It is the end of the world and there are like fourteen academics in this hot tub with me right now. It is basically a cauldron full of all of humanity's worst failures and wickedness.

Four college freshmen boys with erections and slippery, chicken-pale skin clamor to put their hairy, fungal toes on the jets. One of them is my least favorite student of all time and he is fucking pissed about that B+.

An old professor and his new mistress sit in a circle of even older white guy poets talking about how amazing it is that because of the internet there are no ideas anymore, and what a relief it is that they'll never have to come up with an idea again. They move on to identity-as-performance-denial-of-authentic-self-genre-is-so-over-it's-not-even-worth-considering chatter. All of their ideas are plagiarized from the other night's lecture by another poet from a different and better university.

The professor and his mistress make out underwater and talk shit about his wife's ass. I am of course the only other woman in here. I read aloud a story I know is great, but all of the poets whisper through my reading, then say in unison that narrative is "the bottom feeder of literature."

I am so dumb for not joining the Peace Corps or becoming a nun or a kindergarten teacher or a mommy.

I sink to the bottom's silence and wait.