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Chapter 2 - Emily

As the semester progressed, the weather got colder and crisper as it always does. September turned into October. The leaves changed, the pumpkins and plastic crappy Halloween accoutrements appeared in store windows and hung from lamp posts on State street.
My interest in Emily was growing warmer and deeper. In one section she mentioned a short story she read a few years back in which a gang of kids, led by a teenage linguistic genius ne’er-do-well, would terrorize the locals by speaking in a disjointed, arrhythmic fashion, messing with the traditional cadence of our language. This made the normally mild-mannered folks batty. It was a fantasy of course, but the story was intriguing none the less.
She mentioned it on a Wednesday, and the next day, there was a print-out of the story in my in-box affixed to the door of my office. There was no note, no sticky, no little, “Here’s the story I mentioned. Enjoy it!” There was no cute signature with the “i” in Emily dotted with a smiley face, or god forbid, a little bulbous cartoon heart. Just the story. That was Emily’s style, direct with no extras. Of course I would know who it was from. No need for a favor-currying note. Why did she give me a copy of the story? She was not doing any of the standard dance moves of the brown-noser. A brown-noser would have made sure to alert me to the fact that he was going to see if he could “track down a copy of the story” and then make a big show of delivering it in person. She did none of that.
I got the story on Thursday, and read it immediately over a cup of coffee at Café Blasé. A fun tale that seemed targeted at linguistics majors. How odd. While reading the story, I couldn’t help but thinking about Emily’s motivation. I did express interest in the story. But she had to search for it online, as I could tell from the Zaddress on the print-out.
I was thinking, “Thursday today. I won’t see Emily in section until Tuesday,” and in she walked, just like that, just like in the movies. A cold October wind followed her in the door as well as a few leaves. The seats near the door were understandably vacant and the windows were sweating with the condensation from all of the coffee-imbibers collected exhalations and the steam of a thousand spent lattes. My heart hit a small pothole as I caught sight of her. Was it amplified by the caffeine? Would she notice me? Was she getting her coffee beverage to go, or would it be in a white ceramic blasé mug emblazoned with the cartoon outline of a bored French cat? My heart rate had definitely accelerated. Damn. I wanted to wave girlishly at her and have her come sit with me. The story was a perfect excuse. I was too much of a chicken though. I felt my cheeks flush with warmth just thinking about it. It was her turn in line. I wondered what she drinks. It wouldn’t be a fru-fru mocha-frapaweenie with orgeat syrup. I couldn’t make out her order over the whine of the milk-frothers and the gabble of the undergrad coffee fiends that sound like so many strung-out chickens. But… it WAS in a “for here” mug.
She turned, looking for a table. I glanced down at my table quickly, my cheeks blazing with warmth now. I wondered if any of the people-watchers in the café had been observing me observing her. Thud Thud THUD THUD THUD. My tell-tale heart was threatening to rip through my shirt as I stared glassy-eyed at the pages in front of me, unable to focus and unable to look up. It must be safe to look up by now. She must have taken her seat and –
“Hello Mitchell.”
I raised my head suddenly and Emily was standing right there, right by my table, holding her cup of plain black coffee. I stared at her blankly for a moment.
“Anybody sitting with you?” she asked.
“Ah, no. Please.” I gestured spastically at the empty chair, hitting my drink with my arm. It spilled a bit on the pages, but didn’t topple, thank goodness.
Emily sat down and sipped her drink, while I dried the coffee-moistened pages.
“I see you got the story. Have you read it yet?”
“Yes. I liked it. I don’t think it’s too realistic, but still fun to read. Seems like it was written by someone who’s thought a lot about language.”
“Yeah. It was from a collection of stories, each from a different state. The authors were from different states. This one stuck out like a sore thumb. Glad you liked it.”
This small talk about the story was followed by one of those awkward silences, or at least it felt awkward to me. And hey, she called me Mitchell! Not Mr. Scott or anything formal like that. Could I read into that? She wanted a less formal relationship with me? My heart was still thumping loudly.
Emily broke the silence. “You know I’ve been doing an undergrad independent study project with Professor Henri, right?”
What? She’s been doing what?! Jack never mentioned any such thing to me. Nor had Emily up to this point. I knew he sometimes mentors such projects by ambitious undergrads, but I had no idea that this woman, this young woman that was causing me heart palpitations, had managed to get an independent study project going with my thesis advisor, Jack Henri. No, I had no idea.
“Ah, yeah. I think Jack, I mean Professor Henri may have mentioned it in passing. What was the topic again?” Was I trying to impress her, casually dropping Jack’s preferred nickname like that?
“I thought he would have talked to you about it because of your thesis topic.” Jesus. She knew my thesis topic? What was going on here? She took another sip of her black coffee and tucked some stray hair behind her ear.
“I’ve been working on technology related loan words in Mongolian. You know, collecting examples of new words like “Zweb” and “Zmail”, and “petabyte” in Mongolian, their frequency, and trying to figure out how those words impact their culture, and stuff like that.”
The ground felt like it dropped out of the café. My thesis, which she clearly knew about, was on minimal listener response noises in the Mongolian language. What the hell was a minimal listener response noise you ask? A fair question. Most people have never thought of them. It’s those noises you make when you are in a conversation with someone and they’re talking on and on, and you, the good listener that you are, make little “uh huh” and “oh, I see” noises that don’t convey any meaning, except that you are listening. They have their own frequency and types in every language, and mastering their usage is key to being a fluent speaker in every language of the world.
Mongolian was one of my pet interests before it became en vogue. With China having become the latest Asian booming economic “dragon”, Mongolia had been put on the map as a near-by support country, for natural resources, and the like. Ten years ago no one had even heard of it, or if they had, they thought of Genghis Khan from a thousand years ago.
And now here was Emily Simples studying cutting-edge high-tech loan words in Mongolian of all things. And I knew that Jack Henri had little to no interest in things Mongolian. It had been like hitting my head against a brick wall trying to convince him that my thesis was worthwhile.
“How did you come up with that? You’re a what, a sophomore, right? Isn’t that a little ambitious doing an independent study project? And why Mongolian?” Even as I asked that last one, I wish I hadn’t. I’d gotten that same question so many times, “Why Mongolia?” People didn’t seem to get my interest in a different life-style, a different way of being. A third of the country was still nomadic, even with all the modernization that had happened since the collapse of the Soviet Union back at the end of the 20th century. People don’t see the appeal, and didn’t get it. But… Emily seemed to. And I also knew, from having access to the student records, that she was a bit older than your average college sophomore.
In response, she turned up the corners of her mouth in her sweet little smile and pierced me with her clear blue eyes. My coffee mug stopped on its way to my lips. Damn. She could stop me cold like that.
“You of all people shouldn’t have to ask me that. ”
“Yeah, stupid question. I hate it when people ask me the same thing. But it’s kind of shocking, you being interested in such a backward, weird little country. Shouldn’t you be trying out for the cheerleading squad or at least learning business Dutch or something? I know that I find it fascinating, but I’m…” I trailed off here and she quickly filled the gap.
“But you’re backward and a little weird?” she said with a laugh. My god. I hadn’t seen her laugh before. I smiled too and more than my heart was thumping at this point. Where was this going anyway?
“Henri told me to talk to you about a research grant that I found on the Zweb. The Soros Foundation has an open call for grant proposals targeting Mongolia, and language and technology are listed as sub-areas. I’m just a lowly undergrad, but we could write the grant proposal, you could be the P.I., and Professor Henri said he would give it his ‘academic blessing.’”
Emily sure was ballsy. Why hadn’t I found this “open call for grant proposals”? Jack was always pushing me to find new funding options, always threatening my stipend, talking about departmental budget cuts and the like. Where did this 22 year old sophomore get off saying “we’ll” write the grant proposal? Was this her angle? Just using me to get a free trip to Mongolia?
She outlined her plan and she had it well thought out. It did sound like the sort of thing Soros would go for. They’d been pouring money into little countries like Mongolia for some time now. The timing also seemed to work perfectly for Emily: submit the proposal in a month, get the grant, and go next summer and into the fall, doing the field work at the start of her junior year. She could set it up as a big independent study project, get credit for it, and I could flesh out my sagging, going nowhere fast thesis. This was the sort of thing that I needed. I’d been floundering with my thesis for a while now. Having lovely, interesting Emily spurring me onwards, not to mention the long nights in the close quarters of the nomadic gers, sounded like just the ticket. Was this too good to be true? Right then, I didn’t care. I probably should have, but I’ve always been a bit gullible.
We worked on the grant in my claustrophobic office, at the various, plentiful A2 coffee shops, in the graduate study rooms, but never at either of our houses, or anything too intimate. I was struggling to keep things “professional”, but she must have felt my eyes on her. Emily was sharp and driven in a way that I never was. Sure, I was in a Ph.D. program, but I felt like I kind of fell into it rather than chose it. I took that annoying Japanese linguistics class with Jack, one of the few that he still taught, worked as his undergrad slave running statistics for him for his various journal articles and then he convinced me to apply to the U of M Doctorate program in linguistics. He’s on the admissions committee. It didn’t feel like I earned it or even really wanted it. But a lot of my life has felt like that. And here’s Emily, finding grants on-line, enrolling senior faculty members, seducing doctoral candidates with the appropriate interests.
How did she know what she wanted? How could she be so driven? Her optimism and drive made me feel confident that we’d get the grant, that I’d be the Principal Investigator, and that the two of us would fly to Ulaan Baatar next June, together. And that’s exactly what happened. Well, almost exactly.

Chapter 1 - My Name Is Mitchell Scott

I was always skating on the surface of life, never diving in, never taking a big juicy bite. That was all going to change for me, sooner than I knew. I was a nervous doctoral candidate in linguistics at the University of Michigan and I had just grown a patchy, thin little moustache that deceived no one.
I though it would make me look older, or at least more worldly, more mature, more like I knew what was going on and less like a scared chihuahua darting this way and that looking for a hole to crawl into. That’s what I felt like most of the time while I was in graduate school, like a shaking, hairless dog backing away from one thing only to bump ass-first into something equally fear inducing.
It was September 7th, 2013 and I was getting ready for the first Linguistics 101 section meeting of the year. I hated the first session. My stomach was always in knots just thinking about all those little student eyes staring up at me, their TA, their “teaching assistant”, more like “teaching ass”. I hated being up in front of the class, being the one who was supposed to be in charge, like I knew more than they did. As far as linguistics went, I guess I did. Ling 101 was usually made up of sophomores who figured it’d be a Mickey Mouse class, an easy A and fulfill some distribution requirement, even though it wasn’t, and it didn’t. The administration never knew quite how to classify linguistics. It ain’t no science, but was it a humanities class? Humans speak all that stuff, but…
My job as TA was supposed to be to explain Professor Henry “Jack” Henri’s obtuse lectures from the day before, hand out, collect, grade and return homework and berate the students for not having done better on the mid-terms and the finals. For all of this important work, I continued to receive my pitiful stipend and stay enrolled in my “doctoral studies”.
The unwritten TA handbook says that, on the first day, you were supposed to get to the cramped section classroom a good 15 minutes before the section was scheduled to start. You’re supposed to write your vitals up on the board, and they tend to be green boards, rather than blackboards. You’re supposed to lay out papers on the desk, your important papers that show you were an authority and knew every student’s name, who should be there and who should not. Redirecting a student to the correct room was always a good show of authoritative power. I, of course, showed up five or six minutes late. All the desks were full. The students were chattering loudly, and I could tell the hysteria level was rising.
“Is this even the right day? Where the hell’s the TA? In two more minutes, I’m outta here.” That sort of thing. When I came hurrying into the room, my papers almost dropping from my arms, the noise quieted down into a sneering, curious, not quite silence.
I felt their eyes boring into me - their puny little undergrad brains clicking and popping. “Is THIS our TA? He looks more like a drowned water rat.” Even the students who were smiling at me (“Hi! Like, give me an A, OK?”) could tell I was a nervous, fearful wreck. Were they actually staring at my pitiful moustache, or was that just my imagination? Why did they insist that all grad students TA classes? Research with nice, safe, dry books is one thing, but standing up in front of these wet, frightening undergrads made me want to hurl, which I did do last night at around 3 am.
I woke up from one of those standard, recurring nightmares that I get every September. I used to get them the night before grade school. Now I get them the night before my first section. The details change, showing up in my underwear, all the students being skinless zombies with blood oozing from their eye sockets, the desk being made out of slowly dissolving molasses-quicksand, but the emotions are always the same: apprehension, fear, a desire for the next day never to come.
How can these undergrads, several years YOUNGER than me, look so damn confident, casual, relaxed and satisfied. OK, many of them also look bored. But none of them look worried. I guess I’ve sucked up all of the worry-energy in the room. There wouldn’t be any left for anyone even if they did feel a bit nervous about the first section of linguistics 101.
“Hello. My name is Mitchell Scott”, I said with my back to the class, as I scratched out my name in yellow chalk on the green faux slate. Invariably, as several of my nightmares foreshadowed, the chalk let out a spine rumpling screech, which was met with audible winces followed by laughter from the students behind me. The laughter was directed at me, not with me.
I continued to write up the vitals, the main thrust of today’s short session: my office hours, the cryptic location, “B15-012”, of my cramped cell of an office, and the extension number of the archaic, heavy, dust blanketed black inter-campus phone which may have never rung in the long history of the school.
Some of the more obnoxious students were still sniggering. I wrote that off to them staring at my moustache. I couldn’t stop my arm from raising and a finger running along its hairy length, a habit I picked up in the short time that I’d been mustachioed.
The more studious students were copying down the information. The more obnoxious, jock-types just continued to unfurl their long, powerful legs and smack their ultra-maroon, mega-sugared gum, knowing they’d NEVER make use of my office hours, didn’t give a shit about my name, and were hoping that they could get out of here early.
I knew all the types. After three years of this, and comparing notes with the other TAs, we could spot them fast. The jocks, the hotties, the rare linguistics nerd (who the TAs love, and the rest of the section hates), the post-modern feminista, the computer geek, the teacher’s pet, the asshole, the straight-edge Christian, the Chomsky wanna-be, the brown-noser, the hep cat, the moron, the semi-moron, and the total moron. The groups weren’t entirely mutually exclusive.
While I told them about the grading, “my” policies on late assignments, how much their two tests count towards their grades, and the other boring nonsense, I was trying to assign types to the students. It almost required me to make eye contact, but not quite. I managed to avoid it by flicking my gaze around. I may have looked at a student’s face, giving the illusion of eye contact, but I would be looking at their nose, or hair, then check their shoes. You can tell a lot by their shoes.
The sneakers this year have reached new heights of industrial designed madness. The neologisms abound. The jock in the front row (his name can’t REALLY be Biff, can it?), the one who managed to repeatedly unfurl his legs, taking up more than his fair share of space, was sporting two sneakers that could only be described as other-worldly: the shimmering freon colors of red, green, and yellow shifted across the “speed boosting mega-pads” and “cross-training transfixers” as he flexed his no doubt muscular toes. The glowing, white ALED readout showed Biff’s absurdly low resting heart-rate. His footwear looked like something a NASA probe might bring brought back from Io.
An angry looking redhead, an obvious feminista with “amp” tendencies, was wearing lime green plastic flip flops that proudly displayed the pink puckered badge of newly cauterized scar tissue where her left pinky toe should have been, or used to be. Around her neck hung a ratty braided hemp cord that these amps seem to favor. It’s not good enough to just cut off a piece of your body. No. You should also display it, wear it as jewelry. I had no doubt that dangling between her teeny and no doubt multiply pierced, scarified, and tattooed breasts was her pinky toe sealed in clear acrylic plastic. If I was five years younger would have I thought it was cool? No, I don’t think so. I had missed the whole amp fad, thank god. I heard it started in Southern California, swept the west coast, then the east coast, and had by now clearly made it to the mid-west. I had to turn away from the student in disgust, glad that she had her toe tucked into her shirt and not on full display. Maybe it was a first day consideration for her squeamish TA.
Another type that is even easier to spot than the jock, amp, or feminista is the hottie. And I’m referring to the female hottie of course. Some of the more outspoken female TAs, or even the gay TAs talk about the male hottie, but I have a definite bias here. I would leer at the female hotties, secretly, from behind my protective desk, as I discussed the minutia of the grading system, answering the same inane questions they always asked. There were two or three candidates this year. A blond in the 2nd row, with a short, straight hair-do that might look severe on someone who wasn’t so fine-featured and pretty. Her tight yellow sweater was a definite plus. But she also seemed even more bored than the Biff-jock. That’s a minus. They should at least pretend to be interested in what I’m saying. I guess it would have helped if I was interested, which I wasn’t.
The next candidate for hottie had long, jet black hair. Must be dyed. No human hair was that black on its own. Or was it? She was tall. I could tell even though she was sitting down. And leather mini-skirts must be making a comeback this year. Ann Arbor was already feeling the autumnal chill in the air, the ugly head of winter poking around the corner. But none of that was going to stop this black-haired beauty’s fashion statement. I think the red fishnet stockings sluttily complemented her red nail polish. Garter belt or full-on stockings? I’d have to ponder that on my own back in my room later.
The third candidate was a maybe. Not your standard hottie. The other TAs would not even put her on the list. She looked a year or two older than the other students, shoulder length dirty blond hair, a light brown leather jacket worn over some sort of psychedelic rock t-shirt which seemed to be confining a pair of serious breasts, but I couldn’t be sure. Clear blue intelligent eyes. I did make the mistake of making eye contact with those. The intelligence is what got me. I did the thing no TA wants to do. I stuttered and lost my place while staring into a student’s eyes. Luckily it wasn’t one of the official hottie candidates, or else the guffaws would have been more vociferous and pointed. The students could always pick up on the nerdy grad students drooling over the undergrads. The official unwritten TA handbook clearly states, ‘Stay Away from the students! No fraternizing.” It happens though. Not to me, but it does happen. The students are much more clued into it than the tenured faculty. That happens too, the real faculty and the undergrads. It occasionally erupts into scandal, marriages ended, professors transferring to lesser universities in Ypsilanti and the like. The administration doesn’t much care what the grad students are up to, but we are the ones who largely determine the student’s grades, so there is supposed to be no monkey business. Little did I know that this was going to be my “lucky” semester.
I think I was talking about Dr. Henri’s first lecture of the day before, and I was trying to answer some semi-moron’s question about whether “sin-tax” was as boring as Prof. Henri made it sound. I’d never thought of the word syntax as “sin-tax” until that heavy-browed Cro-Magnon asked it that way. Sin tax. I was answering his question, basically saying that there are some interesting facets to syntax, although this intro course doesn’t really address them. Something like that. I was half way through with my answer when I looked into those blue clear eyes. I spluttered. I lost my train of thought. She didn’t even blink, but just nodded slightly. Was she confirming her deep knowledge of the thrilling syntactical areas of research, or was she nodding that I was alright? That she didn’t think I was a joke. She wasn’t putting on the various airs that the other types exude from their very pores. She seemed sincere. And that struck me deep. It made my words catch in my throat. She didn’t laugh or look away. I broke eye contact as the others snuff laughed at me, the jock’s shoe computer beeped, and I shuffled my papers on my desk as I tried to collect myself.
“Yes, sin-tax is as boring as it the Professor makes it sound. You’ll hate it.” I actually got a laugh from that one, perhaps my first from a section. Definitely my first on the horrible first day of a section. I normally loosen up slightly over the course of the semester as the types solidify and I know what to expect from each of them. Was this a good sign?
Emily smiled at that point. That was her name. The 3rd string, maybe hottie. Emily Simples. Her lips curled slightly at the corners and her eyes lit up even more, if that was possible.
I concluded the section and the students began filing out of the room before I finished my last sentence, grabbing the sheet that lists everything that I just told them on their way out. I got a good look at Emily as she grabbed her bag and headed out of the classroom. I liked the way she moved and the way her tight jeans fit her hips, ass, and thighs. I quickly looked away as a brown-noser, a pimply junior male came to ask me a useless question, the point of which was merely to establish rapport with the TA in charge of his grade.
“Yes, Tuesday and Thursday. The sections follow the Monday and Wednesday lectures. But not Friday’s lecture. No, of course there is no section on Saturday. It’s all on the hand-out.” The brown-noser scurried out the door. I looked up hopefully but Emily was gone and the classroom was empty, except for me.

Blog going active

So, I've been pushed to post my novel, Camel7, rather than just "printing it out and paying shipping costs from cafepress .


Here goes: