If “school” can equal “college” and “psycho” can not equal “bully”, then it’s time to hear the story of Paco.
It all started back in my creative writing class at LSU. It was halfway through the semester and halfway through this particular class session, when Paco walked in. He had unkempt long hair, an army jacket, and sandals, as I recall. I remember him being big - not fat, just big. Being a writing class, the desks were arranged in a big circle. Paco walked in mid-class and sat in the center, silent. We all looked at each other, unsure of what to do. Whoever was talking, after pausing and seeing nothing happen, nervously continued talking.
After a few moments the professor interrupted. “Excuse me,” he said to this new arrival. “Can I help you?”
“I’m in this class,” replied Paco.
“Oh. Well can you please take a seat in the circle and talk to me afterwards?”
Paco complied, and became one of my classmates. He brought a certain surreality to the sessions. He would go off on long, pointless tangents to the discussion. If he wanted to quote a bit from the story we were discussing, he would start several paragraphs before the quote and read the entire thing aloud until he either got to the part he wanted to or the professor asked him to jump there. It didn’t help that Paco’s voice was slow and quiet. When he returned copies of the stories to the author, they would be filled with bizarre doodles and comments.
Then we got to Paco’s story: “The Big Black Momma of LSU”. I can’t begin to describe it. The plot itself was odd, but not overly so. It was other details that really struck a chord. Like the fact that words seemed to be randomly capitalized (I actually looked to see if they spelled some kind of hidden message or something.) And the phrase, “hammy wrestler’s arms” was used time and again. In a way, it was strange, but less strange than we were expecting, which was something of a letdown.
The class ended without any further incident, but that wasn’t the end of Paco. Some time after that class I worked with a graduate student named Michael who was teaching creative writing. I mentioned Paco’s name to him and he had a story as well. It turns out Paco had done the same thing with his class - walked in halfway through without a word. Michael had told him that he was welcome to be in the class, but since he had already missed half of it, he couldn’t give him higher than a C in it. Paco said this was acceptable.
The semester went on in much the same way - long pointless comments, slow mumbly voice, oddball story. Then one evening Michael was out and about when he remembered something he left at his office. He decided to go back and get it. He opened the door to the hallway where his office was and was shocked. In front of his office door (which, unfortunately, was right next to the door he had just opened) was Paco. It was 11:00 p.m., but there was Paco. Waiting for him. Since the door was right there, Michael couldn’t exactly back away - Paco had seen him. So he nervously greeted him and asked if he could help him.
This was the end of the semester, and since there was no final in Creative Writing, they had gotten their final grades already. Paco wanted to know why he’d gotten a C. Michael calmly explained that they’d agreed this was the best he could do, and he’d barely gotten that, since he never revised anything. This seemed to satisfy him, and he left, much to Michael’s relief. Michael grabbed what he came for, and then waited a few minutes, just in case. Nothing happened. As he was locking up his office door, he happened to glance down at the floor and saw what Paco had done to entertain himself while he was waiting.
Across the hall was a box in front of another office with graded papers that a professor was returning to his class. Paco had gone through the stack and commented on them in his usual heavy black pen. He had written things like, “I think Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful example of a picaresque novel. Perhaps your professor is unaware of this.” Every paper had comments like this written on it. Michael hurried out of there.
The third chapter of the Paco story doesn’t involve me, but my friend Kurt. One day Kurt was waiting for the bus to pick him up on campus and bring him to our apartment (we were roommates at the time.) He looked over and saw someone he thought he recognized, but wasn’t sure. As soon as he figured out it was Paco, he whispered to himself, “Paco”. At that point Paco turned, saw him, and “recognized” him. You see, Kurt wasn’t in that class of mine, but his girlfriend Anna was, and he often sat in on it. Plus, Kurt looked a little like me at the time, so we think Paco confused him with me. He quoted a comment Kurt had made in that class back at him verbatim. At any rate, Paco began talking to him.
(Let me interrupt here for a moment. I showed a draft of this to Kurt who also pointed out another encounter. When Kurt was (jokingly) running for SGA president he was in many of the campus buildings late one night hanging up posters. He came across Paco in an empty classroom, talking out loud to nobody.)
He explained that when he was in the creative writing class he had been in his “Charles Manson/Jesus phase” but was beyond that now. (It took Kurt a bit to recognize him because he’d cut his hair and was wearing different types of clothes.)
When Kurt’s bus arrived, Paco got on it with him and continued the mostly one-sided conversation. At one point he talked about getting into a fight with his father. “Yeah, we got into a big fight and I guess we were really loud because the neighbors called the cops. So the cops showed up and I guess there’s some law that if there’s a certain amount of blood, someone has to go to jail.”
When Kurt’s stop came, he politely excused himself to no avail. Paco got off the bus with him. Kurt finally was able to ditch him by saying, “Hey, I’d invite you in, but my roommate is really weird and doesn’t like it when people he doesn’t know come over.” Paco replied with, “Oh hey that’s cool, I understand.” Kurt then took off in the opposite direction from our apartment and then doubled back behind the building. Paco waited at the bus stop, but it was the last bus of the day, so no bus would be coming.
That was the end of my Paco knowledge. A Google search on his name a few years ago turned up a police report from the LSU newspaper describing him as involved in a “fistic encounter” (a fistfight, I hope) on campus, but nothing more. Not until recently.
A strange coincidence now has Michael working with a friend of mine in Ohio. I told my friend to mention Paco, and he got Michael’s story out of that, along with the information that Paco is no longer with us - apparently he committed suicide. A not so humorous end to the tale, but a not unexpected one either.
Wherever you are, Paco, you made an impression. Perhaps not the one you wanted, but one nonetheless.