Fake Moustache

1.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. When it did, I’m just glad it was Jean Christophe and not someone else.

In the first months on the job, a newly initiated member of the brotherhood of the broom, beige coveralls still starchy and stiff, I was vigilant, jumpy, convinced that the dreaded encounter, the supremely awkward moment, was just around the next corner.

Making the rounds, I gripped the broom handle extra tight and kept one eye on the door as I mopped the floors. The pushcart, packed high with cleaning supplies, was never far off. For good reason: it served as my prop. If need be, I could hide behind it, crouch low, and rummage through the tray of knick-knacks in the bottom compartment. At least it would buy me time until I could figure out an escape route and plan my retreat to safety, which is to say the supply closet, where, door closed, I would wait until the storm abated, until the coast was clear.

After the pushcart, the beige coveralls were my second line of defense, my smoke screen. Perhaps the change in costume and scenery, the dramatic difference in context, would be enough. That is, perhaps the effect of defamiliarization would be great enough to bypass the recognition of a familiar face. A potential encounter, unsettling for all parties involved, could thus be averted. The dreaded conversation would be replaced by a mere double take. Besides, don’t we all have doppelgangers out there somewhere, parading around with our facial features and an utterly incongruent personality? Is it so hard to believe that you would mistake the janitor of a community center for a university professor, your former teacher or colleague? Couldn’t it all be chalked up to a strange coincidence?

I often wondered what I would do if my cover was blown, if my fake moustache loosened, coming unglued in the corners, causing it to fall to the floor in mid-sentence. Would I play dumb? Would I not respond to my name when called? Would I pretend that I don’t speak the language? Would I scurry off, red-faced, palms sweaty, hyperventilating, to the safety of the supply closet?

These concerns cast an ominous shadow over my first few months behind the broom. But one shift became two and then three. Then one week became two and then three. Before I knew it, I was over the spokes, wind in my hair, engines purring. With each passing month, I was less tense, less edgy. With each passing month, I glanced over my shoulder less. The fabric of my beige coveralls loosened and took the shape of my body. It felt natural, like I had always worn it. Occasionally, on my days off, I even felt strange without it. I imagined it waiting for me on the hook of my locker in the boiler room. Likewise, my Sketchers waterproof, steel-toed, slip-on work shoes moulded to my feet. For as stiff as they had once been, I could feel the ground beneath my feet and register the information that it was transmitting. I became responsive. Foreign at first, the building became a place. I listened to its breathing, labored during the rush, low and easy at night, a soft draft beneath the doors, the barely perceptible undulations of the hem of the shower curtains. The more I recognized its sounds, its hues, its moods, the more it confided in me and revealed its secrets. At the same time that I was growing into the job, the job was growing on me. Somewhere inside of me, a hidden wellspring, a sense of belonging was beginning to stir, a sense of artistry perhaps.

The months passed. The heavy banks of snow that encircled The Community Center retreated to the center of the lawns and then disbanded, breaking off into an archipelago of frozen islands of every imaginable geometric shape, which grew smaller and more misshapen with each passing week, until they were mere patches, threadbare, and eventually just gaping puddles of mud. The days grew longer and warmer; the mud dried; and green shoots appeared in the cracks of caked earth. Buds, tight little fists, studded the branches, leafless for so long. In time, the closed fists opened to reveal the most tender green. Trembling, it spread throughout the city like wildfire, like a new religion. The sun ceased to be the benevolent force that it is in winter and springtime and switched roles, from hero to villain, revealing its true colors, its fanaticism, its tyranny, its sadism. It dropped like an anvil on the city and its surfaces, limiting free passage. The air grew thick, cottony, and weighed down on the roofs on the houses and the buildings. On hot days, it was motionless, as if time had stopped, foreclosing the possibility of sleeping through the night without waking to sweated sheets. The insects gnawed at the edges of the days, testing of the nerves of all sentient creatures. What had once been young green grew tired, flaccid, haggard. The cicadas heeded their cue and came out of hiding to finish the job, to accelerate the fall, the Fall. Just as the snow had done, the heat receded to the center of the lawn and broke into pieces, shards. Channels of cool air started to stir and dislodge the heat, breaking its monotony, pushing it upwards and onwards. The breezes grew more vocal and joined forces, forming a chorus that shook the leaves dry until the first ones started to fall. The dark margins of the day inched towards the center, gaining ground, chipping away at the kernel of brightness, loosening its hold. The sidewalks filled up with leaves, face down or belly up, a kaleidoscope of rubber ducky yellow, jack-o-lantern orange, and firetruck red. The mornings started brittle, with a tiny layer of frost detaining the blades of grass in mid-scream. The first flakes of snow couldn’t be far off. 

As I watched these changes from the floor-to-ceiling windows of The Community Center, my anxiety lessened. I lowered my guard. I let my moustache grow.

2.

Thus seasoned, I began to dread The Inevitable less and less. So what? Who cares if a former student walks in through the double doors and sees me in my beige coveralls? Who cares if an ex-colleague, a professor at The Almost Ivy League University, finds me standing at attention at the side of my trusty mop bucket, an image that would confirm, once and for all, what they always suspected, what they always knew to be true, which is to say that I am indeed not one of them, that I was an infiltrator, a mole, who has been restored to his rightful place, his subordinate place, next to the mop bucket? What cares if this would ease their longstanding jealousy, assuage their anxiety over being an impostor, and satisfy a deeply seated yet unspoken desire for revenge? Who cares if they would be unable to suppress the grin forming at the corners of their mouths as they expressed sympathy over my contract not being renewed? Who cares if they would be unable to conceal their delight, a most sincere and spontaneous giddiness and indeed joy over the professional demise of a perceived rival?

Deep down, we would both know that, in my beige coveralls, I was not the only fake moustache in the room because the simple truth is that, academia being what it is, the academic job market being what it is, no one really deserves their job, at least not more than the legions of other equally qualified candidates who could do the job at least as competently, if not more. Yes, the simple truth is that, academic formalism being what it is, which is to say a race to check all the right boxes and add all the right lines to your CV, independent of the quality of the work, independent of the authenticity of the experience, to the point of falsification often, if need be, the simple truth, under such conditions, the definitive triumph of quantification over quality, form over content, the simple truth is that those who go the farthest, those who get the jobs, are often the least qualified, precisely because they have spent so much time obsessing over forms that they neglected content, which, in the end, is what determines our level of competence in our respective fields.

This is the paradox of the university as a neoliberal institution: those who excel at the production of knowledge because they dedicate their time and intellectual energies to content are disadvantaged in the academic job market and are particularly susceptible to losing their jobs to the pen pushers, the sycophants, and the handmaids of wealthy donors. Academia being what it is, nobody’s clothes fit them well. Fake moustaches all around, sometimes sticking to the skin, sometimes falling to the floor, nobody’s feet fill their boots.

What, then, do I have to hide? Perhaps, I was right to jump ship before it sinks beneath the waves. Perhaps, by pushing the broom around a few days a week, by turning the supply closet into my headquarters, my hideout, a safehouse for books, I am finally free, free to ditch the cumbersome and empty formalism and focus, at long last, on content, on my profession, on writing, on the production of knowledge. Cleaning clears the head and allows the well to fill up again so that, when I return to my writing desk, the ideas flows and I ink up the page, unencumbered, late into the night.

3.

If it was bound to happen sooner or later, I’m just glad that, when it did, it was Jean Christophe and not someone else.

The sun was low on the horizon, all daggers, and the reflection off the elevator in the foyer blinded me on my way up the stairs. I stopped in my tracks. My field of vision was temporarily cluttered by fuzzy geometric shapes, orange oblongs like UFO landings, purple cones whirling like dervishes. When it cleared up, like smoke after the magic trick, after a graceful stroke of the wand, there he was, Jean Christophe, standing before me, close enough to tango.

From the looks of it, I had startled him as every bit as much as he had startled me. Irreflexively, as if I had gut-punched it out of him, he pronounced my first name, all four syllables, as if it were a question. The word hung in the air between us, an uncomfortable presence, menacing even.

My first response was panic. I scanned the foyer for my trusty yellow and black Rubbermaid cleaning supply pushcart. It was nowhere to be found. There was nowhere to hide. I was caught red-handed or, more specifically, with a plunger in my hand, since I had just come up the stairwell from the basement where I had unclogged a john that, upon first glance, had appeared uncloggable.

Unable to respond, I watched as delicate beads of toilet water dropped from the black rubber stopper of the plunger onto the floor, just missing the side of my black Sketchers waterproof steel-toed slip-on work shoe.

I was thankful when Jean Christophe, gracious as always, broke the silence. “Long time, no see.”

I hadn’t returned to the office since the day, two semesters ago, that my contract ended, the day that I scurried down the hallway with a suitcase full of books and slid my key underneath the door of the main office of the department, the same office where Jean Christophe works, for many years now, as an administrator.

Jean Christophe looked me directly in the eyes. I had trouble meeting his gaze. “To be honest, I was a little worried about you after what happened.”

4.

Neither of us needed reminding. We both knew exactly what he was referring to. We both knew the unfortunate details of The Great Debacle.

The Almost Ivy League University had found itself in quite a bind, torn between its corporate donors and the student body, the former resolutely in favor of the war, the latter overwhelming against it.

It was no secret where the university’s allegiance lay. From the very start, they took a hard-line approach, cracking down on protest, limiting free speech, and stigmatizing dissenters. The question was not whether or not to punish incompliance but, rather, how much repression was the right amount.

Following the lead from several actual Ivy League universities, students set up an encampment on campus to protest the university’s complicity with human rights violations, crimes against humanity, famine, and genocide. 

Despite spending extraordinary sums of money on its public image, rooted in an Old English aesthetic that evoked an ethos of equanimity, restraint, and decorum, the institution’s response was what could only be characterized as hysterical and histrionic. It rallied to the cause of its wealthy benefactors by hiring a private security force, encircling campus, setting up checkpoints, and engaging in surveillance against students and faculty, especially those targeted as potential critics. In short, it militarized the campus, the first move towards its endgame of bulldozing the encampment.

It was a context that was ripe for debacles, a landscape dotted with buried landmines and no map. Head held up, arms jammed deep into the front pockets of my overcoat, I walked nonchalantly towards the coming explosion.

I did The Unthinkable, what, from the perspective of the department, was unforgiveable, grounds for terminating my contract. I invited someone from the encampment to speak in my class.

My opposition to the war is unwavering. It should also be said, however, that it is also separate from my profession, or more accurately my ex-profession, which has its own needs that, properly understood, are the needs of the students.

My course was on political violence in Latin America in the 20^th century. In class, we were beginning a unit on the Tricontinental Conference of 1966 and the formation of the OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Not only did a sizeable delegation of representatives from Palestine participate in the conference, but the emblematic issue of what at the time was called Palestine Liberation figured large in the activities of the OSPAAAL. The encampment was a singular opportunity to make a distant topic closer to home for my students.

I did, however, have another reason for inviting a delegate from the encampment to my class, a reason that is more pedagogical than political. Contrary to The Almost Ivy League University’s policy of orchestrated avoidance and imposed silence, I found that my students had a need to talk about what was happening, both on campus and in the world outside its narrow confines. Once I opened the floodgates, there was an outpouring of concerns, all of which, in one way or another, were related to the central theme of the course. My job, as always, was to create a space for the needs of my students, a space to listen to them and address their concerns, a space for them to reach their own conclusions without imposing my point of view.

I left class that day knowing that I had tripped the wire. Detonation was imminent.

By the end of the week, central administration had sent a communiqué to the department denouncing “antisemitism” in its ranks and signalling incompliance with university policy. Eager to pacify the awakened beast, the department set up a committee to investigate “infractions.” I was the first and, to my knowledge, only member of the faculty to be interrogated by the committee. Upon request, I handed in my class notes, outlines, and PowerPoint for the class in which we discussed the encampment. Judgment was swift: within days the committee confirmed that my class content was indeed in flagrant violation of university policy, its state of exception, as established by a series of public declarations and internal emails in response to student protests over the university’s complicity in the war.

As a disciplinary measure, my teaching points were removed. Previously, they had been the highest of all non-tenure track faculty in the department. Lowly lecturers like myself were not employees but independent contractors, obligated to apply for their courses each semester to obtain what is informally referred to in the industry as a “hire and fire” contract that covers teaching hours but not holidays, vacations, class preparation, or grading. If I were to apply for classes the following semester, I would be at the very bottom of the pool of lecturers, erasing years of accrued hours and rendering me effectively unhireable.

5.

“I don’t believe you’ve met my daughter, Genevieve.” Jean Christophe gestured to a young human being at his side. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. When her father and I worked together, he had a photo of her on his desk. She was much smaller then. I had the sensation that I had been gone a long time, much longer than just two semesters. 

When I addressed her, Genevieve hid behind Jean Christophe’s leg. “I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s nice to finally met you in person.”

“We came to sign her up for swimming lessons,” Jean Christophe clarified, signalling over his shoulder to the front desk. “Yourself? Do you come here often? Where are you teaching now?”

I guess my beige coveralls were not a big enough clue. I looked down at the plunger. The drops from its nozzle had formed a puddle on the floor. It was the shape of South America. I squinted my eyes to see if I could make out the Rio de La Plata.

Now it was my turn: I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, wishing that I had a someone’s leg to hide behind.

“Teaching? Teaching, no.” Then I mumbled something about independent research, my voice trailing off before I could finish the sentence.

“I’ve always thought that your research is fascinating,” Jean Christophe said, humoring me.

Recognizing the moment for what it was, I decided to come out in the open. “You know I have been doing a lot of, though?” I raised my eyebrows towards the end of my rhetorical question. “Cleaning!” In lieu of an exclamation point, I used the plunger to punctuate my statement, lifting up by the handle to eye level. “Yep, you heard right. Straight from the horse’s mouth. On the fringe of the day, late into the night, you can find me here, armed to the teeth with squeegees, plungers, push brooms, mop buckets, you name it!”

I had emerged on the other side of awkwardness, feeling chipper, bushy-tailed, light-footed.

Jean Christophe furrowed his brow, pursed his eyes, and scratched his chin. “Hmmm,” he exclaimed, as if trying to solve a math equation, as if searching for the answer to an unformulated question.

It was time to put poor Jay See out of his misery. “You can sign up for the swimming classes over here,” I said, gesturing toward the reception desk, letting him off the proverbial hook, relinquishing him for the obligation to participate in conversation that had reached the threshold of awkwardness.

“Wait,” he gasped, clasping onto my forearm. “Your name came up in a meeting the other day. The lecturer for HIST301, a new hire, is going to adhere to the strike. Professor Bruzzone is the only faculty member who has taught the class, and he is in Argentina for his sabbatical. We’re looking for a replacement. Everyone knows that HIST301 was your class. The Chair even said so. It might be a good time to reach out to her…”

My mood changed as dramatically as the light in the foyer, the sun having fallen behind the treeline, withdrawing its rays from the elevator doors. The plunger felt like it was made of lead.

It had taken me months to come to terms with my situation. It was a delicate peace, a fragile truce, a small boat on big waves with storm clouds on the horizon. Jean Christophe’s words were the gusts of wind and heavy rain and raging whitecaps that threatened to capsize it. I felt seasick.

Genevieve pulled on her father’s arms. “Can we go, daddy?”

I walked with them across the foyer to the front desk.

At a loss, I tried to make light of the situation. “Well, now that my fake moustache has fallen off, you know where to find me. If the department needs everything, I’ll be right here behind the push broom…”  

Partially recovering the spring in my step, my buoyancy, I added, “now let’s get you signed up for those classes.”