…for the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM post-doc) who I know from around town:
1) On my way to his lecture, I’m in my new (synthetic fabric) (khaki) workpants that I had bought for work but never wore, and they’re super slick, and every time the busdriver hits the break, I slide halfway off my seat on the bus.
2) At the research center event, there’s some breakfast stuff left out on the coffee table for the earlier lectures from that morning, and they have these miniature bagels that almost look like dog treats.
In the lunch boxes, too, they have these strange small individual plastic bags filled with apple slices, and I hold them up to various (Brazilian) people who I know there and am like, “This is a metaphor for capitalism," and one comments that that product is "very American."
3) Since his lecture is about designing industrial systems for resilience and he keeps talking about pipes all the time, just going on and on all the time about pipes and the various parameters of pipes, I want to ask a question during the Q&A if it’s ever possible for pipes to be too big or too stiff, but I don’t.
4) When I skip out on the afternoon lectures to run an errand, I’m in the local library and then stop off at their restroom by the main entrance, and there’s dirty footprints coming out from a stall and leading to a trashcan by the restroom’s entrance, and the footprints are the heaviest there and and not where they began, and there’s no footprints leading into the room at all.
5) At a post-lecture social event, I become acquainted with a (gay) (male) (Brazilian) grad student who studies animal science and in particular industrial farming, and so I ask him his opinion on bestiality, which he does not really have, but he says growing up his cousins fucked sheep.
He also says that the quality of fast food is probably indeed growing worse and it’s not just everyone’s imaginations, since it’s likely corporations mixing in fillers and while they may lose some customers, they make more money overall, and that’s probably just what’s been happening.
6) At a bar that we go to after ) post-lecture social event, we start talking about hazing rituals for fraternities and sororities, and his (larger) (curly blond-haired) (female) (artist) friend says that one local sorority makes pledges strip down and sit on a dryer that’s running, and all of the sisters there pick up sharpies and surround the naked pledge and circle anything on her body that jiggles.
7) At that same bar, I learn that lime juice sitting on your skin can cause nasty sunburns, and so usually (Brazilians) pre-squeeze limes and bottle the juice if they’re going to be going to the beach and drinking caipirinhas (sp.?) there, since there’s less chance that way that you’ll accidentally get lime juice all over your hands and arms and body and whatnot like if you had squeezed the limes on-site.
8) At yet another bar after all of this, the one (nerdy) (worked out) (visiting STEM Ph.D. student) (Brazilian) shows me pictures on his phone of his boyfriend of 6 years who died in a car crash in his arms 11 months earlier, and he says that he decided to go ahead with his study abroad because he had decided that he needed to start living again, and suddenly I re-read all of our past handful of interactions and I realize that above his nerdiness and his less-than-ideal (English) much of his being occasionally out-of-touch with what’s happening around him is likely due to profound, profound trauma, and that my one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM post-doc) acquaintance had always been inviting him to things and always taking him out to things to get him out and among people, while at the same time not telling anyone of his tragedy so as to allow others to treat him normally and give him the ability to self-disclose or not what has been happening with him.
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