The day I turned into David Foster Wallace

Well, I know it's kind of superficial, his talent I had not, but the looks I had. It was eery. Woke up wearing a bandana. A pirate bandana and a ponytail. Woke up sporting a two days old beard, and a much older smile. This is the smile of a very old soul, my mate said to me over breakfast. I said it's David Foster Wallace's smile, don't you see it, and he said oh yes I see it now. He said it's melancholy, kind of. I said it probably is and I turned my back on him, reaching for the cereal box. We didn't say anything else because there was nothing else to say. 

I didn't  shave, I put some glasses on, which were not mine, whose origins weren't clear. I thought I must be some kind of temporary reincarnation and I was playing along with it. I was cool with it. So I left for the university.

At the faculty I wasn't a student anymore, everybody was saying hi to me, smiling and saying hi and then saying Mr. I had an office with my name on it, written on a piece of rectangle. On the desk there was lying a pile of copies to grade. The wind was hurling from an open window and I knew I was late for class. I was feeling a mixture of anxiety and detachment. Everything was in it's right place, kind of, it's just that I was looking for that place. 

In a bathroom mirror I saw that I was much taller than before. My whole constitution was different, my complexion, my teeth. My hands were much hairier. There was a blot of ink on my left thumb. I 'd never been a lefty.

When I got to the auditorium, everybody was there, waiting for me. There were at least a hundred students and some of them looked very young. I took place at the podium, in front of a black microphone and opened my suitcase. The lecture went well. I talked to them about tennis and war. I explored briefly the dialectical relation between the domestic and the politic. I ran my hand over my face a couple of times, put off my glasses to read. In the front row there was a small young man who kind of looked like me. His hair was real short and I could see my face in his. I couldn't stop staring at him. And as I should have known, at the end of the lecture he threw his hand up and I said yes and he said are you really David Foster Wallace, and I said no. I said no, I'm sorry, I'm not. And then there was silence.