When Is a Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

cheerleader platitudes. From Tran Minh, international student: “To go higher, better, really kick the wall’s ass. That’s what I’m talking about.” Or Nathan Cook, BA candidate in political science: “Break out of those set rules of movement, the prepackaged, so-called reality of our surroundings. Reinvent.”
    The group also had a desire for fame. They filmed themselves obsessively, edited and synched the footage to hip hop and heavy metal, and then uploaded it onto their own YouTube channel. Nathan, ever the purist, tried to lend an instructional bent to the videos by adding voiceovers, but most clips were all bombast and rhythmic jump-cuts, testosterone with a soundtrack. Filming his fieldwork proved to be a headache, and Paul quickly abandoned it—participants were too eager to be in front of a camera, it became a fetish object instead of an unobtrusive means of documentation. That might have posed some interesting meta-ethnographic possibilities worth exploring—except, really, he just wanted to play.
    He spent the summer learning how to do proper rolls and tumbles on the grass, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. Parkour wasn’t meant to be competitive, but Paul found a friendly rival in Tran Minh. They competed at kong-vaulting picnic tables and ledges or muscling over walls, and taunted each other when a manoeuvre was bungled. But Tran also proved to be a willing teacher, perhaps revelling in the novelty of instructing someone much older than himself. By October, the physical enjoyment of becoming a competent traceur, of his own unexpected transformation into a faster, stronger, more limber man, far outweighed the pleasure of conducting interviews, writing up field notes, or instructing archaeology students. A fact that didn’t escape the notice of either Christine or Dr. Tamba.
    One evening after a long session with Tran and Xi, Paul went to the lounge where he often met and drank with a handful of instructors and grad students. He liked his department. They were mostly younger and, like him, still valued the academic life over family, children. Tamba was putting in a rare and unfortunate appearance and sat at the head of the table with Christine and the others gathered around him. In his late forties, smooth-shaven and blessed with Mediterranean skin that rendered him both exotic and ageless, Tamba was more charismatic than handsome. He never spoke loudly or with any real vigour, never intruded or forced himself on a conversation, but always caused a stir. The female students in the department, even Christine, cheerfully confessed to having a crush on him. He’d made his reputation at conferences lecturing on the participant-observer oxymoron and the ethics of conducting consumer, or mobile, ethnographies. In public he spoke with a self-deprecating tone noticeably absent when he met with Paul inside the confines of his office.
    Paul slipped into a chair at the far end of the table. He sported a fresh purpling bruise on his forehead and a scraped chin. Dr. Tamba stared deliberately at Paul’s wounds. He raised his glass—a clear alcohol, garnished with a sprig of mint and a lychee—and gave him a thin smirk. “I see you’re going native,” Tamba said and made it sound like a bit of martini-dry humour. The crowd chuckled. It was, in fact, an old saying among ethnographers, an accusation that Paul had lost his objectivity and gone beyond the acceptable limits of participant observation. Everyone heard and registered the undertone of contempt.
    When Paul had first suggested the project, the two men had had a lively discussion about the philosophical background of parkour, from Georges Hebert’s “Natural Method” to the dérive and Guy Debord’s “hurried drifting.” Tamba worried that parkour, in and of itself, was a difficult subject to take seriously. Still, with diligence, connections and parallels