The Ablutions of a Swami
I was the new janitor at Pima Community College in Tucson. I worked during the daytime which was much easier than the night crew. One morning I was in the east wing of the English building. I stopped in front of office CC126. Taped to the door was a newspaper article: “Jefferson Carter will read from his new poetry chapbook ‘Gentling The Horses’, on Saturday, May 10th at 8:00 p.m. at The Reader’s Oasis.” The gold name plate on the door said Dr. Jefferson Carter. The article was written by a local female arts critic for the Tucson Citizen. Her praise drooled all over the page. Mr. Carter’s chapbook was a “must read for anyone even remotely serious about literature”. There was a photograph of the sufi-hatted bard cradling his book. A white guy, he looked to be about 50. “Well crafted,” the arts critic said. “A master.”
I entered his vacant office and emptied the trash. A secretary walked down the hall chewing her gum and eyeing me like a prison guard. The office staff didn’t like the janitors to linger in the offices. A week earlier, my coworker Albert was accused of stealing Jello from a history professor’s private refrigerator. They canned him.
Later that day I was in the south bathroom in the Roosevelt building because some future public relations director had used a whole roll of toilet paper to wipe his ass. When I turned to wring out the mop, someone was standing at the…
