Free Cold Rain by Craig Smith Page B

business.’
    While I waited for my order, I found myself reviewing my various conversations with Denise Conway. This was hardly the first time. In fact, less than a week into it, I discovered Denise Conway was becoming one of the most important people in my life.
    It seemed to me there were two distinct possibilities. The first involved a series of misunderstandings.
    Eager and insecure, Denise had sought me out as a familiar face. She wanted assurances that she could handle college. Having received those assurances, her insecurities began twisting legitimate praise into something sinister. The complaint she had filed supported this theory. She wasn’t quite sure what I had done wrong! Her only real problems with me she had expressed as evidence rather than a complaint.
    My second theory involved Buddy Elder. I much preferred this theory, because there was not much I was unwilling to credit to Mr Elder. In this theory Buddy manipulated Denise Conway into filing a complaint. Johnna Masterson’s complaint made more sense as well. Buddy had fed his fellow graduate student choice titbits of gossip and then coordinated a double-assault on the source of all evil, David Albo.
    Theory number two had only one tiny glitch. It wasn’t going to work. As a piece of sabotage the thing had no teeth. I put myself in Buddy Elder’s place.
    Johnna Masterson had been handled nicely. She had been stirred gently and brought to a simmer. At that point I was sure Buddy had introduced her to his girlfriend, letting the two of them compare notes. It was probably even Johnna Masterson’s idea to march on Affirmative Action.
    Denise, however, could have brought charges of real substance. Private conversations between the two of us could have taken any form. Why hadn’t I offered, in her complaint, an A in exchange for sexual favours?
    Pressure, manipulation, insinuation, all the elements that make up a genuine case of sexual harassment, just weren’t there!
    There was no intelligent explanation for this failure.
    Buddy knew his way around campus. He was hobnobbing with professors who had experienced the inner workings of Affirmative Action as few ever experience it. Why hadn’t he exploited his opportunity? There was no answer, and so I was led back to theory number one, a simple misunderstanding. I didn’t like it, but it was the only logical explanation for the charges.
     
    I WAS MILDLY SURPRISED to see Buddy in my class that night, actually amazed to see Johnna Masterson.
    Johnna had filed charges before our last class, but at the time I had not known that. I tried to remember how she had behaved, what looks she had given me, but it was impossible. The week before, I had not been under siege. I had been at work. I watched my students only to know if they were tuned in to the business at hand. This time, I hardly noticed anyone other than Johnna Masterson and Buddy Elder. Buddy made a great show of it. He quietly complimented both writers presenting their work that night. His observations were legitimate, though not particularly insightful. Johnna Masterson put on another sort of face. She had come to class because she did not want to let some pig ruin her academic year. Knowing I might have my revenge on her at my leisure and yet refusing to cower, she sat bravely before me with only a tremor in her voice to betray her.
    At the break, I saw her talking animatedly with Buddy. Buddy was consoling her. I could almost imagine his speech. She had to hang on. Tonight and maybe next week and then I would be gone!
    Or something like that. They imagined their position to be stronger than it actually was. Part of the climate of the university was a bold rhetoric that rejected even the nuances of sexism. Truth was another matter. Because students never got to experience the process directly, they didn’t know. The truth was tenured professors remained, even in these modern times, virtually untouchable. One heard about those rare cases of dismissal