Apparently, my left shoe is very squeaky. Every time I walk up and down the hallway of the English department, it speaks: scrinch, scrinch.

I pack my class of twelve into a tiny conference room for workshops. It's very cozy and very warm. I feel as though I should bring candles in glass jars and pass out hand rolled cigarettes (only in this room should we inhale deeply and into rattling lungs). Somebody should brew black coffee in an old rusty percolator and we should sip it with deep grunts. It should slide like syrup over our tongues and we should have at least a few brown teeth and some deep wrinkles around our eyes. Somewhere out in the hallway someone should be playing the accordion, slowly and sadly.

Someone should read an essay that sounds like Hemingway. There should be bulls and red capes and women who speak little. Red bottles of wine atop trains and on tables in dirty cafe corners. A cat who sleeps all day on the bosom of a large, wrinkled woman, a woman whose fingers stink of garlic, whose eyes are full of rivers.

I wonder if I could book such a workshop room?