Typical.  It’s the last day of instruction for fall quarter and the Latin American Studies graduate lounge is deserted.  The daily copy of the Los Angeles Times on the coffee table is crisply folded, awaiting its first reader.  Cubbies are still stuffed with colorful xeroxed flyers from yesterday.  No slobs have messed up the place yet, spilling coffee or absentmindedly forgetting a library book.  I probably won’t see another human being until noon.  Latin cultures don’t run on the American tyranny of clocks and productivity, so why should Latin Americanists?

My work habits belong in the hard sciences.  Those grad lounges – BioChem, Physics, MatSci, you name it – are already packed with eager beavers and beaverettes, most of them Asian.  They’ve left everything behind to study here, made sacrifices worthy of docudrama.  Me, I’m just an Iowa farmboy used to waking and working at the buttcrack of dawn.  Chores before school before more chores, lather rinse and repeat.  I’ve never out-brillianted anybody in my life, but out-working?  I know all about that.

I shrug out of my backpack and kick back on the ratty orange couch and fire up my laptop, a Dell blowtorch on my crotch.  UCLA is a campus with 100% Wi-Fi coverage, so I could microwave my package anywhere, but I prefer this graduate lounge.  It’s convenient to my triangulation between parking lot #4, Young Research Library, and the Wooden Center Gym.

My inbox is overflowing – with spam, naturally.  I swear to god, UCLA’s IT department has no spam filters on our email servers whatsoever.  But they manage to ban file-sharing, the fuckers.

I speed-delete until I come to a subject line with “FW:FW:RE:FW:RE:FW…” spilling off the screen.  What nobody knows about the craggy and intimidating Professor Emeritus Hercules Gutierrez – he’s a closet frammer.  If I had a dollar for every friendly spam he sends my way – jokes, silly pictures, outrageous internet rumors – I’d have all the funding I need.  Instead I grit my teeth and compose a brief reply.  He’s my dissertation advisor, after all.

I also subscribe to a ton of email newsletters, which doesn’t help the inbox bloat.  Most of them are white noise from Latin America, the latest blatherings from this state department of education, that research institute.  Only the newsletters from the Cuban Ministry of Information have any entertainment value.  This one is more typical:

Senor Roberts,

El Centro de Recursos de la Fundacion de SIDA Baja California Norte posee una…

Not that fighting AIDS in Baja California Norte – Tijuana, essentially – isn’t super duper important and all, but what can they do for me?  Gone with a click of the DELETE key.

Finally I’m down to the red meat.  Emails from other grads, professors, and of course my ever-annoying students:

Nick, what is the difference between an A student and a F student? I don’t believe that genius are born in large numbers and there are only 24 hours in a day for both type of students so how can a person score 90% while another just as motivated, score 60%? Another thing that I want to know is does an A student really know the stuff or it is the technique of taking the test? Is a test/exam a real measure of your knowledge? BTW I got a F on the midterm and always want to be an A student but exams make me nervous and I make very stupid mistakes that I don’t make in my papers. Thanks, Danielle

Jesus wept.  And deleted.

Here’s a call for deep pockets to buy Javier’s stuff:

Howdy all!  I know you probably received something about Javier’s stuff already, but I wanted to make sure no one was left out or forgot.  We need to find a good home for his car and furniture and everything else he didn’t take back to Puerto Rico.  The list is below.  Let me know what you want to buy.  All proceeds go back to him…

Goddamn Javier.  The flamer has it all – brains, beauty, and an aloof likeability.  People will throw parties for him, liquidate his worldly possessions at no charge, follow his willowy silhouette off a fucking cliff.  That’s the kind of popularity I’ve always wanted, but people don’t respond to me that way.  They seem to sense the Nick train only seats one.

And then an email I almost delete, because the subject line is simply titled “hi”:

Hi from Kansas City.  Sorry I can’t keep in touch very well.  My mother-in-law hasn’t put more minutes on her calling card and I can’t guess the new password on our computer.  My computer, as I think of it.  Saman has a laptop for his spreadsheets and porno stuff.  Don’t ask me how I know that.

So what do I do all day?  Mostly cater to my mother-in-law.  We get a bunch of satellite channels from the Middle East.  She likes to watch Egyptian soap operas and old Iranian movies from the Shah’s time.

I’m grateful you took me to Canyon Sin Nombre.  That’s the coolest place I’ve ever been in my life, except maybe for Tijuana where we met.  Anyway, Canyon Sin Nombre is my happy place when I need one, which is a lot lately.

Sorry if this seems disjointed.  I’m at a mosque that has a study room with computers, on a table right in the middle of everything.  People keep walking behind me.  They seem to slow down, then speed up again.  I worry they’re looking over my shoulder at my life falling apart.

Remember when you told me about your brother Brian?  Saman is like that too.  He’s all tied up in his family.  I don’t think he could get an accounting job on his own.  He wouldn’t even be here if not for

I don’t want to think about him anymore.

Today at a flea market, I got this old Polaroid camera.  My mother-in-law took it as proof that I’m stupid because they don’t make film for it anymore.  But we had a camera just like it back in Iran, so I was overcome with nostalgia.  The woman selling it wanted $10, then $5, then $1.  I didn’t have a single measly dollar so she finally gave it to me as a gift.

The mullah just tapped me on the shoulder.  There’s a time limit for using these computers.  I didn’t realize I’ve been sitting here so long.  I guess I’m spacing out…

Saman hit me the other day.  It meant something in this way I’m not sure I can describe.  Like, he feels really strongly for me.  The last 5 years don’t seem so wasted anymore.

Write back, okay?  I’ll be so depressed if I manage to check my email again and

The mullah is back to kick me off.  Bye!

I read and reread and re-reread Nooshin’s email.  The spousal abuse doesn’t shock me, although it probably should.  Instead I fixate on that half-decade of marriage.  Counting back from her birthday, that means she married while still a teenager.  19 years old, maybe only 18, depending on how the dates line up.  Straight out of high school.  I always figured her for a newlywed in a starter marriage, not a veteran wife.