Adjunct

Three days after I wrote this reflection, Harvey was stolen. I thought I'd edit this and post it, but then Harvey disappeared and I couldn't look at it. Changed my mind. Unedited moment from the past.

On the way home, Harvey, my squat, orange scooter with an over-eager throttle, felt somehow more secure than usual. More solid. Less bumpy.

I had too much coffee at the meeting. I felt fidgety and a little unwell. But Harvey held me steady as he glided down Lexington Avenue, swooping around the corner onto St. Clair toward the High Bridge.

Harvey held me all the way home.

The Dean had said: “How brave of you to come talk to me.”

I had said: “I don’t think it should require bravery to speak to my boss.”

Harvey had said: “Fuck these people and go faster.”

The Chair had said: “You are a valued educator.”

Harvey had said: “I told you so. They lie to you.”

I had said nothing more.

I let Harvey sit outside when we got home, rather than sealing him away in the garage. He had earned a little sunbathing while I sat on the deck, enveloped by the unruly wisteria I permit an unreasonable level of freedom. Its bulk constituted a cubicle of comfort surrounding the rickety table at which I schemed and pondered my hopelessness, but its tendrils were claiming the other side of the deck, as well.

I’m going to let them take the deck. I’ve stopped caring how it looks. I’ve stopped caring about any number of things. As long as the vines cover me, they can cover whatever else they want.

Harvey was waiting to take me away. He begged to take me away, but I needed lack of motion for a bit. I was still jittery and he needed a break, too. Things were moving too much.

Sit. Just sit.

We’ll all sit for a minute. Then Harvey and I will run away, but first some sitting needs to occur.

We have to go away from this place. We have to go to a place where the University isn’t. We have to zoom away in an epic orange blur. We have to go to a place where people know what “brave” means and what “valued” means and what “means” means. We need to be in a place where there aren’t English departments and Music departments and deans and provosts and fragile egos and lies and unkindness and metrics and administrators-who-once-taught-about-words-and-are-now-uninterested-in-denotations-of-letter-combinations-like-ethics-and-decency and shitty buildings housing shitty people whom Harvey thinks should “fuck off,” but he can’t speak so I have to and I am inexplicably unable to stand up to these assholes after a quarter century of abuse. I’m going to sit for a minute.

We need to be in a place without institutions that betray their existence. I exist. Harvey exists. We can zoom away from this.

I’m going to sit for a minute and then we will go away from this city and this house and these compassion-void people masquerading as saints. But first I’m going to sit with the wild wisteria that should just take the whole deck, for the love of God, God damn it, God damn me, God damn them, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I want to zoom away in an orange blur.

A quarter century and the administration doesn’t know I’m an employee. Or doesn’t care. Or does. Or might. I’m not sure. I used to care.

Adjunct means unessential. Added to, but not required. Unimportant. Words mean meanings.

I will adjuctify this place, and then Harvey and I will orange-blur away and be brave.