Yaz geldi.

Summer has come.

Suddenly being without academic obligation is at once liberating and terrifying. It's terrifying because, yes, I can already begin to feel my brain atrophy like a broken leg in a cast. Come August, when that cast is split open to reveal the corpse-pale, decay-reeking skin, what of me then? Will Kemal hocam academically euthanize me? And, perhaps most importantly: who the hell will they get to replace that skank Nicole Richie on "The Simple Life?"

Earlier this week while I was cavorting about IU's rapidly emptying campus I stopped into one of my "safe bathrooms" in the Indiana University Memorial Union to drain the lizard and splash a bit of cool water onto my olive-oil-from-the-pores forehead. As I sidled up to the pristine, self-flushing urinal, I felt a presence to my right, and I assumed it was another gentleman who had need of releasing white-hot urea. In that way that you can't really describe, I felt his gaze settle and rest pregnantly on me, and I thought: shit - I'm getting cruised in the men's room again. I decided to look over to see what the eff this dude's damage was and I was met with a crooked smile. It was an international student, and not just any international student; I remember vividly a day when he kept me almost a half hour into my lunchbreak arguing with me about how he could approach getting a travel document for his wife to apply for a visa in Delhi. When I get angry, which (despite what I write in here) is quite infrequent, I become very cold inside, and this cold radiates from my torso to my extremities. He'd gotten me so pissed off that I couldn't even type because my fingers were locked in icy little claws. There he was, his hands on his junk, and there I was, my hands on my junk, and he

STARTED TO ASK ME IMMIGRATION QUESTIONS.

I was too astonished to even register what was going on. I was holding my petie right there, in a public restroom, and an international student was asking me how to submit effing bank statements to my office so that he could bring his woman to the states. When I came to my senses, I allowed the urinal to flush itself and I walked over to wash my hands before I spoke. I was firm with him: Never talk to me again while I am holding my male member. Also, yes, your department's financial guarantee will be sufficient. Also, don't ever talk to me again while I am holding my male member. Then I punched him in the neck and ran.

Last night I went out to my friend Mary-Kate's house for her self-styled "Vegan Mexican Extravaganza", replete as it was with faux-meat tacos and Key Lime pie that makes you regret every single day that you've not eaten it. After a sunset tour of the geode-encrusted shores of Lake Monroe (Bloomington's reservoir), we retreated to her Tibetan prayer flag-encrusted house, where a merry fire was picking up intensity in her yard. Soon, so very soon, that fire was to be getting more fuel. This is because, uh, we decided to burn our French books. You see, the four of us who were present had all been completely sodomized sans lubrication by the Dread Romance Tongue, and, in a rather pagan cleansing ritual, we rid ourselves completely of the evil.

Now, I know all of you are thinking "Gosh! Burning books? That's SO Third Reich!" Well, they weren't books in the strictest sense of the word. They were bound photocopy "books" that the IU Bookstore (Motto: We Have More Money Than Jesus) charges you a kidney for. I kept my two real books, of course, though the day I open them voluntarily is the day I stop eating babies. And, even if I had wanted to burn real books, I do wha' I wan', uh.

Today marked the last day of the Spring Semester of 2005, and, as expected, innumerable international students came to our aerie in Franklin Hall in various states of desperation. "I go home the Korea Sunday night!" and "I start working at my internship on Monday" and "I'm joining the Korean army - what I need to do now?" rang out merrily at the Front Desk, where, as a last mitzvah to me, Brooke stayed the whole of her last day to make sure I didn't kill again. By the time five PM rolled around, we'd stabbed--uh, helped-- no less than one hundred and fifty-two people, all in the span of six hours. The air was thick with pepper spray and the electric stench of ozone from the tasers. Bodies lay in putrid heaps in the lobby, and carrion raptors circled lazily in the cloudless Indiana sky. Yet, in all of the carnage, there was one moment of raw humanity... and it's not just my story, but the story of how an office like mine can actually make a difference in someone's life.

Yesterday, an international came to my desk with her friend. I've got a problem, she said slowly, as if it pained her. My sister is in intensive care in the UK and I have to go see her immediately. A quick glance in her passport confirmed my worst fears: she had neither a visa to visit the UK nor a valid US visa. I told her what she needed to do and whom to contact, and told her that our office was poised to help her in any way that we could. At five minutes to four, when our office closes, she and her friend as well as a man who was accompanying them come through the door. She's being almost entirely supported by her friend as if her body was rendered boneless. She was weeping uncontrollably and couldn't speak, and when her eyes met mine, I knew what had happened. Her sister had passed in the night, and the British Consulate in Chicago couldn't get her a visa until Monday. I'd never had someone crying at my desk before; sure, I'd cut a few unruly internationals, and they'd cried, but that wasn't out of anguish and grief. I took her and her people into a currently unoccupied office and sat them down and grabbed Jenny, who swooped in and made phone calls and made documents and... well, in general, made a situation that seemed utterly desperate into one where there was a faint glimmer of hope to hold on to. Rendy and I mobilized and got her transcripts from the (closed) Registrar's office, and as they left, they all began to weep while thanking us for helping them so much.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

I horse around about my job a lot in this 'blog, but, if you notice, I never mock it. This job may be infuriating and seemingly thankless sometimes, but there's always that one time when you can see the difference we make in people's lives magnified and on a scale that we'd never thought possible. I feel so fulfilled, so imbued with a sense of hope and raw humanity when people tell us how much our office means to them while they are here.

I came home and threw a skinned and disemboweld she-goat to Cuddles, one of the Underbed Clowns, which distracted him long enough for me to grab my Ouija board from his ravenous craw. As I lit a sandalwood (aka, ass-scented) candle and bit the head off a gravid nightengale, the dank of the crypt filled my mask-encrusted room as I summoned "Marvin", who decided to drink a fifth of Jim Beam and ride his snowmobile onto half-inch ice on a lake so deep that it took his rapidly cooling carcass three hours to settle on the bottom.

Me: So, "Marvin", what's it like to spend eternity strapped to a snowmobile in he sunless depths of a lake so deep that the lacustrine worms didn't find the bounteous feast that was you for three months?
"Marvin": L..o..n..e..l..y..W..i..l..l..y..o..u..b..e..m..y..f..r..i..e..n..d..?
Me: Not bloodly likely. I don't speak "motard" and I spend my day respirating, thankyouverymuch.
"Marvin": T..h..e..n..l..e..t..s..g..e..t..t..h..i..s..o..v..e..r..w..i..t..h
..y..o..u..m..o..n..s..t..e..r.
Me: Ooooh, tough words from someone who's last thought was "Maybe when I get back in my old lady will lay me." Well, I'll tell you something: that whore you schtupped at that truck stop two years ago? The one in the fishnets? Yeah, you gave your wife the clap, and she kisses your kids at night.
"Marvin": M..o..v..i..n..g..o..n..,..s..h..a..l..l..w..e..?
Me: So "Marvin", now that you possess the omniscience that only those in the Beyond can have, tell me: how do you know when you've found your calling?
"Marvin": W..h..e..n..y..o..u..r..v..e..s..t..i..g...a..l..t..a..i..l..w..a..g..s.
Me: But Marvin: mine wags all the damn time.
"Marvin": W..e..r..e..y..o..u..t..h..i..n..k..i..n..g..a..b..o..u..t..y..o..u..r..
f..u..t..u..r..e..i..n..t..h..i..s.. w..o..r..k..?
Me: Actually, mostly it's me thinking about how funny it would be to see your algae-covered skeleton mouldering at the bottom of the lake. But yeah, when I think about my future in this stuff, too.
"Marvin": S..i..t..a..n..d..s..p..i..n..y..o..u..a..s..s.

[gaily colored glove protrudes from under my bed; I surrended the Ouija and got a faint whiff of cotton candy and the high reek of offal]

I am surrendering on this, my last night as a second-year Master's degree student, to trashy movies, melon-hinted wine and my blankets. Helvacı kabağım - seni özledim.

I remain, as ever,

Dom