I made an incest joke at the John Dewey Society

Americans are priests in disguise, they warned

the independent scholar said France has a problem with muslims

her husband is evangelical, and so is she

I get mad, she doesn’t

the people treat me differently depending on the language

the hosts talk down to me if they think I’m a local

but they kiss my ass in English

the only local giving a talk is a mess

“I always tell my students I’m not a feminist”, she brags

and she doesn’t know what the German lady means by colonial legacy

in Portugal

they never let the Chinese guy talk

who came all the way to Evora

to talk for fifteen minutes

his talk was good

the rest was shit

I now despise John Dewey

after seeing what they do with him

I hate their guts, and their degrees of puke and piss

the business cards, the handshakes

German guy hands me a QR code of his CV

makes me wanna kill myself on the spot

keeps talking to me in tourist Portuguese, barely passing for Spanish

I reply in German

he doesn’t

he doesn’t shut up

he doesn’t get it

After the first day of the conference, I go back to the hostel

4 beers, two joints and a powerbank

I scan the code

German guy likes to travel

to discover new cultures

boy I bet

what else could he have written

pragmatic people can’t make friends

they hide behind a book or two

and only come out seldom

Chinese guy says it’s his second time in Europe

always Portugal

he’s stunned by how we pay to piss

I made an incest joke at the John Dewey Society and someone with a PhD laughed

lol

that’s all I came to do