Read Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel for Free Online Page A

power—seem able to think only about themselves: their wealth, their power, the size of their cock. Anyway, even though I do believe that, it was a stupid essay, but somehow I was selected. I didn’t want to go—the program was allegedly bipartisan but the NRA or the DAR or some organization like that ran it, and I knew it would be awful. I’m an anarchist. I hate politics. I hate politics and I hate religion: I’m an atheist, too. If it weren’t so tragic, I think it would almost be funny that religion is supposed to be this good force in the world, making people moral, and charitable, and kind. The majority of the world’s conflicts, past and present, are all caused by religious intolerance. I could go on and on about this because I find it very upsetting, especially with things like 9/11, but I won’t. The point is I didn’t want to go to The American Classroom, I knew it would be a nightmare, but I was told I had to go. This was right about the time last fall that I was applying to colleges, and being selected for The American Classroom was supposedly a very big deal that would get me into Harvard and Yale. (It didn’t.)
    Of course I went with a bad attitude but it was genuinely awful right from the beginning. Actually the beginning was okay, before I got to D.C., that is. I took a train from Penn Station to Washington, and I love traveling on trains, even pathetic Amtrak. The very beginning was bad—I had to deal with going through the nightmare that is called Penn Station. The idea that there was once a beautiful and majestic building in New York City that I cannot experience because some men in the 1960s decided to tear it down (this is a good example of why women should be in positions of power—I seriously doubt women would have torn down the old Penn Station) infuriates me. At the new, improved Penn Station they don’t announce the platform until about thirty seconds before the train departs, which means you have to stand around staring up at the (really ugly) signboard and then make this mad dash along with thousands of other people to the announced platform if you want to get a seat. So the very beginning of my trip was unpleasant, but once I got on the train, and found a good seat in the quiet car where people were forbidden to listen to music and/or talk on cell phones, things were okay.
    One of the most foreboding things about The American Classroom was the dress code. “Men” had to wear jackets, ties, non-denim pants, and leather shoes. “Ladies” had to wear dresses or dress slacks and “appropriate” blouses and leather shoes. I found it a little distressing that a program supposedly celebrating the wonder of democracy had this totalitarian approach to dressing.
    So I was wearing my jacket and tie and leather shoes and appropriate pants and enjoying my last minutes of freedom on the train ride down there. In addition to the aforementioned costume, we were also required to wear name tags the entire time we were in Washington. We had been sent our tags so we could be wearing them when we arrived at whatever airport or bus or train station we arrived at. These name tags said THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM in red-white-and-blue-striped letters and beneath that, in black letters, our name and the state we represented. Mine was in my pocket, because I refused to put it on until the last possible moment.
    When I got off the train at Union Station it suddenly occurred to me that I could just pass the group by unidentified and wander out by myself and have a lovely solitary week in Washington. My mother had given me her credit card “just in case” I needed it, so I would have no problem checking into a hotel. I could spend a lot of time at the National Gallery or just stay in my hotel room reading Can You Forgive Her?, which I had brought with me on the off chance that I might have some time in between the indoctrination sessions. I was thinking about this when I saw a large group of oddly attired young