The T-Rex of Shame
Everybody thought that he was strange and nobody liked him.
I imagined he was an alien from a distant galaxy.
He appeared out of nowhere when I started my second semester at Moscow State University. He materialized in our classroom one day, said his name was Alex, and sat at the desk right in front of the professor. At the department of Philology where I studied this space is traditionally left empty, because the front desk stands too close to the instructor’s desk, so if the student sits there, the lesson turns into a staring contest between the student and the professor. Moscow State, as one of the oldest universities in Russia, likes to imagine itself as a Russian Oxford of sorts which is mostly manifested in maintaining lots of social conventions and traditions that help uphold the hierarchy between professors and students. In the first year of studies one absorbs (most of the time subconsciously) the dos and don’ts of the interaction with professors, and the front desk rule is one of the first things to learn. In my time some professors were really sensitive about it. Alex seemed not to feel any discomfort, as he proceeded to stare at the professor the whole class long. He always got social conventions wrong.
The strangest thing about him was that at first sight he seemed almost normal, and until he started speaking, it was impossible to suspect anything particularly inadequate about him.
He was very tall and thin. He had gray eyes and black hair. He had scarce patches of soft fuzz growing on his pale spotty face. He always wore baggy pullovers and jeans of unidentifiable muddy color. He carried around a huge dirty backpack. Certainly, he was not handsome, but he looked like most male students at my Department, gentlemen who read too many books and spent too little time outdoors.
Yet the moment he would start speaking, it became clear that he was beyond strange. His remarks were always out of place. Even when he managed to get the topic of the conversation right, the very way he uttered his sentences was wrong: he made long unnecessary pauses and his intonation was incorrect. His speech was a mess of words and sounds hardly connected to each other. He stammered, stuttered, and stopped in the middle of his utterances. He rarely finished his sentences.
I used to joke that the alien agency which sent him to Earth greatly underestimated the importance of speech on this planet. They had provided him with a human appearance, but failed to equip him with an ability to speak properly. With all that, it was very difficult to understand how he managed to remain a student at the department of Philology, where the ability to speak smoothly and convincingly amounted to seventy-five per cent of one’s grade. The rumor was that he was either a nephew or a grandson of somebody at the department, but I preferred to think that it was his extraterrestrial connection.
The worst thing was that he made us feel uneasy and embarrassed. Everybody felt stupid when he said stupid things to the professors. Everybody felt ashamed when in the middle of a class he would start eating carrots which he took one by one out of his battered backpack. (Eating in class was considered absolutely inappropriate at Moscow State.) Professors were scandalized but none of them said anything, because they too felt ashamed. He seemed not to feel anything at all.
Even worse than feeling ashamed for oneself is feeling embarrassed for somebody else. I remember clearly that disgusting feeling of discomfort that settled in my stomach when he would speak during classes. He would raise his hand and say something like “Err … d-d-do you … think… the importance of religious education… was…underestimated in …the …USSR?” during the seminar on Shakespeare or Coleridge. My face would grow hot and tips of fingers cold. It was unbearable.
It was the time in Russia when Asperger’s and even autism were still largely unknown concepts. Instead we pretended not to notice anything that crossed the boundaries of normal. Like everybody else, I tried to avoid Alex.
At the same time, I was bewildered by his existence, by his acute alienness. So, because I was such a people-pleaser, I felt bad that we avoided him and sometimes tried to be friendly. As a result, he noticed me and started attempting conversations once in a while. For that my people-pleasing nature just wasn’t enough — I felt so ashamed of his awkwardness, that I fled, embarrassed and uneasy every time he would approach me.
My most painful memory related to Alex dates back to my fourth year at University. It was the eighth of March, an International Women’s day, the day of traditional bestowal of flowers and useless gifts upon the female population of the ex-Soviet states. By the time Alex appeared in the hallway, I was already blessed with a drooped tulip and a bar of milk chocolate with a lavender-colored cow on its wrapper. “Look, your alien friend is coming,” giggled one of my girlfriends. I slid down against the wall with a groan and closed my eyes in exasperation. When I opened them, there was a blue, green, and orange plastic dinosaur toy pushed into my face. “Here,” croaked Alex, “congratulations?” He often intoned his statements as questions.
I took the toy and probably mumbled something like “Thanks. I think it’s time for class.” But I don’t remember what I said, because all I can remember is the burning sensation in my cheeks. Alex towered over me for a little more, then turned and proceeded to give some dinosaur toys to several other girls he distinguished from the rest of the student body.
“Now, that’s what I call a thoughtful present,” laughed one of my girlfriends, “it makes you think: ‘what the hell?’” I shoved the dinosaur into my backpack and said, “I will throw that ugly thing away.” My cheeks burned.
***
Alex died less than a year after that. The way we learned about his death was also embarrassing. We had a department meeting for students in their final year during which professors discussed our graduating prospects. Professors talked about us in the third person, and we were not expected to say anything. Right before the meeting started one of the girls said that Alex died. His body was found on the roadside a couple of weeks before. His skull was cracked open, but it was not clear what exactly happened to him. We suddenly realized that he was missing in classes for a while and became even more embarrassed because no one noticed.
But that was not all. At a certain point during the meeting one of the professors asked, “Does anyone know if Alex will try to graduate this year?” to which another professor replied, “I don’t think that it is possible unless he writes his thesis on carrots.” Another professor added, “Can I go on sabbatical the semester he is going to defend? I am not sure I can handle it.” And all of them laughed. We kept exchanging glances, because we were not supposed to speak up, but the longer they talked, the more unbearable our shame was. Finally, the girl who told us about Alex’s death spoke up. She said, “He died two weeks ago.”
The professors went silent. They looked very embarrassed. The chair asked disconcerted, “Why didn’t you say anything? And we sit here and joke…” and there was more silence. Then, the chair said, “Well, let’s discuss the project of student …” and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Now we could pretend that nothing happened, although the relief we just felt would make us feel even more ashamed.
I never found the heart to throw away the dinosaur he gave me. It is an exceptionally ugly T-Rex made of rough rubbery plastic. It consists of two parts: the half with the head and tiny front paws and the half with the thick tail and huge hind legs. It was probably considered by its makers as one of those ‘natural-looking’ ones, so the small T-Rex looks naturally terrifying. It is also empty inside. The only way this toy makes sense to me is as a cocoon discarded by a beautiful creature.
I keep the ugly T-Rex in a box which holds the ephemera of my undergraduate years. Sometimes, when I go through my meaningless possessions, I come across the ugly T-Rex and I am ashamed. To offset the feeling, I tell myself that Alex’s mission on our planet was over, and that’s why he left the clumsy body he no longer needed and got back to his world where speech was unnecessary and nobody felt awkward or embarrassed, but it rarely works.
Katya Kulik is a PhD candidate in the Program for Writers at UIC. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in ‘So to Speak’ Literary Journal, “The EEEL”, “Embodied Effigies”, CutBank Literary Magazine, Jet Fuel Review, and elsewhere. She is 2014 winner of Montana Prize in Nonfiction.