TERM PAPERS & SMUT: WRITING FOR THE LAZY & SOCIALLY MORONIC

CHEATERS INC. & DUMB LUCK LTD. Part 4 From The Chapter – The Dream

Laboring in a bar as an eighties kid provided the opportunity to clean the establishment on Saturday mornings. Wiping down tables, sweeping, and mopping paid the slightly above minimum wage of three-fifty per hour along with all the money dropped by drunks during the night. The job sucked but didn’t matter, being a necessary effort to obtain success and happiness karmically promised through diligence, hard work, and time.

While sweeping the bar, the owner, Bill, entered the establishment, bringing the threat of annoying drunk talk. Bill’s booze-inspired conversations garbled in nonsense but sometimes proved worthwhile when he divulged information or exploits he shouldn’t.

Unencumbered by professional ethics, sobriety, and age of majority restrictions, Bill drew wisdom from a relentless, daily routine of fucking waitresses and blowing coke in his office. Standing in the doorway watching my broom sweep dust across the floor, his body swayed in inebriation as he pointed near my position. “Son, you’re going to do well in this world. Just remember, if you do the work other people don’t want to do, you’ll make a fortune.”

Bill turned and staggered to the office to get some needed sleep as I returned to sweeping. A glance at the dirty floor revealed a twenty-dollar bill in the trash. Unknown at the time, the drunk restaurateur gave me the blueprint for success. I smiled and pocketed the twenty with a laugh. That Bill might be right.

Entering college at eighteen and leaving the retail food career for a job at a bank raised my hourly rate to six-twenty-five, instilling a lucky feeling and a sense of life moving in the right direction despite being broke. More importantly, the bank provided experience, networking, and an accidental mentor who added wisdom to the success formula.

Betty, a seventy-something bank customer, routinely made deposits and conversed with the tellers. Handling her transactions one day, I noticed a publishing house name printed on her check, which led to the question of her being a writer.

She smiled. “Why yes, I am.”

Lost in the shuffle of career choices gave authorship appeal but felt impossible, spurring interest in her journey to authorship. Imploring Betty’s wisdom stretched her grin with prophetic words. “Son, you should know there’s no money in writing fiction unless you’re really lucky. If you write a chemistry textbook, this might be a good avenue for success because schools need textbooks, but you need to be a chemist. Now, I write smut, the literature family’s bastard no one wants to acknowledge. If you can write smut, you can make a ton of money because there’s a huge demand for dirty books. You see, few people read quality fiction since most people can barely read. Even newspapers must write articles at a fourth-grade level. My advice is to write what people need and want, and you’ll do fine.”

Betty left as I stared at her check printed with an amount three times my weekly pay. Reminded of Bill and that Saturday morning in the years prior summoned the question: could it be true all you had to do to make money was write crap that people wanted or needed?

Fate provided the answer in the coming weeks while sitting in the E-lounge at the community college. A visibly frustrated Mary Jane entered and slumped in the chair across the table. The beautiful Italian girl’s troubles provided the opportunity to earn some nice-guy credits desperately needed for a date. “What’s wrong?”

She whipped her long, lovely hair in a quick shake of the head. “I messed up so bad; I have a two-page essay due in like an hour and forgot about it.”

I smirked. “Oh, that’s no big deal; give me the directions.”

Handing me the directions, she moved to the same side of the table, distracting me with her hotness, but determined wielding of pen and paper forged an essay in about twenty minutes.

“See if that works.” I handed it to her.

She sighed in relief, “Thanks. It would have taken me forever to write that.”

“Really?”

She frowned. “I hate writing papers.”

She departed for class as essay writing machinations identified a market, and after leaving school, I purchased a top-of-the-line Smith Corona word processor. With the help of Mary Jane, people began requesting service and paying for essays. Quickly, a portal opened to a wondrous place of hot Italian sex, paper writing, and partying. The ease of market entry shocked less than the ever-growing business that quickly rivaled the pay of the banking job. The simpleness of obtaining customers from word-of-mouth paled in the marketability Mary Jane suggested while smoking weed after having sex one evening. “Dude, you should just go to the people who need the papers the most, the jocks. They’re all idiots.”

She was correct. Returning to school the next day to visit the lounge occupied by football players, I found a jock who shared my astronomy class. “Hey Martin, do you know anyone who might need help writing papers? I am trying to earn some extra money.”

“Yo! You just don’t know. We got to maintain our grades, or we can’t play. If you can help us out, I know about five guys who would pay you.”

Paper after paper written for dumb jocks increased as they found me almost daily in the E-lounge. Often, they presented directions and money, but sometimes jocks didn’t understand their mental inferiority and attempted to write the papers. This effort resulted in commendable but futile efforts returned by professors requiring revisions. Revision work provided much entertainment as Mary Jane stood on my sofa in her underwear and recited the jock papers while smoking a joint.

“One night, I went to bed and dreamed I was a woman.” She tilted her head and closed her eyes. “When I woke up, I found I no longer had a penis and balls. I had a furry bush where my balls and penis used to be.” Her eyes and mouth widened in surprise. “Yes, I had a vagina, and I decided to explore my new vagina.”

Smoke billowed from her mouth as she read in a peal of laughter, and witnessing her antics justified paper writing, and soon, the fun and money earned outstripped the banking job’s torment. Clearly, the job hindered the new career path and needed to go, and I would like to say I stormed into the bank and defiantly told them, “I quit!” Instead, several months passed before a night of drunkenness caused termination, but life progressed swimmingly anyway.

Like all good things, hot Italian love and term papers ended in time, with the beautiful lover disappearing into the ether of young adulthood as work absorbed me. Paper writing was a thing of college, not a real job, and certainly not meant to be a career. In the aftermath of education, attempts to write books and publish met with defeat, and time wore on in a day-job doldrum that paid the bills and then some.