When my friends left, the math teacher called them parasites, saying that they were the kind of element that paralyzes society and keeps a country from ever making any progress. I said that I was just like them and he replied that it wasn’t true, that I studied and worked whereas they didn’t do anything. They’re poets, I argued. The math teacher looked me in the eyes and repeated the word poet several times. Lazy slobs is what they are, he said, and bad parents. Who goes out to eat and leaves their child alone at home? That night, as we were making love, I thought about little Franz sleeping
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