In an Affront to Good Sense, Colm and Mira are Heading to Barcelona

Turdling: Not exactly a lazy summer getaway
Colm: We’ve sorted out how to coexist.
Turdling: Since when?
Colm: Remember the thing with the Dean?
Turdling: What?. . .Oh, yea, the sit down.
Colm: Right, and since then we have an agreement, things get heated we turn to the arbiter.
Turdling: And how does that work exactly, is he on call?
Colm: She, I insisted on that point.
Turdling: The Dean agreed to this?
Colm: He suggested it.
Turdling: An arbiter on Skype is going talk you two down when you start throwing plates at each another in Barcelona?
Colm: If anyone can center shit, it’s Lakshmi.
Turdling: Who makes the call?
Colm: I’m not really sure on that point.
Turdling: Wouldn’t that be central to the protocol. . .
Colm: We’ll work it out, we have so far.
Turdling: You’re on opposite ends of town on completely different schedules, it’s untested, this is different.
Colm: How’s that exactly.
Turdling: You’re together, It’s Spain, they’ve never experienced the likes of you two.
Colm: The fuck are you talking about, Franco’s goons killed Lorca, they shot Orwell in the fucking neck, Mira and I are a bit of a come down after that don’t you think?
Turdling: Things have cooled a bit since the 1930’s.
Colm: Exactly, so I don’t see the problem.

Mira Barcelona

Instead of sending postcards, Mira and Colm will be savaging one another in real time this summer:

Turdling: But it’s still the two of you, together.
Colm: For a month, it’s not that big a deal.
Turdling: That’s plenty of time to do some significant personal damage. Please tell me you’re living separately.
Colm: Of course not, the college has that castle.
Turdling: It’s not a real castle Colm.
Colm: I’ve seen the pictures.
Turdling: They tore that thing down years ago, they use the pictures to lure kids in for the summer programs.
Colm: What?
Turdling: You didn’t know that?
Colm: No.
Turdling: Jesus Colm. . .
Colm: Everyone calls the place The Castle.
Turdling: The Celtics play at The Garden but there aren’t any fucking tomatoes there. They put up one of those six story hacienda looking things.
Colm: Maybe we’ll be on different floors.

The Boys of Summer

The last few days have been spent in my office disposing of the evidence of another year. I tend toward the deliberate, unlike Colm’s method which involves great sweeping motions and construction grade trash bags. The entire operation takes him a few minutes, so he spends a great deal of time sitting in my office watching me sort through hillocks of academic detritus.

Turdling: (Holding a pile of magazines over the trash) You want any of these?
Colm: What’s that?
Turdling: The free shit they send, sample copies, literary start ups.
Colm: Naw, I’ve got my summer reading all set. I’m sticking to soft core pornography.
Turdling: (looking though the pile as he tosses them) Hedgehog Review? There’s a piece in here about Victorian sexual quirks. Long form too, none of that seventeen reasons to hate humanist poets shit.
Colm: Dump it.
Turdling: (still sorting) When do you leave?
Colm: First week of July.
Turdling: How are you going to make it through a month with Mira?
Colm: She teaches in the morning, I teach in the afternoon, we’ll never see each other. Plus it’s fucking Barcelona isn’t it.

Gaudeamus Igitur (Part 2)

Vestibule Plowden-Wardlow approached with her usual look of concern muddled with arrogance. She had hesitated once she saw Colm advancing towards the table, but her determination overwhelmed her common sense.

Vestibule:(approaching) Ansel!

I was thrown by her use of my given name; It was an interesting opening gambit.

Turdling: . . . Giselle.

I hesitated. I had referred to her as Vestibule for so long I stumbled in an attempt to remember her real name. If she hadn’t been aware of the nickname known campus wide, Colm’s arrival settled the issue.

Colm: Morning Vestibule.
Vestibule: Professor Wilshire.
Colm: (Sitting and tucking into plate of eggs #1) Lovely spread up there, why don’t you go get some eggs.
Vestibule: I’m on a cleanse.
Colm: Of your soul?
Vestibule: It must be a welcome change for you, seeing the morning.
Colm: It’s alright. Bit of a risk for you isn’t it, being exposed to sunlight.

Enough of that, she must have thought, I’ll try deputizing Turdling.

Vestibule: Ansel, I’ve been meaning to email you. We’re forming a working group, a offshoot of the president’s zero-sum initiative, I think your insights would be of real benefit.
Turdling: What is this?
Vestibule: It’s been incentivized by administrative fiat.
Turdling: Well, that’s, you know. . .
Colm: I’d love to jump in Vestibule, but my fucking podcast eats up most of my time.

Colm filled his mouth with bacon and began chewing with the gusto of a three year old securely strapped in a chair.

Gaudeamus Igitur (Part 1)

I arrived at Colm’s apartment yesterday morning at 9. We had planned to walk over to the college’s graduation ceremony, an event that has always been off-shored to another, larger area university. Arriving at Colm’s in the relatively early morning is an unpredictable undertaking, but yesterday Colm was freshly pressed and ready for action. This shouldn’t have surprised me as one of the benefits of participation in the graduation ritual was the pre-ceremony buffet in the faculty holding pen. We arrived at the Dapper O’Neil Arena and were directed up several flights of stairs, down a series of halls and into a room of surprising corporate elegance. Laid out was a buffet befitting the self-important and slightly hung over: groaning toadstool shaped vats of pillowy scrambled eggs, platters of bacon and sausage heaped up like cordwood, huge urns of high test coffee. For a sponger like Colm there are few opportunities more exciting than steam trays of free institutional manna. He attacked the spread like an adolescent steer set loose from a cage. I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down while Colm re-enacted the Sack of Carthage. I was scrolling around on my phone when I saw Vestibule Plowden-Wardlow break away from a group and head towards me. I glanced over at Colm who had a week’s worth of food balanced on two plates; he too was heading towards the table. Here it is, I thought, a perfect storm of officious high pressure on a collision course with a bumptious tropical depression.

The Year’s End, Colm, Uber and The Condor

Where has the year gone? Was it really twelve months ago that I caught site of the president of our little college? Five months since the Christmas party? It’s a fleeting thing the school year, and so busy that much has gone unreported. Take, for example, last Friday night. I had arranged to meet Colm for a mid evening drink amidst the end of the semester chaos of projects and papers and grading. He showed up, half an hour late, to the run down joint we discovered this semester, The Condor. Unmarked and unwashed, the Condor has long been a clubhouse for downmarket, elderly gay men, in short, the kind of joint that hasn’t yet been ruined by the presence of art damaged hipsters.

Turdling: Where the fuck have you bee. . . what’s wrong with your eye?
Colm: Nothing, nothing’s wrong . . . .
Turdling: You’re bleeding.
Colm: That’s from my nose.
Turdling Then what happened to your nose?
Colm: I had a little misunderstanding on the way over, on The Uber.
Turdling; The Uber?
Colm: The car service.
Turdling: I know what it is, I’m making fun of you.
Colm: Thanks very much, I’m injured, you son of a bitch.
Turdling: You just said it was nothing.
Colm: Well it’s something now isn’t it?

What was supposed to be a quick drink . . . Oh let’s face it, with Colm there’s no such thing.