It was a dark and stormy night. I had taken a creative writing class.

It was a dark and stormy night. I had taken a creative writing class.

-Crow T. Robot, MST3000

It was a dark and stormy night. It was a creative writing class. It was ’91, and I had just read American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis.

There was me, and there was them, and they were mostly old ladies. Which I am now, but wasn’t then. And there was Irma, our teacher. Full name, Irma Winter; you vill write a short paragraph for me, she said in her thick German accent.

We met every Tuesday from seven to nine. Six sessions in all. Tonight was devoted to introductions. A few scribbled vords. Vee vould read them out loud. To give Irma Winter a sense of our style.

These are the words I read that night:

The crossword puzzle, in pencil, unfinished; the wicker basket, full of bananas. The bananas were green. Fat black flies smacked at the window. And she was a color she shouldn’t have been.

The ladies said nothing. Ach. Vell, Irma Winter said. Who vould like to go next…

At eight o’clock the class took a break. The old ladies talked about flowers they grew. About grandchildren, sewing. That terrible book, by that young Ellis fellow.

"That terrible book”, I didn’t think was so bad. American Psycho's not great. It's not terrible, either. It was, I thought at the time, A Rebours, re-written.

The lurid and the trash, and all the shock and hype aside—when Patrick Bateman says, you can shake my hand and feel my flesh, and I simply am not there—there are moments, though they scare me, when I know what he means.

There was me, and there was them, and this confession means nothing. Except that now, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.

It was a dark and stormy night. It was a creative writing class. The next thing I wrote about was my cat. We called him Wuzzy; he drank from the tap. Little old ladies broke into applause.

Goot, said Irma Winter. Very goot.