Most academic disciplines with “History” or “Studies” in the title coalesce into their own cliques, an incestuous but understandable dynamic. Everybody is a colleague in the abstract, but wouldn’t you rather hang out with classmates you already know than near-strangers you encounter in the departmental offices? Your classmates share your field of study, your language fluencies, maybe even your ethnic or national background. So the Latin Americanists — Latin American History and Latin American Studies grads — are a clique, and the Western and Eastern Europeanists are cliques, and blah blah blah, until you wind up with the Balkans instead of the melting pot.

Like any clique-driven world, there’s a social hierarchy at UCLA, in this case defined by academics vs. socializing. For example, my clique is renowned for being social animals extraordinaire. Did somebody say party? The Latin Americanists are there! We drop everything for a good time, and enjoy vices like smoking and drinking, and kiss each other on the cheeks even when we’re fighting. But you don’t want us representing UCLA at the Knowledge Bowl. The academic extreme belongs to the East Asianists, who never leave the library because they’re either good Asian students or non-Asians trying to learn a bitch of a language like Chinese or Japanese. The best collection of brainiacs in the program, but no social lives. None. Empty set. Zilch-a-mundo.

The Americanists fall somewhere in the middle. If it wasn’t for a couple brilliant Canadians pulling them out of the academic doldrums, they wouldn’t even be able to look down on us Latin Americanists. Socially they get together once a week, which is good, but for some type of sporting event, which is bad. During football season it’s Monday Night Football. Not my thing — and not really my crowd — but I’m suffering from a bad case of Phoebe withdrawal, and any company sounds better than none.

I find the Americanists shoehorned into Grant’s campus apartment, a couple stories up in the hazy and cold southern California night. The hardcore fans crowd the TV, beers in hand, mesmerized by a sport that manages to move faster than baseball but not much. The rest are packed onto a couch or flopped on throw pillows on the carpet. The sickly-sweet odor of weed is suffocating. Every upturned face is white. For a moment I feel like I’m back in Iowa again.

“Hey, look who’s here — Graduate School Ken. He’s neurotic, he’s balding, and he has no accessories whatsoever!” This is what passes for a witty greeting from Pete, a fireplug of an antebellum historian. His wedding band links him to an obese wife and whiny kids in married student housing. No wonder he never misses a Monday night shindig. He presses a Heineken into my stomach and announces “The Steelers scored 35 points in the first half!” Like I care.

I circle the room, knocking some fists, giving some hugs. Then I drop to the floor between Mary-Beth and Wil, spelled with one L since it’s short for Wilson. Their corner of the cramped apartment is embroiled in a bitchfest about funding — or lack thereof. The Americanists subsidize the rest of us. Very few receive funding or TAships, which means they have to pay their own way, taking out student loans or dipping into trust funds. Looking around the room I can see dollar amounts floating over their heads. Grant got a TAship during his first year but nothing since, so he’s probably $30,000 in debt by now. Mary-Beth and Wil are both fourth-year grads paying their own way, so they’re probably $70K or $80K underwater by now. Pete is on the 10-year plan to complete his Ph.D., by which time he’ll have more debt than Argentina.

I’m secretly chastened. They would kill with their bare hands for my $12,000 research grant.

The other burning topic is the UC Regents’ decision to jack up the cost of student health insurance. Adjectives like “corporatist” and “redistributive” are tossed around with vitriol. There’s also noise about emigrating to a kinder gentler country with national health care, such as Canada. Christine and Micheil, the two Canadians in the program, exchange an eye-rolling look.

Suddenly Mary-Beth tries to put me on the spot. She kicks me with an unshaven earth-mother leg. “What do you think of the higher premiums for health insurance, Nick?”

“I think I’ll plan on staying healthy,” I say. Then I swig my beer to prevent further conversation on the topic. God I hate Heineken.

Eventually the night wears down. The game ends, the last joint is smoked, the conversations devolve into shoptalk. An outbreak of watch-checking sweeps the room. It’s almost tomorrow. People say their goodbyes, filtering down the stairs and into the midnight glare of Hilgard Avenue.

I linger like I usually don’t, sitting in a lazy circle with Pete the fireplug and Janna, an M.A. student who didn’t have the grades to get into the Ph.D. program. Protracted smalltalk about music, the weather, etcetera is just an excuse to size her up. She’s a laid-back girl with dirty blond pigtails and a pinched but still pretty face. Her body is a zaftig threat to the seams of her long-sleeved t-shirt and pink jeans. We’ve been heavy petting with our stares, trying to figure out whether we want to make the effort of hooking up. A couple beers ago it seemed like a forgone conclusion. Now she’s probably too high and I’m probably too tired. We table the decision while I escort her back to her apartment — a brief trip to the elevator, three floors up, and a dozen doors down on the right.

Janna turns her key in the lock and the door swings open into blackness. “Do you want to come in?” she asks. Almost wearily. Her eyes are rimmed with angry blood vessels.

My libido is nowhere to be found, so I find myself hugging her big-brother style. “Another time. I’ve got a long drive back to Koreatown.” It’s the right decision. I feel instant relief, and she probably does too. Why make tomorrow’s hangover even worse with bad breath, awkward naked conversation, and flashbacks to fumbling half-hearted sex?

Riding down the elevator my cellphone rings. I wave its silver clamshell around, trying to catch a signal stronger than a single bar, but there are none. The call is lost. Phoebe, no doubt. Another earful of breakup misery. Or maybe…

I find myself thinking back to Nooshin, the skyscraper-tall Persian girl with the crooked eye and unhappy marriage. I feel a surge of irrational hope that it’s her. I’m not really sure why. Same as I’m not really sure why I introduced myself on Avenida Revolucion, and shuttled her back to San Diego, and gave her my business card. I guess there’s just something about her. Something that got under my skin.