Last night's White Hen ham on rye, Sea Monsters, Chocolate Clusters and Butter Creams gurgled around his entrails.  The sun had been shining in the living room for quite some time, but Will was just farting himself awake.  A square of light glistened on his face.  Vincent (his cat) had torn a patch of the blinds away, letting the unwanted light in.  This was the third set of blinds his wife Joyce had purchased since they'd moved.  The most pricey yet.  They're Comfortex© Woodwinds Plantation Shutters, Joyce had said, making the international symbol for copyright in the air, the fabrics are fade resistant and will help protect our furnishings from harmful UV rays.  Vincent sat on the sill, baffled by the sounds of screaming schoolchildren down the block, his tail the only part of him visible to the room, but then he skitted away causing the blinds to bump the wall a couple of times, an audio companion to the square of light Will knew well.  Everyday, around noon, the sun twinkled directly through the little square and into his tiny cave of a room, waking Will.  Sometimes the light was shaped by Vincent's silouhette, today not so.  Their room was just large enough for a queen-sized bed, and Will dragged his foot through the dust bunnies and bumped it on the radiator as he got up, scratching his head with one hand and feeling the warm square on his face with the other.

He tottered into the living room, belly leading the way, still bewildered.  Mark (his dog) bit his heel; Will yelped.  No, Mark, I'm not a sheep.  The dog quickly turned its attention to the cat, steering it into the kitchen.  Will gazed at the cedar timbers, bucolic, hand-painted walls and wood-louvered doors.  He was back in his beloved Oregon.  He could feel the dank humidity.  Hear the ducks quacking.  His rain slicker pressing against his skin.  He could smell the coffee of the Portland coffeehouses.  He tasted Mcminnamin's beer.  It had been hard enough to find northwestern furnishings at IKEA, it was even harder to convince Joyce it was only fair.  She saw their furniture as status symbols, not for its escapist possibilities.

She forced him to move into this urban techno nightmare of a city so she could be closer to her parents.  Will fought her.  He told her they needed to start their lives, not continue to live under the shadow of her parents.  He didn't want to make trips to Ohio every weekend to hang out with the "fam."  We can sleep in the same bed, now that were married, she said.  We can sleep in the same bed here, Will countered.  One thing Will knew, women never wanted to leave home.  Their umbilical chords stayed fused.

Will had a story to finish for class, so he put on his favorite Gansta Boo album, the bass tugging at his creative strings at once.  OK, three hours to write, two hours to revise, thirty minutes to print and he would be a few minutes late to class.  Gansta Boo really was an anomaly within the generally misogynist late-'90s Dirty South rap scene; she never sacrificed her pride.  Will knew his somewhat less-favored Three 6 Mafia disc was next, Gansta Boo's first group.  The words started to flow.  The bass throbbed inside his small apartment.

He thought of his classmates.  The "nonessentialists" he'd dubbed them.  None of them cared about writing or literature.  They were in graduate school because they had recently been divorced, and this was how they were coping, or they needed more money from their jobs, which upped their salaries for Master's degrees or they were technical writers, who had been professional for some time, and this was their chance to express their creativity.  They were old and they thought old.  They believed stories had to be true.  What nonsense.

He thought of his professor.  He had won PEN/Faulkner award.  He had been published in the Atlantic and Harper's, but he was having trouble with his latest book.  His others had been novels; this was his first stab at nonfiction.  It was supposed to be about the history of air travel in Korea, but so many ideas kept popping up, he was having trouble controlling it.  Will had similar troubles.  But his were on the micro level, rather than the macro.  His professor's books kept getting longer and longer.  Will's sentences didn't get longer, but denser, more pregnant.  He tried to be literary, rather than just being literary.  Hence his statements read something like "The interpolated image hovered Junoesquely over the sardonically placed edifice of avant-garde structural ornamentation, leaving Steve with a vacant sentiment."  Not that Will was your typical logophile.  No, his vocabulary was as limited as the nonessentialist.  Will spent more time on thesaurus web sites than he did typing.

Joyce complained a lot.  She would start when she got home from work and continue on sometimes till she fell asleep.  He hadn't figured his hour with Joyce into his writing schedule.  Class was at 5:50.  She was gonna bitch when she got home and Will told her right away that he needed to work.  So Will decided to run to the White Hen, buy some flowers, scratch out a love poem for her, buy a phone card so she could call her parents then finish up in the computer lab.  With his headphones on, he found he could work quite well there.

Will passed hundreds of smiling undergrads on his way to the lab.  They seemed so confident.  He knew what he needed.  He needed a new persona.  This quiet guy bit, chuckling at the jokes, mumbling cryptic comments once or twice a class and working very hard on his stories, was getting old.  He could be loud, boisterous.  Say off-color things.  Write about drugs and sex.  Share his true opinion.  Go to class stoned and admit it.  And still work hard on his writing.  This would be his new persona.

Rhiannon, the worst of the nonesssentialists, was outside smoking her vagina slimes as Will pedaled in.  Maybe he wasn't as late as he thought he was.  She was well into her thirties, and looked as if she had been screwed over by every man she ever met-including her father.  Rhiannon recently had to leave her civil servant's job because she had been caught blowing one of her parolees in the bathroom.  She was a basket case and a bad writer.

Will, Will!  she called from the top of the stairs in front of EPB.  Breaking step awkwardly, Will turned and waved-hoping this would satisfy her.  But she beckoned him over; he could see the leather skin hanging from her triceps as he rambled in her direction.  Rhiannon.  You finish your story?  These sentences were populated with more words than any Will had ever said in or out of class to any one of his colleagues.  Rhiannon smiled.  Yes, Will.  Her eyes gleamed.  You? she asked.  Just in time.  Will returned to the three word, verbless sentences that were his trade mark.  Uyen and I are going to go out for a drink afterwards, if you wanna come?  Will looked down at his shoes.  Uyen was the token minority in the program.  She was a fine piece of ass and club-crazy e-head.  Will had dubbed her a "hindigger" because she was Hindu but waxed ebonic when she spoke.  I'm buying, Rhiannon persisted.  Well . . . Will knew Joyce would be even more pissed at him if he went drinking after class, but free drinks and the chance to stare at Uyen's tits all night tempted him.  As luck would have it, Uyen strolled up the stairs just then.  Will looked up when he heard her What up!?  The two audio companions to her breasts Will was used to.  Sure, he said quietly, just one.

Will's going drinking with us, Rhiannon spat at Uyen.  Uyen shouted at the top of her lungs, Bling bling!  Will had never actually heard a black person use that phrase; he just had to laugh.  Class went well.  The usual comments of, I think this character needs more detail, and I don't think that sort of language is appropriate didn't clench his jaw as tightly as usual.  Towards the end, Will almost decided to try out his new persona, but he shied from it, as is his nature.  Rhiannon smiled at him incessantly.  Will stared at his notebook and drew squiggles.  Uyen bling blinged.  Their professor related yet another story about operating the El.

When class got out, Will thought about trying to make a quick get away, but Rhiannon cut him off at the door.  Took off mighty quick there, Will.  Uh . . . yeah, it's stuffy in there.  It is.  Let's wait here for Uyen.  She said she had to get something.  After a few minutes, Uyen came out smiling.  Got it? asked Rhiannon.  Word up! returned Uyen.

Uyen's jacket was felt, beige with faux red liner.  The salt on the ground glinted in the moonlight, emphasizing their shadows as they walked across the parking lot and past the film school.  The Commons Street Pub was just down the street.  Rhiannon peppered their walk with silly jokes while Will counted the sections of sidewalk.  Seeing the line up of beer taps returned Will's thoughts to Portland.  Stange, the northwest had been away from his reflections since earlier that morning.  I guess I did work hard on that story, Will thought to himself.  Then he turned to Uyen and said, I really liked your story, and I think if you blemish your characters more, you'll really have something-something for Granta or Ploughshares.

Will ordered a Red Hook, laying his money on the bar, where it was immediately snatched up Rhiannon and put back slowly into Will's pocket.  Will turned towards her; she had longing in her eyes.  For a moment, Will felt sorry for her.  She'd had a rough ride.  Will felt his humanity swell up inside him and decided to stay for a few drinks. Joyce would just have to be pissed.  The Red Hook tasted acrid, Uyen's breasts appeared magically whenever she laughed and the Commons Street Pub chose to play standard hip hop-no Gansta Boo.  Will decided to order a Sea Breeze.  He relaxed.

Privy to Will, his second Sea Breeze contained a hale and hearty measure of flunitrazepam, better known by its brand name, Rohypnol, or by its street name, Roofies or in the media as the date-rape drug.  It took about an hour to kick in, and in that time, Will had one more Sea Breeze, a Stonyrook and a Scotch Julep.  Rhiannon's suggestion to go to her place seemed quite dandy to Will at that point.  Once there, she fucked Will hard as Uyen watched.  Will was not there in mind, or in body, for that matter; he was only there in erection.  It lasted long into the night; Rhiannon plunging away, posessed-not noticing when Uyen left.

Will did not wake up with a patch of light on his face.  Instead, he woke up coughing.  Rhiannon's cigarette burned from the other side of the bed, where she sat up.  As Will's eyes began to focus and his head began to beat, he saw her banana-shaped breasts, which were uncovered.  Her cunt smiled at him.  He covered himself.  As usual, he couldn't think of anything to say.