Dust-up.

A while ago the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc was saying that I should do my one linguistic discovery lecture/celebration event again since he wasn’t here for when I did it the first time, only I had to tell him that it was a one-time thing where I didn’t have anything else of that magnitude like that that would work again for such an event.

Only, after my conference this year, I realized that part of my new research direction that I was premiering was not only pretty big, but would also make a sexy short lecture that would be accessible to the public, and that I could put it together a similar if somewhat smaller event without too much effort if I had a projector, since I could reuse and adapt PowerPoint slides and I already had the poster template made up for the last event and I’d just have to adapt that, too.

And, besides that, I’d heard from the local brewery where I had my event that some random people who had attended had been asking bartenders if I was ever going to do something like that again, because they had come to my event and really, really enjoyed it.

So, I told the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc that if he could check out a projector from the university so we could test-run the technology – I have access to the university libraries, but not to equipment like that – I would then set a date and put everything into motion.

And, he said that he would.

Then, like over a week later, he hasn’t done anything, and when we spontaneously meet for drinks when he happens to be out on a weeknight near where I live, he starts saying we should have a whole lecture series – good idea, but too late to plan it and I don’t want to coordinate that – and he also says that I don’t need to test the equipment, because the university tech center tests equipment before they lend it out, and I have to tell him that it’s about making sure that the equipment is appropriate for the space, and also that everything is compatible with the laptops and stuff we’re hooking in, since it’s a bad idea to schedule a huge event and just show up and put together technology you’ve never used before and that the whole event is dependent on.

And, he says he’ll do it on the Friday, but he forgets, and then Monday he doesn’t go into campus because he’s hung over, and by the end of that week he was already going out of town for Halloween, so I texted him to remind him again, and he starts debating with me by text again whether I need to test it out, so I tell him that we’re almost 2 weeks after he agreed and we’re repeating conversations and I’m this close to cancelling the event because I don’t feel like dealing with this, and he starts saying that I’m rigid and following a schedule that I have in my head and that I need to work with other people and trust them with technology and he knows technology, etc., and besides he was talking about a whole lecture series and not just me, and I told him that I was doing this for him, and he disagrees, and so finally I tell him this whole thing is just chaotic and stupid, and he refuses to get the technology, but then by Wednesday he texts me back if I still want the projector then or not, and I text him back no, the whole exchange left a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t feel like doing the event anymore.

I mean, give me a f*cking break, I ask someone to do one thing at the beginning of a process and they agree but then they don’t do it and I have to hound them and debate them multiple times over the course of several weeks and overall they’re just stretching things out so that all the major work gets dumped on me in a compressed timeline, I’m sorry, fuck that, I would do the event if I didn’t have to spend that much time or energy on it, and this is just sucking up time and energy into needless stupidity, and then it would put me in a needless crunch on the other end of things and maybe also hinder advertising so it’s a less successful event as well.

“How young is he?”, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker asked, when I told her about the drama (she’s met him).

And, “How young is he?”, my one (art school) colleague who wears (women’s) clothes also asked, when I told him about the drama (he’s also met him).

And, “Still young,” he replied, when I said around twenty-eight or so.