In writing and reading, Alfonzo chewed on anything that had even a vague connection to camelid identity. He learned about the social, political, and mystical histories of the Andes. He pored over guinea pig oral histories. He entertained the kooky artiodactyl theory that camelids were all distant relatives of dolphins and whales. He pondered the symbolic significance of toes and stomachs, and the absence or “lack” of humps. He wrestled with arguments that spitting was a form of ritual rather than a violent act. He meditated on images of sand, water, and mountains. Translational nuances, phenomenological asides, footnotes on hooves—there was no academic flourish Alfonzo eschewed. His text rippled outward in ever-expanding concentric arguments.
When friends made the mistake of asking about the subject of his dissertation, he would hum, then ask them softly, “What is anything about? What is animal life about?”
And his friends would puzzle. “Are you high?” they would query.
He’d borrow one of his dad’s nonsensical quips: “As high as a flea on the underdog.”
Why was his dissertation 1,532 pages long? Because it was about all alpaca life. No, but why, really?
Because he was afraid of ending.
Viviana was right, he craved failure. Alfonzo was bitter and confused because he could see that the text he’d written had no end. The academy wanted him to conclude, and he wanted to keep unspooling.
He knew he should edit, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Each chapter leaned on another, and all bore weight. Was he supposed to choose between chapter 3, “Cloud and Astral Llamas,” and chapter 7, “On Forced Labor in the Guano Mines”? Or should he cut chapter 19 on camelid solidarity with Guatemalan donkey guerrillas to make room for chapter 30, “Wool Work and Woolworth: Alpacas’ Five and Dime”? Obviously, the chapter on how camelids became “mammals” in the eyes of the establishment was as necessary as, if not more so than, “Alpaca Red, Alpaca Blue: Labor Activism and Law Enforcement.” And then of course there were the sentimental chapters, like the autobiographical one on music and subculture. For “From Jaguarondi Cumbia to Los Crudos: Popular Music as a Window into the Shifting Politics of Three Generations,” he’d done a deep study of his grandparents’ and his parents’ record collections and contrasted them with his own aesthetic leanings. He couldn’t take a scalpel to this tribute to his grandmother and mother.
More, Alfonzo couldn’t admit to his will to fail. He had better and more comfortable coping mechanisms to fall back on. He preferred critiquing the institution itself to critiquing his own work. Academia was just another predatory con game, was it not? And he was just another mark. A brick down somewhere toward the bottom of the great pyramid.
Outsiders dismiss scholars as bloodless obscurants. Those inside the walls know, though, that every scholar fights for or against something. Teeth are bared. Some fight to correct an old, oppressive, official narrative, while others quarrel to protect their scrap of field. Academia is a dangerous landscape in which all inhabitants are forever preparing themselves to be seen and chosen. Everyone draws a boundary, they pee around the edges of their turf. But what is enclosed within the disciplinary hedges? Who are the foxes? Who are the hounds? Who trims the topiary? Who owns this land? Is nothing common?
Alfonzo knew he had lost his way. Whichever path he took, he became immediately disoriented. The dissertation had become his Everest—or, to use a more appropriate South American reference, his Aconcagua. Yes, that faraway mountain was the perfect analogy for his sea level struggle. Alfonzo felt like he was dying from lack of oxygen. He was simultaneously too high and too low.
* * *
The Aztek Howtek printer clicked as it rolled out page 237 of Alfonzo’s dissertation. He trotted around the office, filing the day’s files while listening to the comforting mechanical spit of the printer.
Barring mishap, the dissertation would be ready before lunch. He planned to slip out at four and rush to Hunter. American Studies closed at five, and today was the deadline for dissertation submission. He was hoping for the real possibility that his adviser would not read all the way through and his abrupt ending would go unnoticed.
The printer continued whirring out pages. Alfonzo wandered deeper into the files.
Since the loss of Ketzel and Lucky, the Aztek Howtek printer had become Alfonzo’s de facto confidant. The printer was a gray relic and about the size of a chopping block. It exhibited a subtle sentience to him, and Alfonzo had come to care for the machine. The maintenance animals had long ago stopped servicing it. Alfonzo expected they’d forgotten. Despite its age and neglect, the Aztek Howtek persisted. It was a survivor. It continued to live and work in obscurity. It did not judge or comment, aside from its geriatric wheezes and squeaks.
Alfonzo had leaned on the Aztek Howtek countless times over the years, and the printer had marked different milestones. Alfonzo had printed copies of impossible-to-obtain texts, such as a whole bootleg copy of Browsing as Method and Itchy Subjects: Who Are the Fleas in the Political Fur? Alfonzo had printed the first article he’d ever gotten published, “Equine Realism: Is There No Alternative?,” on this machine.
The printer insisted on a few simple yet inflexible rules. It didn’t staple, or use any size of paper aside from eight-and-a-half-by-eleven. It did not collate. Wrinkles gave it fits. The Aztek Howtek communicated only with Alfonzo’s word processor, and accepted one job at a time. You sent a new job before the previous had finished at the peril of losing everything. If any of the Aztek Howtek’s preferences were ignored, it let out a squeal until Alfonzo came to wrestle out the hot crimped-up mess from the inner cylinders.
What the Aztek wanted was simplicity and a steady diet of paper and black toner. Alfonzo treated the machine like a demented grandfather who had once been a skilled worker. And because Alfonzo was good about providing for it, he’d come to assume he and the printer were on the same side.
“But of course, assuming makes an ass out of you and me,” Alfonzo’s father liked to say. To which Alfonzo would retort, “Wouldn’t it make an ass out of u and ming?”
“If you used half the smarts you use mouthing off to do your job, you’d be mayor by now,” Luis would grumble.
“I’d rather be dead.”
Since Alfonzo’s mom had died, he and his father had been trying to be kinder with each other. Voicing a desire for suicide was as gentle as they could muster.
Alfonzo was scanning a shelf while having an imaginary fight with his father when the beeping began.
His father believed Alfonzo was unlucky in a metaphysical sense—a trait he associated, for some reason, with Alfonzo’s curly wool. His father kept track of all Alfonzo’s ordinary hiccups of fortune and assembled these into evidence of a mystical, preordained ill fortune. When Alfonzo heard the beeping, he felt the truth of this in his very follicles.
The Aztek Howtek was emitting a series of bad beeps.
His various stomachs tied themselves in various knots. Through the pneumatic tubes he thought he could hear the faint cackle of the creature called Budget.
5.
Most workers rely on magic, astrology, and prayer when it comes to appeasing their office appliances. Of course, there are those maintenance creatures who truly understand the inner wheels of a printer, those who know the codes and the wires, but for most, electrical machines run on sorcery.