For the first time all semester,

I get to Admin on time. I am patting myself - literally! a pat-fest! - on the back for getting to Vanderbilt 218 with enough spare time to grab a generic NYU "house blend" coffee. I saunter - no, swagger - no, *swing* - to the classroom, lick my palm and slick my bedhead back, prepare the grand entrance, prepare to say the witty things I plan to say about, uh, Allentown Mack, and enter the room to what I expect will be applause, laurel wreaths, adoring fans, bosomy women pressing my face into their nature's gifts, etc.

Alas, alack: class has been cancelled. The professor is kind enough to send a cancellation notice at 8:31 a.m., fifteen minutes after I've crowbarred my way into a standing spot on the overcrowded 6 train, displacing pregnant women, doddering elderlies, disabled subway patrons. (Hey...dog eat dog, do or die, you know?) I spend several minutes at the front of the classroom deciding what to do, flirting abstractly with friends in terms that include "aerodynamic" and "flight," admiring and coveting for the umpteenth time Frenchie's convertible primary color vest/jacket, and deciding whether it would be appropriate to masturbate in Furman C-12 to photographs of well-crafted European pastries.

In short, how do you fill the absence of meaning that accompanies the cancellation of a class you barely attend?

I know! By reading for a class you attend but never attend to:mm...torts are delicious! There's some perverse logic at work here, but since I attend class so rarely my analytic skills have not advanced to sufficient levels such that I can actually identify the perversities at work. Is it too late to be a fiction writer? (Oh wait...lawyers are fiction writers! Who has the last laugh now? A-ha ha ha ha ha ha!!)