I'm Totally Over It Now

I joined a writer’s group in college.

Most of the other members were older,

but for a time, I seemed to fit right in.

Our meetings were held on Sundays

in their glamorous off-campus homes.

(They would never have fit

in my single dorm room.)

Mark was the de-facto “president,”

an intellectual snob with a nasal voice.

He eventually started dating one

of our members, Leah,

who was basically just like him

in a female body.

Brett was the gentle vegetarian,

a good cook, kinda cute.

Wrote the kind of poems

you don’t really know how to respond to.

Painted morose portraits

in off-putting yellows and greens

and aspired to be a lawyer.

Sven was the cool, funny guy,

a hipster before there were millennial-era “hipsters.”

Bald, thick plastic-rimmed glasses, goatee.

I probably liked his writing best,

And I think it was similar to mine,

but his stories seemed more sophisticated somehow,

and so did he.

Francine was the beautiful poet.

Her works were inspired and effortless.

All the guys were madly in love with her,

but she had some bland Indiana boyfriend.

At that time I was trying to work out

what it meant to be

a Northwest Indiana “Region Rat.”

We were working-class people

whose dads worked at the steel mill

and were laid off from time to time.

I often felt different from all the kids I was meeting

who were from rich Indianapolis suburbs.

So I wrote stories about teens from my hometown,

and because I liked the movie Pulp Fiction,

all my characters cursed a lot.

Once I hitched a ride back home from Mark

in his vintage Volkswagen Beetle

and he seemed keen to gossip about the others,

analyzing their writing styles and their flaws.

He asked me if I honestly wanted to know

what he thought of my writing.

Not really, but I didn’t want to seem afraid.

He told me, voice dripping with condescension,

“You’re pretty good at what you do,

but I’m afraid it’s all you can do.”

One of our newest members, Sylvia,

approached me with evidence

that Francine had been plagiarizing her poetry.

Not just an unintentional phrase

but entire poems—famous ones, too!

Ones that we all studied in our English Lit classes.

Elizabeth Bishop was one of her victims, I think.

I don’t know how we didn’t see it before.

As one of the founding members,

I decided to take the matter in hand.

I emailed Mark with the

incontrovertible proof.

At the next meeting,

while I bored a hole in her skull

with my eyes,

Francine read a piece

that she explained symbolized

her plagiarism.

She talked about it like it was an eating disorder

and not a massive failing of integrity.

She was praised for her honesty.

Then they stopped inviting me to things.

I spent the rest of that year

stalking around campus,

lonely and bitter.

Fantasizing about the day that I would

be signing books,

and they would all spontaneously combust

with jealousy.

I wrote wildly experimental works

just to prove that I could do more.

I started a new writer’s group

that met in the Union,

and we behaved more like an actual

college organization

than a group of sixth-grade girls

with a secret, elite slumber party invite list.

I know that Mark and the rest thought

that my group wasn’t nearly as good

as what we had had before.

They did their own thing, and I did mine.

My true friends back home

supported me as well as they could.

Padraig prank-called Francine,

accusing her, “I know you’re a plagiarist!”

then hung up the phone.

I outwardly objected to such immature antics,

but I loved that he did that.

And here I am,

years and years and years

later,

decidedly not famous,

no revenge for me.

But no one’s ever heard

of them either.

And I’m still writing.

I’m pretty good

at what I do.