I met Slacks at film school. He was a visiting professor from Hamburg…

I met Slacks at film school. He was a visiting professor from Hamburg who hung around the halls smoking his pipe and talking theory to the girls. After lectures, he’d sunbathe shirtless in the quad while reviewing student scripts; a red pencil in one hand, the other rubbing his polyester slacks. I have no empathy for character, he’d tell us students, running his hands through his wiry, red hair, sentiment’s lost on me. I had a bit part in one his films, Stages, he called it and I played “Adolescence”. I lay on a Chenille bedspread swearing at a haggard mother character chain-smoking in the corner. When he read my poetry, he said girls my age shouldn’t write about lust: It’s just ugly love rustling on the bottom, Liebesgetränk, he called it, love poison. After that he proposed a drive and we went to Twin Peaks in his old Pacer and he kissed my knees in the fog.

Breaking Point:  His wife in Hamburg and his increasingly dull films.