin said, still not back yet. Then he realized this was an invitation for information. "How old is your sister?" Devin asked.
"Oh well I have two but this one is only a year older than me." And then Erin stopped, as if he wanted to say something but also didn't. He swallowed and began to speak again but now with some care, "we were home-schooled together, and kind of forced to be together most of the time for a long time so we got to be close."
"Who home-schooled you?" Devin asked, also trying to speak with care.
"My mother did. But she's this kind of evangelical Christian woman, so she had us learn a lot of stuff too I probably wouldn't have wanted to learn if I had the choice."
Devin had read a lot in high school about home-schooling and why it was the choice of a lot of parents. There was one writer in particular, actually, who Devin liked a lot and who argued, and damn well, that the only way to ever raise a child who can think for themselves is by home-schooling them, and home-schooling them properly.
"Well, what about for the most part though-did you like being home-schooled? I mean did you feel like you got a better education?"
"I don't know, I mean it's not like we studied a lot or anything. We mostly just had a bunch of books read to us, when my mom was there I mean. About the time I should have been in fourth grade she had to get a job to help make money for the family because my dad's business was starting to go under. Around that time, and this was for like a year, we basically just sat around and watched T.V." Again Erin laughed his words out here, showing Devin he knew what had happened was pathetic, yet this time Devin could see that the memory really did bother Erin.
"Well. was your dad ever around for you then?"
"My father's a workaholic. I don't know him. It's alright though. It's an example of what not to be when I grow up." He laughed and then said that they should get going.
Devin could see now from how Erin talked about his sister that he surrounded himself with women without discussing them sexually with other men because he possessed an immense respect for them, that he had come to develop as he was growing up.
Devin also learned, though this was after knowing Erin a little longer, that he was one of the luckier of the home-schooled, and when it came to math, science, and languages-all the things Devin felt mediocre in-he was prodigal. He had never had to study at all for any of his five classes. He would simply go to class, sit though each lesson, understand everything and remember everything. The whole time Devin knew the boy, he never heard of him getting anything less than an A. That led Devin to wonder why Erin had decided to study at his university. It also led him to wonder-and this was a question that got harder to face for Devin as their friendship went further-he wondered why Erin would want to be friends with him, as he felt and honestly, probably was inferior to Erin in every academic subject-even the one he was majoring in!-and both of the things they spent their time doing together: jogging and playing tennis. Something Devin had noticed about many gifted people who were not socially inept was that they enjoyed, and a few even starved for control over others, physical reflections of their superiority to the "masses." Devin hoped this was not Erin, but the whole time he knew him he never stopped worrying that it was.  
 
It was in the early winter of October that Devin met Dan. Devin had gone across the hall of his dorm to check on an acquaintance who, at the time, was spending most of his hours smoking pot instead of studying and who would, indeed, eventually flunk out because of it. Dan was with this other boy that day, also getting stoned and when Devin first knocked on the door and then saw Dan, he went into a kind of curious shock. He had never seen anyone who looked like the boy; he was a giant, though he only stood 6'2. As Devin studied him he began to see that it was not just Dan's being taller, but also that his body had a much greater girth-a kind of thicker bone structure that complimented his height, and that this was what made him seem so giant-like. Yet something comical about the boy juxtaposed the threat of his giantness; he had a slight, but noticeable hunch that most could immediately tell, unconsciously, came as a result of his attempting from childhood on to bend down to the rest of the world, so as not to feel like such an oddity. These two contrasts of height and hunch left Dan then, finally, with a unique adorableness about him that Devin would see later many women actually fell for quite easily. On this occasion Dan was particularly funny to watch because in addition to being himself, he had smoked a lot of pot and was now moving his stare from one side of the room to the other, over and over, as though a bird were flying around his head. When Devin came in the room, the acquaintance introduced him to Dan and vise-versa, and, as though addressing a fellow king, Dan bowed his blond head forward to Devin slightly, then offered him a dainty "Hello."
When Devin came to his acquaintances room, he had actually not come with the intention of checking on him so much as to raise his own confidence.  He had never had a girlfriend yet and was just beginning to realize this was weird. In all fairness, this is understandable; Devin was introverted by nature and had been to three high schools. Of course, then, he never made any friends for the most of his time in the three; and when he did finally learn to start opening up (though only with men unfortunately) at the end of his Senior year, it was only because a boy at his school in Connecticut had literally-no flattery intended-begun stalking him until he finally agreed  to friendship. While to some men, abstinence throughout teen-hood may sound painful, for Devin it was actually a relief-his hand had worked pretty well, after all, and something about the opposite sex-perhaps a side effect of Devin's having moved so much, hence being almost mentally unstable by then-something about women scared him immensely, more so than the extent to which it does most inexperienced teenagers; Devin could look at certain girls sometimes and equate making a fool of himself in front of them with actual suicide, and a painful suicide at that; when his first year at the university started Devin felt a little more confident, thinking to himself now that at least he had a head start on some in that he could make his own friends. This led him to begin to think that maybe he could make his own girlfriends too. He could not see then that if he wanted to avoid becoming a forty-year old virgin, he would have a lot of personality surgery ahead of him.
Anyway, Devin had come to the acquaintances room half knowing his concern for this unhappy stoner was a decoy for complaining to him, and under that, bragging to him about his recent heart break with a foreign girl from his psychology class who had asked to study with him because she liked him-according to Devin-though really it was because he spoke so much in the classroom (the place where he was most confident speaking) and he spoke in English she could actually understand. Again, Devin thought himself boasting to the boy and Dan here, telling them about a girl from one of his classes who he somehow managed to talk to outside of class, but the least-liked part of him knew it was stupid, so he left enough unsaid so to imply that at places more had happened between them than really had.
He continued with the story, now telling them about how she would sometimes invite him to her dorm building to play ping-pong after they studied and how every time she beat him-most of the time-she gave him this really sexy look. Once, he admitted, she even brought him to her room and they "hung-out" (really all they did was talk) for a little while. "The other night though," Devin began to say, "I invited her to a comedy show happening on campus, just out of the blue I did it." He was visibly proud of himself here.
"And she said no," the stoner guessed.
"No, she said she would meet me there, showed up with fifteen of her girlfriends, and without even saying 'hi,' she just sat down with them." His face seemed shocked by its' mouth's sudden honesty.
"Rejected huh? It happens man." Noticeably unimpressed, the acquaintance said this and went back into his flunking-out trance.
Dan, however, seemed to recognize the anguish that the inexperienced Devin was feeling, and made a visible effort at consolation: "I know what you mean man. I was just with this Asian girl recently too, and she also rejected me without giving any reasons." The boy forced a cool expression after saying it.
Devin could tell right away that Dan was using consolation to brag as he had used complaining to do so, and when he went deeper into his first conversation with Dan, which flowed easier than any conversation he ever had with anyone else on that campus, Devin became aware that, as he had hoped when he caught him secretly bragging that, yes, Dan damn nearly, in reality, was as inexperienced as he was. This made Devin feel better about his problem-his complete lack of experience-bringing him to see that there are, now and then, cool and even handsome Americans out there who are almost twenty and still have not made it past first-base. This was, too, the way that Devin and Dan's relationship stayed almost the entire four years they knew each other; both using the other to make himself feel better. From the first word spoken, the symbiosis was, really, close to perfect between the two.  Devin and Dan both had certain skills stronger than those of the other and this allowed for them to compete freely without the relationship turning into its often inevitably master-slave form.
On this first day of meeting, the two ended up going out to the nearby golf-course to sled on stolen cafeteria trays, with Dan (being stoned) laughing in the snow for two minutes every time he fell off the tray. There was a lot Devin got to know about Dan that first day; the Asian girl had kissed him while drunk in her boyfriend's dorm room, and this gave Dan the idea they were going out. After a few days though, the girl, drunk again, met another boy and slept with him on top of a washing machine in Devin's dorm building, leading, logically, to Dan feeling heart broken and embarrassed having seen his first kiss gone to garbage. But Dan would not ever tell it to you that truthfully; he would add on to the story that she wants him now but he told her he's through, so he comes off as the envied person in the end. That Dan did this with the story and almost every aspect of his life was not something Devin learned on the first day of meeting him; it took a couple of weeks with Dan before Devin figured that one out, but when he did, he also understood, right away, that Dan did this because he very passionately and secretly-in a way he could show to no one until they became very close with him-hated himself. Though this would be obvious to Devin after a few weeks of knowing him, secrets Dan would later share with him would strongly affirm the assumption. Since he was this way then, Devin did not learn much that was real about Dan that first day. He did learn a lot, however, about the kind of envied figure Dan wanted to be.
"I'm a heavy smoker-just to apologize if the smoke bothers you I mean," Dan said spontaneously as they were walking back from the golf-course.
"Oh ya? What brand you smoke?" Devin did want to know because, though he had been running three times a week, at least, since joining the x-country team, and ate no meat, and tried to be healthy in most ways, he did still crave a cigarette now and then, a bad habit that had not-unlike most which had sprung from the black period of his childhood-disappeared.
"I smoke Marb 27s," Dan said to him.
While Devin was truly a little repulsed by anyone who could smoke without caring what it was doing to their body, he also really wanted just one cigarette.
"Can I have one?" Devin asked.
"Ya, sure" Dan replied, suddenly twisting his entire upper body to Devin in a very awkward, robotic way that he seemed not to know looked as odd as it did. Kind of clumsy, while trying to come off as very together. Devin added to his invisible book of observations.             
"So where are you from Dan?"
"All over. I was born in Missouri , but I've lived in Madison, Wisconsin since I was about eight."
"So you had to go through a move huh? Ya I went through one of those, but that was when I was sixteen. It must be real hard when you're young right?"
"Actually, I think it's better to go through when your younger because than you adapt more adequately to new environments later in life. Plus when I left I was still young so I didn't feel like I was leaving behind much." From the beginning it was the form of conversation between the two to combat their perspectives on an issue with each other as they were doing here. The exercise was a regurgitation of the oldest game in human history: Who has the largest penis? Yet the two would not stop their playing of the game as their seemed never to be a clear winner. Inside though, Devin was never threatened by Dan, nor did he see him as much of a competition really; Dan was a chain-smoking, fast-food gorging, rich boy who lied a lot because he hated himself. This was how Devin saw it. What made him want Dan as a friend from the beginning, honestly, wasn't that he wanted a competition but more that he saw Dan's adorableness very clearly, and also he was the same as the boy in some very hidden way, which made him easy to empathize with, and to care about.
"Besides," Dan continued in his counterattack to Devin's views on moving, "if I hadn't come to Madison so young I would have missed out on a lot. I probably wouldn't have gotten close to any of my punk friends from back home."
Devin, at this point in the talk, moved his eyes to the sweat-shirt Dan was wearing: "Turbo Negro," it said; the name of an obscure punk band Dan loved and probably had decided would be good to advertise on a shirt just after he bleached his hair blue earlier that summer when he was still at the measely zenith of his place in the scene for which he wanted to be recognized as one of the coolest members. This was the figure, Devin realized as he figured Dan out-this envied, popular image whose identity Dan wanted to steal--it was the smoking, tough, punk-guy. Rightly so, in the first years of friendship Devin did his best never to let Dan see that he was anything else, partly because he liked Dan so much, but also because he was worried about what Dan might do if he ever did see. 

And so they've appeared; the four characters from Devin's freshmen year at his still amorphous university: Vatyana, PP, Erin and Dan. That's not to say these were the only important "friends" Devin acquired that year. Notable others include an Indian kid who Devin will no longer mention in this novel as Devin thinks he might not be comfortable with it, or at least might find a way to get money out of it. What should be said about him here is that he lived with Devin at Devin's mom's house during the first semester of their sophomore year at the university and he would play the "Who's got the biggest penis?" game with Devin every night, and far more fervently than anybody else Devin has met. The other character worthy of a brief mention here is Mann Sime, an overweight, insomniac prodigy formerly hooked on paxel who Devin started liking but was peer pressured away from, peer pressured by the same friends who were eventually peer pressured away from him. Now looking back, Devin realizes that if he had stayed friends with Mann there's a chance nothing like this would have happened.