It was a long job and the machine was old, but he had a faith that came from his subconscious. Today was the day. He listened closely as the printer sputtered and coughed in a kind of mechanical throat clearing. From the machine’s gray slot, the first of his 1,532 pages slipped out. He was done being a cog. Now was the time for change. Alfonzo thrilled as he read his title arranged across the white page.

DISSERTATION

FROM ROAMING THE ALTIPLANO TO SUPPLYING THE GARMENT DISTRICT: A MOOKONIAN PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC REVERIE ON THE CAMELID DIASPORA OF THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN AREA

Submitted by Alfonzo Velloso Faca

Department of Pan-American Studies

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Mammalian Philosophy

Hunter College

New York, New York

4.

Because his father hadn’t been to college, let alone grad school, Alfonzo had a lot of anxiety and guilt. This difference between their experiences could curdle into resentment in the stomachs of both father and son. Luis sometimes called Alfonzo “Dr. Egg.” Alfonzo sometimes snorted when his father mispronounced things and squirmed when Luis loud-talked to waitresses. Alfonzo wished to prove his father’s way of life wrong but at the same time win his respect. He wanted to convince his whole family that intellectual work was work. And when it came to Hunter, Alfonzo wanted to show the fancier students he was quick enough to triumph in the perpetual fight of academia.

Alfonzo chafed at academic norms but still tried to behave right. The frisson of class resentment, the desire to understand and elucidate, kept him motivated for a long time. This clash of feeling had carried him through his formative years of fancy liberal arts undergrad and partway through his PhD. The scholarship to Hapshire had changed his life, and he was still struggling to realize the potential he supposedly had. It was at Hapshire that he’d met and fallen for Vivi, and there he’d been exposed to ideas and work that changed his brain chemistry, stomach flora, and sense of what was possible.

But this energy had dissipated. His mother had died after he completed his comps, and the old motivating anger turned to amorphous grief. Who was he mad at? The metaphorical father was the easy answer, but his real father had turned gray and frail. Alfonzo found he couldn’t stay furious with a widower alpaca whose wool hung around his body like a thin layer of melancholic smoke.

When he’d first accepted his job at City Hall, Alfonzo told himself that he was smarter than his grad school peers with their loans and free time. Though it would take longer to complete his degree, eventually he would emerge from his cocoon as a fluttering professor-monarch with understanding of both the public sector and academia. He was no slouch.