Graduation night is a paradox.
Until tonight, I am a high-achieving uni student pursuing a double degree while moonlighting in a call centre. I’m admirable.
After tonight, I’ll be a graduate with two degrees and nothing to show for it but a dead-end, entry-level job. I’ll be a failure.
Nobody ever says it to your face, but I already feel the judgement. Every time someone at the call centre half-jokingly(but half-not-jokingly) asks when I’ll be leaving for better things. Every time Sabrina suggests postgraduate studies. Every time my mother emails me a Seek ad with a message ofThis could be a good option for you, love? Xx
What was I thinking, doing a useless Arts/Business double degree, majoring in English and Marketing? I have no real-world skills. Who needs a grad who can write essays and marketing copy in an era when AI writes both?
Uni was a useful way of kicking big life decisions down the road. Any time I thoughtWhere is my life going?I’d tell myself,That’s a problem for Future Zeke.
Now I’m twenty-four. IamFuture Zeke.
Part of me likes the idea of burning out. No job, no home. Sméagol devolving into a horny Gollum. Would that be so bad? Nobody would like me, but it’s not like I have friends anyway. I could devote my life to sex – and if I die, I die. Plenty of worse ways to go.
Speaking of sex: despite me telling Jack I wasn’t free today, he messages me on Grindr.
In case ur schedule frees up – here’s my number bro.
I reply:Still busy tonight. Graduation. Hope we can play again soon. Ur hot AF!
Jack texts back:Graduation shmaduation. Come get ur hole pounded instead. :P
He adds an appealing array of eggplant and squirty cum emojis.
Suave bugger, I reply.
Burnout Zeke would love to skip his own graduation for cock. But my family will be there tonight. They made the trip from Geraldton to see the first Calogero boy to ever graduate uni. And they understand academia as much as they understand homosexuality.
Saint Lawrence, pray for me.
The Riverside Theatre is packed to the rafters: nervous students jiggling robed knees, duty-bound academics and roped-in loved ones stoically preparing for a three-hour snoozefest.
I’m in a velvety red seat five rows from the stage. I’m between Caoimhe Cafferkey and Xia Chen, neither of whose names I pronounce correctly and neither of whom I’ve ever met. In fact, I only recognise a handful of the grads around me. I didn’t really make friends at uni. I had some banter with classmates, but we fell out of touch once each semester ended. So, at my graduation night, I can only share nods and smiles with people whose faces I know but names I don’t remember. Four years and it’s like I was never here.
Xia’s mobile rings. She answers and turns around, scanning the crowd before waving and grinning. She speaks into her phone in what I assume is Mandarin, eyes shining.
I give her the warmest look I can, which I suspect looks like that meme of Rupert Grint doing the awkward half-smile to a co-worker he doesn’t know well enough to say hello to.
Caoimhe leans over me and touches Xia’s elbow. ‘Are they your parents?’
Xia nods. ‘And my cousins. They flew over from Guangzhou for this. We haven’t all been together since before the pandemic.’
‘That’s so special,’ Caoimhe coos. ‘Me mam came over, too.’
The two girls chat for a bit, leaning over me, until Caoimhe presumably feels impolite and asks, ‘And do you have someone special here, Calogero?’
She thinks my surname is my first name, and she pronounced it the Aussie way instead of the Italian way. I’m tempted to get back at her for being snarky at me for not knowing her name was pronouncedkwee-vah, but I never have the guts to be overtly rude.
‘Yeah, my folks are here somewhere,’ I say.
I peer into the crowd and spot them. My father is staring at the ceiling, mouth open gormlessly and a tired look setting like concrete on his deep-wrinkled, sun-cooked face. His shirt is untucked. My mother, by contrast, is in a full-blown conversation with the woman beside her, both holding out their programs like they’re comparing notes. They’re laughing like fast friends, but my mother’s jaw is pointed as it extends in an overly enthusiastic, lipstick-coated smile. I know for sure she will tell me later she hated something about the lady beside her.
Sabrina is out there somewhere, too, but before I can search for her, the lights dim. Grand music plays. A spotlight follows a regal woman in blue-and-yellow medieval-looking robes as she crosses the stage. She’s our MC, the pro-vice-deputy-chancellor or some shit. She introduces one of the uni’s Nyoongar Elders for a Welcome to Country, then a procession of professors heads up to the stage in ornate regalia ripped directly from the chic runways of the Middle Ages. My own regalia isn’t quite as overdone: just a peasanty black cape and mortarboard with a blue-and-white sash.
Graduation is boring. It takes ages. Nothing interesting happens.
Eventually, our row is called to line up and cross the stage.
