“Ah, come sit down, Carl.” Professor Carnegie spreads his arms out, places his left hand on my back, and guides me toward a chair across from him.
The coffee shop bustles around us. People maneuvering drinks to their seats, couples chatting idly, a business man speaking excitedly to a more important businessman. Professor Carnegie and I sit underneath a world atlas of oceanic topography. (Because the coffee shop is called the “Java Trench.” Do you get it? Don’t worry, it’s not funny anyway.)
Now Professor Carnegie crosses his hands on the table. Now he strokes his short-trimmed beard. Now he says, “Well, Mr. Fitz, I took a look over your paper.” He delivers his line matter-of-factly, perfectly emotionlessly. It could have been, “I took out the trash this morning,” it was that casual. Some people spend years in acting conservatories and can’t deliver a line like that.
This is the part where my heart starts pounding, in case you’re keeping a biometric log here, my heart’s pulling maybe 120 bpm at this point. He looks at me for a second, like a bull facing off against a matador.
I’m the matador here.
I’m waving my flag around, but beneath my delicately-mustachioed smile, all I can think is, “please don’t gore my nutsack, please, please, please.”
False citations happen all the time. Really. You wouldn’t believe how many people in the academic world do it, I swear (Clarke, 2006). So don’t even get started on that self-righteous shit about how academics have some kind of grand obligation to society. Lots of people take on an implicit societal obligation and subsequently fail to fulfill it (Madoff, 2007). Academics at least have good intentions [citation needed].
I didn’t really write any false citations, though.
I just made it up.
I made up the whole thing. I don’t know how IQ tests vary across generations in countries with little elementary schooling. I’ve never been to Mali.
And the Malian Ministry of Education couldn’t get me records on IQ testing, anyway, because those records don’t exist. So I invented them. Yes, as in the developed world, children without education are getting smarter than their parents every generation. With or without an elementary education.
Kids are just getting smarter. Don’t ask me why. I just compiled the IQ tests.
I had a grant to fulfill. You can’t blame me.
“Really, Mr. Fitz, I have to tell you.”
My pupils are definitely dilated now, my scalp is oozing out sweat, my palms are more slippery than an oil spill on black ice, so mark all this down in your biometric log.
”This is really excellent work. Very significant findings. We’ll have to put you on the fast track to publish!” He smiled and twisted his neck to crack it, then took a sip of his espresso.
Bulls don’t check their facts. They just charge at brightly-colored objects. That’s how you win bullfights.
The two businessmen shake hands and the more important one walks out of the coffee shop.
I wipe the sweat off my forehead.
I was eleven.
One morning, I was staring out our window at the giant yachts docking at Road Harbor.
My father said, “Did you know that this whole city burnt down? In the 1850s, some rioters set fire to everything because of some goat tax.”
“Or maybe it was a cow tax.” He looked out the window and scratched the back of his neck with his thumb. “Anyway, they burned it down because of some farm animals,” he said.
I wrote down the dreams I had there, for some reason. I would wake up and write down whatever I remembered. I only had four different dreams throughout the three weeks we spent on the island. They usually recurred in the same order.
On our taxi to the airport, I listed all the dreams. This is what it says in the journal:
I also remember that these flocks of sun-brunt white people would take over the streets for a few hours before they got back on their giant yachts and left the harbor.
