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The tedious life of a T.A. serf | page 1, 2
"Listen, I told you I would do it. I can't even think of it now. Ask me in a month." "But the end of the semester is too late. I need the letters now. I tried to tell you about this." He spoke very softly: "I can't do them now." He was obviously getting great sadistic joy out of manipulating me. What a sexy new game: to torture a person he actually liked, one who had taken care of him for the past three months. The whole thing was so tragic, so dark and Freudian. He called the next week and left a message that he had the finals for the entire class, blue books for a two-day, six-hour final exam. "Ahh, is this working? Pick up. James, you need to pick up these books by Sunday. Saturday night is good. Meet me at my apartment. We can talk about the letter of recommendation." Beep. He was waiting in the lobby when I showed up, standing in a tired terry cloth bathrobe with stains all over it -- earth tones, browns, tans, light greens, bodily hues that bled together in a calico pattern. He handed over the final exams in gigantic folders: "When these are done we can work on the letter of recommendation." I turned around, went down the elevator and corrected papers until 4 that morning. He called six days before my applications were due and mentioned, again, that he didn't have time to write the letter, but suggested that I write it instead, and he would correct it as he saw fit. We met in a small cafe a few blocks from his house, a well-lit hole where old Chinese men played checkers and speed freaks sipped well-sugared iced teas while picking their cuticles with ballpoint pens. I had everything: All 54 final exams for his two classes, a meticulously kept roll sheet, all grades, all late papers -- everything -- and, most importantly, my unsigned letters of recommendation. He made room to the right and asked me to sit, his right knee touching mine. He took the grade sheet and read each student's name aloud: "Maria, you have that she earned a B-plus. She's a sweet girl, let's give her an A-minus. Brandon, B, he gets a C-plus. Marisa, A-minus, she doesn't deserve it: B." And it went on. Everything that any student had done in the class -- the countless revisions, the tutoring sessions, the study groups, the months of sitting through his lectures -- every one of these efforts were erased in a second by the whim of his pen. "Here is the roll sheet for the entire semester. Do you want this?" I said. He folded the grade sheet up into his shirt pocket, took a sip of coffee and said: "There are some things you do not understand. Some things are more important than just turning your papers in on time, showing up for class. The grades are done." He grabbed his coat to leave. "You, you need to sign these recommendations. Here, you said you would sign these, and the back of each envelope. I have them all printed up." "Ahhmm, quickly, I don't feel good. Where." I shoved letter after letter in front of him; he signed each without looking. After the 10th, while I was busily licking and sealing each envelope, he sighed, slid down the bench, put on his jacket, again, and prepared to leave. "I, you have to sign the back of each envelope. They won't accept them if you don't." He stood up, and with a vicious eye, snorted: "Listen, I am not a fucking secretary. You sign the backs, goddamn it. I am sick. I have to go now. Bye bye." "I can't; you have to sign the backs or the schools will not accept them. I need these. I am already late. Please." He stepped closer, now yelling: "Listen, your management skills don't work on me, man. I went to Harvard Law School. I graduated from Columbia. I graduated with honors. You don't tell me what to do! That fucking school can't tell me what to do -- that bitch the dean can't tell me what to do. I went to Harvard. Do you understand that? Hhaarrvvaard. You are an idiot. I won't take orders from you. Fuck you." His voice broke. The entire restaurant was silent, staring. I was sweating. Nobody moved. He walked out. So this was it -- I finally got it. Another tragic tale of an Ivy League-educated professor teaching at a state university, never meeting his rosy expectation of an active life in the academy, never up for a Pulitzer, never published in the New Yorker, never a chair for the Modern Language Association, never content expounding high art to the lower class, never a scandalous affair with a fawning, impressionable grad student -- left behind with only the memory of the genteel Harvard men, the ascots, the nights reading Gide, lusting after Marais, speaking Latin and exploring Hellenism -- it all ended 30 years ago when he got hired 2,000 miles from home. We haven't spoken since. I recently saw him from afar, walking across campus, now with a cane, more hunched over, carrying his own backpack, beaten -- his trousers lower, the cuffs hanging over the back of his Wallabies, creating new holes with each weary step forward.
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