1. The Boy Who Is Habitually Late
In class we’re discussing Freud. His idea that you can’t strike out directly—it’s too risky, you’re powerless, the repercussions could be harsh, potentially castrating. So you express aggression indirectly, symbolically, passively. You leave the shirt untucked, you wear the cap backwards, you show up late.
Tony walks in. I look at the clock. Tony is late, he is habitually late. I like Tony. Good, smart kid. Handsome, straight. In his journal he writes, among other things, about his current living situation, which involves an apartment share with an older woman (thirty-one) with whom he is intimate. His hair is wet, as it often is. He slips into class not noiselessly, but discreetly. He doesn’t slouch in his seat, but the tailbone slides forward, the legs extend, and the pen always between his fingers taps softly against a notebook.
“Tony,” I say, “you’re late.”
He nods, like, yeah, I know. We know. No biggie.
“Again,” I add.
Others watch Tony. He’s good for the sharp comment, the keen insight, a kind of street-smart observation that pulls back the curtains on musty academese, on professor-speak.
“Any idea why?” I ask him.
In a moment rare for Tony, he appears modest.
“It might not be appropriate to share,” he explains. “You know, with the ladies present and sh—and all.”
A few snickers. Britney says, “That’s sexist.”
I think about Tony’s living situation, the thirty-one year old woman, the intimacies alluded to in his journals. I think of myself at his age, fumbling, unsure, anxious. (Lonely, horny, unlaid.)
“We were talking about Freud,” I tell him. “Any idea what Freud might say?”
“About?”
“About your being habitually late.”
Tony surveys the room. The students all look to him. Some are new to New York. They come from China, Korea, Minnesota. Often, they marvel at the informality of professor-student interactions, professor-student relationships. Tony, it would appear, gives these interactions very little thought, but he’s somewhat expert at their calibrations, pushing the envelope but not tearing it, like a tennis player whose shots, shown in slow-mo replay, just manage to nick line edges with a whisker of fuzz. He smiles. He’s going for it. He’s not certain if it will be a shot-of-the-day highlight, or an unforced error.
“Well, I don’t know for certain,” he says, “but I’m gonna guess he’d say it’s got something to do with my cock.”

• • •

… Knowledge, real knowledge, is problematic the moment we start trying to nail it down.
—John D’Agata, “We Might as Well Call It the Lyric Essay”

• • •
2. The Lingam
Later, at Le Pain Quotidien on 11th Street and Broadway, I relate this incident to Saraswati, a colleague, a visiting professor from Bangalore, India. A tall, imposing woman who navigates western norms and Indian tradition with exquisite taste. I love her nose ring, the many bangles on her wrists. Among other things, her research concerns the historical Buddha. Also yoga, both its traditions and its current practices east and west. Her talks are popular with the female faculty. They almost forgive her for being so attractive.
“Oh my god,” she exclaims, hand to mouth. “What on earth did you do?”
“I laughed.”
“You what?”
“Out loud, yeah. I laughed.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“But I did. Not in the nanosecond following the remark. Because really, a statement like that, in a classroom, to a professor, it sets off a detonation. There’s a ripple in time. You’re not quite certain what just happened in the previous nanosecond, nor do you know how best to proceed into the next. There’s the class to think of, they’re all looking at you. There’s your authority, what you represent. The institution. So time suspends even as the clock tick-tick-tick-ticks. And Tony’s expression was like, uh-oh. Like he expected repercussions.”
“As well he should,” says Saraswati. “The cheek!”
“But it was so funny, so …”
“Insolent?”
“So correct. He got it, what it boils down to, the Freud.”
“Pardon me,” she says, “but his cock?”
“No, the cock.”
Saraswati says, “Mmm,” sipping her chai. “I think I’ll remain blissfully and ignorantly immersed in the Gita.”
“What about the lingam?”
Saraswati shakes her head. “No, that’s an anachronism, a fallacy.”
“A p-h phallus-y?”
“Look who’s cheeky,” she says. “No wonder this, this—”
“Tony.”
“—right, Tony—enjoys your class.”
“Then why is he habitually late?”
She fingers up foam from the top of her chai and plips it onto my nose.
“You’re not going to get me to say it.”
I say, “One of these days.”
“Careful,” she says, “I’ll tell my husband.”
I say, “I don’t think he’d mind.”
“Then I’ll tell your wife.”
“Ah, in that case…”
“How is she, by the way. If I’m not prying.”
“Yeah,” I say, “good. Getting better, I think.”
“It’s such a slow process.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I’m happy to hear she’s improving.”
“I’ll mention you asked after her.”
“I’m happy you’re giving her space.”
I nod. I throw back my espresso. I avoid Saraswati’s eyes.
I don’t tell her that I dream about her, or dreamed. I’m not sure if it’s happened more than once, but when it happened last, early this morning, just hours before the class with Tony, it felt like a recurring motif within a long dream. It wasn’t terribly detailed, but it was significant. Saraswati appeared as a cat. I was seated on my sofa with a book and Saraswati, as cat, hopped up. I patted my lap and said, “Come, Saraswati, come sit,” and the cat obliged, curling into herself and purring almost immediately as I scratched beneath her chin.
“By the way,” Saraswati says as we stand to leave. With her, leaving is a captivating sequence of colorful gestures—the scarf ends secured inside a silk vest with cloth buttons, a fringed shawl over the shoulders. The patterns, the colors. I love watching her perform the rituals, concluded by lifting the dark luxurious hair out from the collar. “This Tony person, is he African-American?”
A bit taken aback, I say, “Black American, yes, as a matter of fact. He is. Why do you ask?”
She hesitates. “I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Makes sense?” I say. “How?”
“Oh,” she says, “I’m sorry, I’ve stepped in it again, haven’t I? Is that not the kind of thing one says these days? You seem nonplussed.”
I say, “No, no. I’m just, I’m—”
She says, “Plussed?”
“Yes,” I smile, relieved for the deflection. “I’m plussed.”
“Forgive me any faux-pas,” Saraswati says. “This American lingo, there’s so much of it to learn. L-G-B-Q-alphabet and so on, but I’m trying, I promise. I’m really trying.”
She places a large warm hand on my arm.
“Of course,” I say. “We all are.”
• • •

No person shall be provided with genitalia unless:
22. said person looks forward to seeing the genitalia of others
53. said person is not without critical holes
—Joe Wenderoth, “69 Restrictions”
• • •

3. The Truth
My wife is eating soup and watching Rachel Maddow. When I say hello, she puts a finger to her lips and points to the TV. Something about the coming election. I drop my bag inside, take a piss, go check my e-mail. There’s a message from Saraswati with a link to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, something about using Freud in the classroom. I send her a quick thanks but I’m hoping that the link leads to a firewall.
I’m not a fan of The Chronicle. Too many occurrences of the words “pedagogy,”
“diversity,” and ethnicities that end with “x.”
It’s a commercial when I go back out to the living room. My wife hits mute.
“I waited for you,” she says, then indicates her soup, “but I got hungry.”
“I had tea with Saraswati,” I tell her.
My wife says, “Her.”
I ignore the tone. “We ran a bit late.”
“A bit?”
“She asks after you,” I say, detouring into the kitchen.
She says, “Oh.”
I return with a glass of coconut water and a honey crisp apple.
“Your mother called,” she says at the next commercial. “She’s all bent out of shape.”
“What now?”
“Secrets.”
“Secrets?”
“Two of her friends knew something that they didn’t share with her.”
“And?”
“And she’s insulted. Or offended. Or something. She thinks they’re infantilizing her.”
“I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“You better call now. I told her you’d be home.”
I say, “Oh, fuck.”
“I’m sorry. You should have told me you’d be late.”
“Yeah. There’s a lot of things I should do.”
I go inside and call my mother. Since she turned ninety, people treat her differently. She doesn’t like it.
“Differently how?” I ask her.
“Like a child,” she says. “What am I, some kind of retard?”
I recoil. I remind her about that word.
“What word?”
I say, “You know what word.”
But it’s not the word that bothers me so much, really. It’s my mother. It always comes down to that realization, sooner rather than later these days, anytime we have a conversation. I remind her that when her own mother turned ninety, she treated her differently.
“I did not.”
“You infantalized her.”
“I what?”
“Treated her like a child.”
She hangs up.
“Well?” my wife asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I got her to hang up.”
“Wow—tell me how. What’s the secret?”
“Tell her the truth.”
In bed, my thoughts turn to Tony, to Saraswati, to her question. What exactly had she meant: that it made sense it would be a Black person making inappropriate, potentially confrontational remarks, or that it made sense that I didn’t confront Tony because he’s Black? I drifted off with the idea that I might have the makings of an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Our brains recognize and want patterns. We follow natural patterns without a thought: coiling a garden hose, stacking boxes, creating a wavering path when walking along the shore. … Why wouldn’t they form our narratives, too?
—Jane Alison, Spiral, Meander, Explode