A L S O_ T O D A Y

Comics
Dark Hotel

T A B L E_ T A L K

Which courses best prepare teens for college? Suggest a curriculum in the Education area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Playboy goes limp without feminist vice grip
By Nicole Nolan
Playboy's flaccid College Girls issue
(09/30/98)

As American as ethnic studies
By Joan Walsh
Strange bedfellows: Can ethnic studies survive a marriage to American studies?
(09/28/98)

Recess
A one-stop playground for weekend frivolity and fun
(09/25/98)

Recommendation wars
By Tyler Thoreson
While students increasingly sue professors for less-than-gushing letters of recommendation, professors are subtly crafting their criticism in calculated ambiguities
(09/24/98)

Confessions of Harper's serf
By Marc Herman
The secrets learned from a Harper's internship
(09/23/98)

S A L O N
E M P O R I U M
FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

BY HANK HYENA | Are you eating Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese (75 cents) for dinner every night? Reading all your homework in the campus bookstore, because you can't afford to buy the books? Sneaking out of Kinko's without paying for your copies?

If you answered yes to these questions, you're a pitifully poor starving scholar, like I was, haggard with hunger in the halls of knowledge. If you're wondering what "War and Peace" would taste like baked and lightly salted, or boiled with a bouillon cube, you've descended to the same dismal depths.

Do not despair, my dear famished prisoners of the Ivory Tower. There is hope for you. With only minor ingenuity even the most abased academician can defeat destitution. I succeeded, and so can you.

Turn your thin ears toward my tale, gaunt creatures of the cap and gown. Listen, I will teach you how to use your marbles for money. But first let me tell you my own tale of deliverance.

I plummeted rock bottom in the fall semester of my junior year. I began sneaking into fraternity houses on Tuesday mornings; my fingers dug under couch cushions, hoping to discover coins that dribbled out of Docker pockets while frat brats couch-potatoed for Monday Night Football. Sure, I found $1.17 at Phi Sigma Kappa, but soon realized I was morphing into a scavenging jackal, a deplorable pigeon-man. I needed to improve my self-esteem and my income with an imaginative Money Plan.

I cruised the campus pub, nabbing pizza crusts off soggy tables. Beautiful girls laughed all around me, rich boys were buying them drinks. I glowered in the shadows -- green with envy because I was hideously sex-deprived. Wealthy lads were burping up delicious meals and pawing curvaceous co-eds. But me? I was getting nada.

I desperately needed cash and cuddles, a concise but thorough plan that would satisfy both lusts, simultaneously. Wistfully, I prayed for guidance to the Deity of Dinero, the Muse of Money.

Suddenly ... Yes! Yes! A duet of lights exploded in my cerebellum -- I received not one idea but two beautiful visions that successfully put bills in my bank and babes in my bed for the remainder of my collegiate years.

The first inspiration was: Teach Massage. A week earlier, I'd found an oil-stained how-to massage book in a trash bin. I could instruct others in the Groping Art, I could get paid to fondle. Sweating, I imagined a roomful of bikinied women lying supine before me. "Rub me!" they moaned. "Higher up my legs!"

That night I shivered wildly in anticipation. The next morning I designed a New Age poster offering my services in 1-Day, 2-Day or 5-Week workshops. I littered this ad all over campus, and at the appropriate housing and departmental venues. Within a week I was scheduled to teach at the Peer Counseling Center, at a human sexuality class and at Santa Rita Hall (a freshman dorm).

I stuttered my way through the first dreadful workshop -- I had to keep the rancid manual open beside me the entire time because I forgot all the strokes. The students enjoyed themselves, though. Eventually, I realized there was no way to ruin the experience. The students just wanted an excuse to lounge around each other half naked, feeling each other up in the name of health.

Dorms proved to be the most lucrative arena. I left flyers with the resident advisors with notes attached suggesting a one-evening introductory workshop, costing a mere $2/per student. Sometimes 75 eager freshmen would show up -- the entire floor, plus dozens of curious friends. Everybody wanted to check out their neighbor's anatomy.

Money came streaming toward me, accompanied by a sensuous new identity. I became "the massage guy" on campus -- luscious women who had wrinkled their noses at me when I was a destitute nobody were suddenly begging me for back rubs.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Bagging two volleyball babes