Tenure Track (32 page)

Gus indulged his younger brother’s enthusiasm for a few moments, then turned down the music and redirected the conversation towards the evening’s drinking plans. Apparently alcohol consumption had to be as well planned as the path to musical venues. Lewis realized that he and Gus were the only members of the group over 21, although apparently all of the younger members had very good fake I.D.s. Julie was the designated driver, because she lived in fear of hurting her naval career with an alcohol arrest. She used her fake I.D. just to get into over-21 clubs with her friends, but never bought her own liquor in a public place.

“
Well, I plan to get totally shitfaced, so it’s a good thing my girl’ll be drivin’ us home,” Gus announced.

Gabe piped up, “Yeah, me too!”

Big brother quickly shut him down. “Oh no you ain’t! If you get into trouble tonight I’ll be beatin’ your butt all the way back to Nana’s house, and she’ll give you a second beatin’. Understand?”

Silence from the passenger’s side.

Louder, as if ordering a new boot camp recruit, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“
Yessir,” Gabe muttered with little enthusiasm.

Lewis thought it was too bad that Gus had been injured, as he would have made an excellent drill sergeant.
It must be something ingrained in eldest brothers.

“
What ‘bout you girls?” Gus asked, glancing into the rearview mirror, as if Lewis shared a gender with Blanca and Mandy.

“
You know I always hold my liquor,” Blanca declared haughtily.

“
Hey Blanc’,” Gus said, getting her attention.

“
Yeah?”

“
Hold this,” he said plainly, holding up a middle finger, which she returned right back at him amid laughter from the rest of the car’s occupants.

“
What ‘bout you, Man’?” Gabe asked eagerly, turning toward the backseat.

“
Sorry, Gabe, I’ve had my fill of hangovers for the week,” Mandy replied.

Gabe informed Lewis that they had celebrated Mandy’s 20
^th
birthday two days earlier, to which the professor offered a belated “happy birthday.” Realizing that she had probably texted him about the wristband during her birthday celebration, he wondered whether alcohol had influenced her request.

Gus piped up, “Yeah, well what she won’t say is that it only takes one shot of tequila to get her wasted.”

“’
Not my drink, Gus,” Mandy piped up. “I’m a vodka gal.”

“
Good thing you wasn’t in the Corps. Even the BAMs gotta hold their booze.”

“
Yeah, I’ll remember that the next time I’m tempted to enlist,” Mandy cracked, causing Lewis to chuckle. Then he leaned behind Blanca and whispered, “BAM?”

“
Gus!” Mandy called, busting the professor on his lack of knowledge about jarhead lingo. “Lewis wants to know what a BAM is.”

“
Broad-Assed Marine!” the driver shouted joyfully, to which the three girls all shouted in unison, “Ooh-Rah!” All four of the roommates burst into laughter, clearly in on some private joke.

Lewis saw Gabe shake his head. “Man, you guys’re crazy.” The professor said nothing for fear of seeming even more out of touch than he already was.

All the way downtown the younger people continued to kid one other with various insults and commentary. At one point they started a contest to see who could come up with the best name for a punk rock band. The students’ suggestions progressed in creativity and offensiveness.

“
Bad Sushi.”

“
That would be a Japanese punk band.”

“
Ugly White House Daughters.”

“
Lynching Treehouse.”

“
Buttfuckers for Jesus.”

“
Ooh, good one!”

“
Burning Sphincters!” Mandy shouted out, much to Lewis’s dismay.

“
What’s a spinkter?” Gabe asked innocently.

“
Asshole!” Gus and Blanca shouted out, almost in unison.

“
Hey, I’m jus’ askin’!” the younger brother defended.

Julie, taking pity on her seatmate, whispered, “Your sphincter
is
your asshole.”

“
Oh . . . No kiddin’?”

Gus chimed in, as any big brother would, “Aw, Jules, whydya tell him? We coulda had ‘em goin’ all night!”

“
Sorry. My bad!”

Lewis had often overheard undergraduate conversations similar to this one. Such focus on pop culture, crude language and drinking generally seemed inane to him, but listening to this group, he recognized the wit and intelligence behind even their insults. When Gabe finally forced him into the game, Lewis tried to think of something that might be offensive, yet could hold underlying significance. Harkening back to a series of tasteless jokes he recalled from adolescence, he suggested, “Uh, Dead Babies?”

“
Not bad,” Julie said. “But too plain.”

Mandy piped up, “How about Trashcan Fetuses?”

Shouts of approval went up as the contest continued until, just as Gus predicted, they snagged a handicapped parking spot right in the middle of the entertainment district. The pack began their journey by meeting Gabe’s bandmates in front of a club where a punk band was playing very loud, incoherent lyrics. They joked about which of their made up, tasteless names would best fit this group. “You like this?” Blanca asked Lewis, who seemed to be listening carefully, trying to decipher the lyrics.

“
It’s interesting.” Forgetting himself, he switched into scholarly mode. “I once read an article on the rhetoric of punk. It was very enlightening. The lyrics and style have much deeper political meanings than we often give them credit for.”

Gus piped up, grabbing Lewis by the shoulder. “Really? That’s cool, Dude, but it sounds like shit to me. Come on, let’s get some real music.”

Mandy rolled her eyes at Lewis and grabbed his other arm as they followed their leader to their next designated stop, a jazz club featuring a piano-drum-bass trio. Their route would progress to an R&B cover band, then the Toob Sucks, and finally, a heavy metal group to help them wake up just as the bars stop serving alcohol.

Lewis realized how much it paid to be traveling with Gus. Besides actually being able to get a parking spot, it was also easier to snag a table in the crowded clubs. Patrons who usually ignored such things often gave up their seats to the scarred vet with the imposing prosthetic leg. Occasionally when they passed service members from the nearby Army base the soldiers would give Gus a knowing nod.

By the time they were halfway through the R&B band’s last set, Gus had imbibed enough alcohol to share a few details of his service experience with Lewis. He had joined the Corps right after graduating high school—June, 2001. Gus made it a point of pride that he was already in service before the terrorist attacks that changed his country’s trajectory. “I wasn’t one of them pussy flag-wavers who only found their mojo after 9-11,” he proudly declared. “I’m a true patriot. I’d give my right nut for my country. . . . Oops! I already did!” He banged the table loudly while laughing at his own well-worn joke.

As the evening wore on, Lewis realized that Gus rather enjoyed using his disability to make people uncomfortable and draw attention to himself. The young man carried a small video camera with him wherever they went. At first, Lewis assumed it was to take videos of the group or some of the bands, but the budding filmmaker seemed to be focusing it mainly on random strangers, often very subtly. Mandy explained that it was part of a short documentary he was making about how able-bodied people view those with disabilities, looking up from the perspective of the disabled person.

Gus explained to Lewis that he was taking some community college classes, but admitted that school was not really his top priority. He wanted to become the next Robert Rodriguez—writing, directing and producing films his own way. He was currently interning at a local television station as a technical assistant and often worked as an extra on locally produced films. He was particularly popular in educational movies about 19
^th
century wars, but relished his recent big break, playing a zombie in Rodriguez’s latest horror homage. “I been dozens of dead or wounded Mexican soldiers,” Gus bragged. “I even get paid extra if I show my stump. Rodriguez loved me ‘cause I was able to play this zombie hoppin’ around on one leg, with this bloody stump hangin’ down ‘cause it got chewed off by another zombie. It was wicked! He said he might use me again in his next
Mariachi
movie.”

“
Maybe you can be the evil Mexican drug dealer’s hood who gets his leg blown off,” Blanca suggested.

Lewis was aghast by the thought. Two gin and tonics combined with the beer from earlier loosened his tongue. “Doesn’t that make you feel exploited?” he asked.

“
Exploited? Oh, hell, no!” the Marine replied, himself getting pretty loose after two more Boilermakers. “I figure, I got a commodity and if people want to pay me for it, I’ll take that.” He slapped his artificial leg for emphasis. “This is just like J.Lo’s ass. ‘Makes me unique. Like this great profile.” He turned the unscarred portion of his face towards Lewis. “John Barrymore ain’t got nothin’ on me.”

“
John Barrymore?” the professor responded.

“
Yeah, Drew’s granddaddy,” Gus explained. “Silent film star. They called him ‘the Great Profile” ‘cause he looked so good from the side. His directors, they took a lotta shots of him from the side, to highlight the profile. ‘Dude did look pretty good.”

Lewis found himself surprised that the young man would know so much about silent movies. He hated to admit that his own knowledge of films was limited mainly to movies that had been released since his teen years and westerns he reviewed for his research. “I see you know your film history,” he said, making sure the comment came out as flattering as it was intended to be.

“
There’s nothin’ this guy doesn’t know about movies,” Mandy explained of her friend. “I think he’s seen every one ever made.”

“
Well, almost,” Gus clarified. “Yah see, my cousin Ritchie, he got this gig workin’ at a video store when I was a kid. Let us see all the movies we wanted for free. Then, he gave me a job after school, doing the shit work that he didn’t like, like sweepin’ up, cleanin’ toilets and shit. Everyday, I’d go in, do my stuff, then watch any flick I wanted in the back office. Everyday, a new movie. How wicked is that? Later, when I got old enough to get a real job, Ritchie was the assistant manager, so he got me a job in the store. Then I got a weekend gig workin’ at a movie theater. Man, I saw every freakin’ movie I could. It was righteous! KnowwhatImsayin?”

“
And he remembers everything about ‘em, too” Mandy said. “Ask him anything about any movie, he knows it, ‘specially old or weird stuff that most of us have never heard of!”

“
That’s right,” Gus replied. “Dude, you gotta study the masters to make great stuff. I love the old black and whites. Great visual style, the way they worked with shadows and light. KnowwhatImsayin’? Especially those old Germans! Makes ya sad color came along.”

“
Germans? You mean the Nazis,” Blanca chimed in.

Gus bristled. “Oh, don’t you get started again. Most of those guys left after Hitler took over.”

“
What about Leni?” Mandy retorted. Lewis vaguely recognized the reference to Leni Riefenstahl, a talented filmmaker vilified after World War II for having made Nazi propaganda films.

“
Leni was brilliant,” Gus defended. “In
Olympia,
the way she set up some of those shots. Outrageous! Sure, she slept with Hitler, but hey, if you wanna to get the job, sometimes you gotta do things. KnowwhatImsayin’?”

“
Oh, so you mean you’d sleep with Hitler to get a job?” Julie inquired with a raised eyebrow.

Mulling it over, Gus mused, “Well, maybe just a handjob.”

Everyone at the table laughed except for Blanca, who asked, “Professor, you do American history. Whatcha thinka
Birth of a Nation
?”

He heard a collective groan from the revelers, who had been through this discussion many times before. As the faces at the table stared him down for a response, Lewis decided it would be prudent to just admit his ignorance. “Well, to be honest, although I’m familiar with its themes and the controversy surrounding it, I’ve never actually seen the film.”

“
What?” Gus shouted. “Oh, we gotta have a movie night! Dude needs some education!”

“
Ech! Leave me out,” Blanca declared. “I’m not watchin’ that Klan-lovin’ white trash again.”

“
Oh, you should come,” Mandy interjected. “So Lewis can watch you and Gus go at it over ‘artistic merit’ versus ‘offensive content.’”

The professor had to admit that listening to Gus and Blanca passionately debate a controversial movie would be much more interesting than listening to a similar theoretical classroom discussion. Before he could commit to witnessing such a fight, the conversation veered to Gus’s experiences at the film portion of the festival the previous week. Gus regaled them with analyses until Julie tired of the conversation and pulled him away to the dance floor. Ignoring the stares from other dancers, the vet swayed and moved his upper body in joyous rhythm with the music. “Gus is an interesting guy,” Lewis mused to the women left at the table.