Even though I am on my way out of Romulus University, I still come to my office almost every day. While most of my fellow faculty vanish shortly after the spring graduation ceremony, I like to hang around. I have mentioned before that I am essentially squatting. I don’t feel the need to leave yet, and my 12-month contract states I can still office-and-chill until it expires.   

It is this last part that I think has some members of the administration on edge. I don’t understand why. They need not worry. I intend to leave before any expected deadline. Are they expecting me to hunker down in my office in preparation for a Waco-style standoff? If they are planning to play the sounds of dying rabbits, it won’t really bother me. I hear worse when I tell my students that they are about to take a pop quiz.

I know my office occupation is of concern to at least one person, the provost, whom my wife wittingly identified as a dentist. Truth of the matter is that they do look like a dentist and are just as awkward. Ever since I first arrived on campus, I could tell there was something a little off about them. It happened during new faculty orientation when they would softly chuckle at their own jokes. It would be one thing if they did it once or twice, but this was happening at least every two minutes.

Hokey comedy aside, they can’t even carry on a regular conversation. Before a curriculum meeting, my department chair asked a question that the provost’s biology background could answer, and the response they got had more verbal filler than an early-1990s grunge song. I am starting to wonder if they can’t do anything that doesn’t have a script attached because even small talk in passing is awkward. In the past year, they have said five words to me, and two of them were “um” and “ahem.”

I was working in my office the other week, and they asked the staff if I had moved out yet. They did not come to my office, which is right down the hall. They could have knocked or even looked in, as my door is usually open. After I discovered that they were kinda looking for me, I was trying to imagine what our conversation was going to be like. Were they going to evict me on the spot, or would it be like the situation between The Dude and his landlord in The Big Lebowski? I can’t imagine that, in any timeline, they would actually try to force me out of my office. If not, could that mean that I could stay in my office forever? If I didn’t have a gig lined up already, I might.

What bothers me most is the fact that they won’t talk to me. I do not incline to seek them out. They are busy people. I am sitting here writing (or shitposting, as the kids say) about my experiences at Romulus and Remus. I hope they are not scared of me. I am hardly intimidating. I am just a dude, and the dude abides.