All grooming sheers present unique problems.
There’s simply no good way to shave my forearms.
Thankfully I don’t have any hair on my back except for a few nearly invisible strands on my lower, outer flanks that are easily plucked or shaved if I look over my shoulder in the mirror.
30
I can feel myself getting rounder.
31
And flatter.
32
Like a manhole.
33
Wedged into the asphalt. Sleeping and dreaming beneath the vermilion sky.
34
Abstraction.
35
The academic ideological apparatus interpellates all of us.
For academics and non-academics alike, there is no escaping the apparatus.
Hence I have conceived of a new book-length project in which I will explore the vicissitudes of the word “baby” in pop songs. Every singer pronounces the word in a distinctive, utterly singular way. They employ different inflections for divergent purposes and at times devious ends. It confounds me that a study of this nature has never been conducted before, if only by a linguist. But there’s nothing out there.
Nothing.
36
Sometimes, when I am revising my manuscripts, I forget to breath. My roommates have to remind me. I don’t like it. I don’t like them to talk at all. But they see my face go red and then gray and finally purple and despite how much they hate me they can’t shoulder the burden of my potential death. Stockholm Syndrome.
Some of them enjoy it when I flog them.
One of them asks for it.
I don’t enjoy flogging people. Not for any reason. But the Law is the Law and somebody must uphold it.
I use a cat o’ nine tails that I purchased as a Boy Scout. I can’t remember where I purchased it. But I had my uniform on when I gave the cashier my bills and coins.
I never stop flogging my roommates until I draw blood and they are sufficiently terrorized, i.e., happy.
37
I got to go to the bank.
I got to get some money from the money machine.
I put in my card and press the buttons and wait and press the buttons and wait and wait and wait and my money comes out of the slit.
I take it, count it.
The money blows away. It’s windy.
I go inside the bank to get reimbursed. The teller gives me a hard time. She has to talk to her supervisor. They go back and forth and the supervisor makes a phone call. They look at each other. They look at me.
They decide to reimburse me.
I count my money as I exit the bank.
When I step outside, the money blows out of my hands. The wind has picked up.
I go back inside the bank to get reimbursed and the teller sort of laughs at me and her supervisor comes out and laughs at me and they call somebody on the phone and I can hear them laughing really loud on the other end of the line.
I’m persistent.
My persistence wears everybody out. They reimburse me just to get rid of me, although I’m careful to explain that I’m not breaking the law, that I didn’t do anything wrong, that I can’t help it if the forces of nature are against me, against all of us, and finally that I resent the allegation, veiled or otherwise, that I’m trying to take advantage of the bank and get away with something. Apologizing like henpecked spouses, the bank staff nod perfunctorily and they dole out idle reassurances and they call me sir and so forth and I back out of the bank staring at everybody with my jaw flexed and my eyes round and wet and insane.
This time I’m careful to hold on tightly to my money in two fists.
I’m angry now.
I don’t like those people in the bank.
I might have had too much to drink earlier.
I can’t hold my liquor anymore.
I may just relax the muscles in my fingers.
I may just loosen my fists a hair so that the wind can rob me a third time.
Nothing happens. The wind has died a quiet death.
I open my hands and the money falls onto the sidewalk between my feet.
I stand there for awhile, like a soldier at ease, observing the crisp bills and wondering if the wind will rise from the grave and do something.
Nothing happens.
Somebody comes up to me.
They see me looking down at the money.
They look back and forth between my face and the money and my face and the money.
They bend over.
They take the money.
They run away.
I run into the bank. “Did you see that!”
Nobody saw anything.
Getting reimbursed a third time is difficult but not impossible. It never is. Given enough time, the patience, temperament, and psychological endurance of the human condition will always run its course.
“At any rate,” I explain to the teller, singling her out, “why would I lie?”
38
“I want to declare my intent to go up for tenure,” I say. “Do I have to put it in writing or is my word good enough?”
“You are a student, if I’m not mistaken,” responds the chairperson of the Promotion and Tenure committee, a lumbering man with off-kilter shoulders and a beard he keeps to conceal a deep cleft palate.
“Yes. I suppose.”
“Students can’t go up for tenure. They aren’t eligible.” He touches his overlip.
“I received tenure before, though. And I have all of the requisite publications.” I hand him my curriculum vita and a copy of my latest book. “Generally my work has been positively reviewed in all of the major journals in my field of study. There have been a few bad reviews, but they were written exclusively by scholars whose ideas I turned inside-out, exposing their idiot cores.”
The chairperson makes bird noises as he peruses my c.v. and skims through my book. “Impressive,” he concludes, touching his overlip again. I’m beginning to think that it’s a nervous tic. “But as I said, students can’t go up for tenure. You are a student.”
I flex my jaw. “I can see your deformity.” I point at his face. “Your cleft palate. There. I can see it. That beard isn’t hiding anything.”
Sighing, the chairperson smiles a crooked smile. “What a relief. I was trying to get you to notice it.” Once again he touches his overlip. “Sometimes people forget to say anything. I keep meaning to shave but I never get around to it.”
We shake hands before I leave.
39
I wander around for awhile. I don’t think I talk to anybody and I may or may not go to class. The moon flitters on and off like an ailing lamp. I use toilets frequently, even when I don’t have to go. I don’t stop wandering until I have used every toilet in every public building at the University.
40
After all these years it occurs to me that I have retaken all of my undergraduate classes. I didn’t need to do that. Did I?
I go to talk to a student advisor.
She’s a woman. She’s attractive. She’s younger than me.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“At least fifteen years younger than you,” she retorts. “Maybe more.”