Second Comings - Sex Type Thing

"Depends on the school, I guess," Sharon said. "It is here. The Ivies are still holding their own, for now."

"Things are still pretty tight in California," Lake said. "What's going on here?"

"Facebook," Secord said.

"Twitter," Sharon added. "And everybody's texting. All the time."

"So? Confiscate phones!"

"Can't," Sharon said. "Courts here ruled that's theft. Depriving the owner of their property without their effective consent. Don't try it. Cops'll handcuff you in front of your class."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"It's a brave new world, Justin," she chuckled. "You have to be an entertainer these days, because being a teacher hardly counts for anything anymore. If you can't compete with Facebook, you might as well not show up for class."

"We'll see."

"You do any skiing?" Secord asked him.

"Not much since college, undergrad, I mean."

"Ah, Sierra cement. I remember it well."

"Yeah, we used to go to Squaw all the time."

"Can you ski on ice?"

"Nope."

"Well then, don't bother here. It's a whole different world. Like an ice skating rink that's been tilted to about 45 degrees."

"So I heard. It's really that bad?"

"Worse. A powder day here is when there's two inches of fresh on top of ice."

"Guess that takes care of that. What do people do around here for fun?"

Secord looked at Sharon who looked at Michele, and everyone shrugged.

"Well," Lake said, "maybe Dr Grier is onto something."

Everyone laughed again.

+++++

He drove home and she 'just happened' to be walking down the street when he pulled up to his house.

"Hi!" she said, walking over to his car.

"Hi, yourself!"

"Had breakfast?"

"Yup. Just coming back. Ran into the Secords and Sharon Hastings."

"Oh," she said, her face falling. "Members of my fan club."

"They had nothing but good things to say about you."

"Yeah, sure. How was Michele?"

"Quiet. What's the story with her?"

"Look, I need some breakfast. Got any eggs?"

"If I did, I wouldn't have gone out. You out walking? For real?"

"Every morning. If I don't, I start to look like a blimp..."

"So, I need to get you fed. Is that about the size of it?"

"Feel like going to Boston?"

"What? For breakfast?"

"Tomorrow. After the snow stops."

"You're shivering. Come with me." He led her to his car and got her belted in, then he turned on the seats and the heater; moments later the interior was toasty."

"Thanks."

"Yup. So, Madison's, or the diner?"

"Breakfast, please. Eggs Benny!"

"Right. I know the way."

She was quiet then, and all the way through her breakfast, too, then she opened up a little as he drove with her back to his house, but still, she had little to say.

"Can I drop you off somewhere?"

"No, if you don't mind, let's just go back to your place."

He nodded his head, thinking about what Sharon had said about her career wrecking tendencies all the way home. He pulled into the little driveway and stopped, but he left the engine running.

"You heading out again?" she asked.

"Nope."

"Going inside?"

"Yup."

"You horny?"

He looked at her for a long while, not quite knowing what to say, then it hit him as he sat there looking at her. "Yup."

"Good."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Maybe. I told you. I'm monogamous. And I can get a little bent, a little possessive. That's me. You want me, those are my terms."

"Terms?"

"You want to be with me again, then it's you and me. No one else."

"What if, well, maybe there was someone else, but that someone else was a she?"

"What?"

"I have a girlfriend."

"You're what, bi?"

"Yup. Does that bug you?"

"Look. I want a girlfriend. Someone who lives with me. We cook for each other, help make the bed together. That kind of girlfriend."

"So, no fuck buddy, huh?"

"Nope. No my thing. The emotional side is as important to me as the sex."

"You're old fashioned."

"Very. Can I drive you home now?"

"That's why you left the engine on, huh?"

"You know, for an English major you're pretty smart."

+++++

He was back at his house fifteen minutes later, only now there was a Volvo wagon in the drive, the engine running.

"Now what?" he asked angrily. He pulled up to his drive and the Volvo backed out, let him pull in, then he saw Sharon Hastings as she pulled back in behind him.

"Hello," he said as he got out of his car. "Long time no see."

She was serious, he saw, as she got out of her car. "Let's talk."

"Sure, I'm not doing anything now, by the way."

"Cut the sarcasm. Let's go."

"Where?"

"Inside."

"Okay."

When they were inside she looked around the room. "Wow, just like Secord's. What is it with you men? No pictures on the wall, furniture looks like it just came from Wal-Mart."

"Thanks. I've spent years honing just the right look."

"Small town, Justin. Were you really just with Laura? After what we said at breakfast?"

"She was here, waiting for me when I got home. I told her I wasn't into anything other than a monogamous relationship..."

"And of course she told you she's a lesbian?"

"Bi, she said."

"That's a crock."

"What?"

"Part of her game. Listen, don't let her pull you in. You'll burn. She'll enjoy watching you burn."

"Okay. I get it."

"Now. Michele. What have you heard?"

"Nothing. I asked Laura, twice. She said it was a long story, and maybe later."

"It is. Wanna hear?"

"Sure."

Sharon told him what she thought he needed to know, and she watched his reaction.

"So what? They're lovers now?" he asked, incredulously.

"Nope. Separate bedrooms."

"I don't get it."

"No one around here does. All you need to know is he loves her. I mean Love, with a capital L. He's very protective of her now, too, because she's fragile as hell."

"She? How can you call it a she?"

"Listen to what I'm telling you, Justin. Whatever else you may think, whatever your preconceived notions about these things are, Michele is a woman. Don't you ever imply anything other than that, never around Jordan, and especially around her. She's a very bright, very decent person, warm-hearted, but those wounds on her wrists are very real. And they're recent. And remember what I told you. Jordan loves her."

"I can't get over this," Lake said, chuckling. "Secord's a fag and I've landed right in the fucking middle of some sort of twisted-up Peyton Place."

"You could look at it that way, I suppose" she said, "if you want, but you might consider you're way off base. Because things go much deeper than you might be able to understand."

"You say so. By the way, is there anywhere around here to meet women, or is everyone a fag around here?"

"I don't know. Ask Laura."

+++++

"Romanticism? What is it? What was the movement all about?" Lake asked his students in 302 next Monday morning. "Anyone want to take a stab at it?"

He looked out over a class of 28 blank faces.

"Miss Myers? You want to have a go?"

She shook her head.

"Well, apparently you all missed that lecture in Foundations of Western Civ." He held up a packet of papers, pointed to it. "Because here it is, in the syllabus. Week 10, Romanticism and Revolt. So I'm curious. What did you study? What do you remember? Do any of you remember anything?"

No one moved. No one said a word.

"I see. Every one of you is a history major, is that correct?"

A few nods, a few shrugs.

"And what do you expect to do with a history degree when you haven't the slightest idea what you've been studying? Anyone want to answer that one?"

He looked around the room. "No one?"

"Hmm. Well, everyone take out of piece of paper. Don't write your name on the paper, but I want you to write down what you think 'romanticism' is. Take a few minutes, and get started, now."

He watched confusion settle over the group, then a few people started writing, more followed and soon everyone was writing. Thinking and writing.

He gave them five minutes, then called a stop. "Okay, take your paper and pass it to the person on your right. Now, pass the paper you just received to the right again. Okay. Ms Parker, read what you've got in your hand..."

They went about the room, reading and discussing answers and ideas, and while the poverty of their basic understanding of key historical concepts became apparent, so to did their interest in the subject. He understood the problem now, could see what needed to be done, yet even so he was a little angry. After class he went to see if Secord was in his office, and when he was, Lake asked if he had time to talk for a minute.

"Sure, come on in."

"I'm at a loss, Jordan. I've been..."

"Let me guess. You've been running up against a tide of academic mediocrity and have no idea what's going on?"

He looked at Secord, shook his head. "How'd you know?"

"This department is a shambles. Entrenched faculty teach competing political agendas. Radical feminists here, fire-breathing conservatives there, everyone teaching their own brand of hate, students watching, wanting someone to really teach them something and they're being shoveled ideologies without frameworks day after day. Some students follow along to win approval, others get turned off and go away."

"Is it just in our department...?"

Secord shook his head. "Are you kidding? Ever watch TV? Turn on CNN and you get one brand of hate, while Fox News sells another. Tire of that message and go over to MSNBC and get a whole new brand of hate. Understanding doesn't sell, Justin. Hate sells. Polarization sells. Above all, fear sells."

"What's that got to do with us? Last I heard we were supposed to be teachers?"

"Good question. Seems to me all our ivory towers became politicized, maybe as far back as the 80s. Conservatives saw colleges as bastions of liberal privilege and began shoveling money to oppose the threat. Supporting organizations, conservative foundations for the most part, helped spread the fire by starting up off-campus 'newspapers' to spread their gospel, until they could get professors sympathetic to their causes on board. Now it's a feedback loop. Campuses mirror all the discord you see in society, and the role we used to play – educating critical thinkers, helping people understand long term trends – has been subsumed to the new role of creating the next generation of ideologues, left and right. We don't create thinkers anymore, Justin. We've been suborned, coopted. We're supposed to join the frenzy, become a part of the noise, feed all the hate. It's really in it's infancy, I think, but it's a trend a lot of people are fighting. And I think it's accelerating."

Lake shook his head. "Sorry, I'm not into conspiracies. I'm just a teacher, you know?"

"Yeah? Neither am I, and that's all I am. Welcome to the war."

"You don't get it..."

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Open your eyes, look around, make up your own mind. Look at all these kids, look at their eyes. Half are looped out on heroin most of the time, tuning out the hate. Half are just trying to make their way into the world, but the blind are leading the blind now. My biggest fear is that no one thought this through, thought about where all this would lead. We're there now, right on the edge. Lots of questions, people are asking lots of questions, but it's getting to the point where nobody trusts the answers anymore."

"What's this got to do with teaching history...?"

"Nothing, and everything. We don't just teach history, Justin. Historians teach a way of thinking. A way of peeling back layers of bias, of getting to the truth. When the conservative foundations began going after high school curriculums, the first things they axed were history programs. It worked there, so they're trying the same, in a round about way, at the college level."

"And three men killed JFK, right? Oswald was the patsy? Oh, and Roswell? Not a weather balloon, was it?"

Secord laughed. "Thank God. Another historian! Keep on questioning, but keep your eyes open."

"Not quite what I wanted to hear, but..."

"Look. Hastings might have been a good historian, once upon a time, maybe Beth Gordon was too, but you're dealing with their students now, you're dealing with the product of their efforts. You ask around, see where they tried to take their students. It's all right out there in the open..."

"So, CNN, Fox News, hate. That's what's wrong?"

"Symptoms, Justin. Those are just the symptoms I see. What you see in your classroom? Academic laziness is just another symptom. But we, you and I and those of us who really believe in what we're trying to accomplish, we're on the front lines of a war. No one really has a clue what's going on because I think what we're experiencing is "unintended consequence" – a perfect storm of technology and naïve political engineering, cresting like a wave now. And things are coming undone."

"So, keep at it? Is that your advice?"

"What else can you do? Teach history, create historians. Show these kids how to peel back the layers..."

+++++

He went to his office, started to get ready for his next class, but Secord's paranoid rambling was really beginning to bother him. He opened up a folder on his computer and was searching for a file when someone knocked on his door.

"It's open!"

A student from 302 came in, one of the black girls who sat in the back of the class all the time, what was her name???

"Miss Davis? What's up?"

"Good class today, Professor Lake. You opened some eyes."

"Did I? Well, good for me. What can I do for you this afternoon?"

"Could you read this over? My thesis proposal?"

"Sure," he said, taking the paper. "'Dialectical Materialism in Goethe's Faust.' Okay. Where are you taking this?"

"Well, this 'romantic impulse' you keep talking about, it's an impulse towards revolution, isn't it?"

"Yes indeed. And?"

"Well sir, Faust, at least the 'romantic' parts of Faust, seems directed at illuminating a crossroads in time. When emerging industrialization met ascendant capitalism, when the explosion of knowledge the Renaissance represented filled the gap in understanding left by questioning central institutions like the church, and the monarchies."

"Alright so far, but why drag Hegel into this?"

"Well sir, the dialectic Hegel constructed, where society was led by the church and the monarchies, and how these came into conflict with the reawakening of inquiry after Galileo, the re-emergence of Aristotle, well..."

"Okay, you're doing great. So, this dialectic leads where?"

"To the revolutions of 1842 and 1848."

"Okay. Which of those is most important to your thesis?"

"1848."

"Why? What's so important about 1848?"

"Well, Marx, and his Capitalist Manifesto was published."

"Okay, so what's the link?"

"The link? Between Faust and Marx?"

"Uh-huh. Where are you leading your reader?"

"Well, back to the idea of the 'romantic impulse' – the idea that artists were free to express ideas that more public intellectuals were not. That musicians and writers and painters began to shape dialogues in society that were otherwise repressed, and that these ideas were critical in shaping the response in those two revolutions."

Lake sat back, tried to keep his joy from becoming to apparent. "I like it, Miss Davis. So, what's the blueprint? How are you going to get there?"

She laid out a line between Goethe and Hegel, then took this Marx. She had three good sources to work from, and he saw this as an easy A if she could pull it together. He signed her proposal and wrote a few notes on the bottom of her page, more sources to check out, then he congratulated her, wished her luck and she was gone.

And there was Laura, standing in his doorway.

"Ah," he said. "Something work related you'd like to discuss?"

"May I come in?"

"Sure."

She closed the door as she entered, took the seat across from his desk.

"I've been thinking about the things you said. The things you want. I think I want those things too."

"Secord seems to be holding a grudge. Towards you. And you, to him. What's it all about, Laura?"

She looked down, then away. "Michele."

"Michele? What about...?"

"I tried to hurt him, I mean her, when she first got here. I tried to undermine her, her acceptance on campus."

"You mean, like a smear campaign?"

"Something like that."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Something I'm still trying to come to terms with."

"Hate?" he asked, thinking about his conversation with Secord earlier.

"Probably." She looked away.

"That's a little ironic, don't you think? I mean, lesbians face hatred all the time?"

"Yeah, maybe misery loves company," she said bitterly. "And I'm not really..."

"I doubt it's that simple. Why is she a threat to you?"

"A threat? What do you mean?"

"Well, why else would you go after someone so vulnerable?"

"I didn't know she was..."

"Oh, come on now! Really? Aren't many lesbians vulnerable to emotional abuse?"

"Justin, I'm not really a lesbian. I like men, too."

"Oh, that's right. So, just what are you, then?"

"What? Why all this fascination with labels? Why not call me a 'human being?'"

"Or, why not 'terribly confused?'"

"You know, I came here to...?"

"To what? You want to make a change in your life? Did you and your girlfriend have a fight?"

"Yes."

"Oh, don't tell me...not about me?!"

"Yes, about you."

"Why? We've only just met. We have no history together. Why get into a fight about me?"

"It was the things you said, Justin. About being together. I realized I could never feel that way with Carol. Not only that, I didn't want to feel that way with her. I didn't realize how fucked up I'd become, like I'd been programmed to want girls somehow, but then I realized that's not really me."

"Biological clock ticking away? Time to settle down and make babies?"

"No! Women, lesbians, are doing that all the time now, men aren't integral to that equation anymore. It's, the feeling, what I felt was – something different."

"I'm not sure I understand, then. Why me? What did I say that...?"

"I don't know why, Justin. I don't know why one person chooses another. Why one person falls in love with another. Do you?"

He looked at her for a moment, lost inside the meaning of her words, processing them, hearing but not quite understanding, then he shook his head. "No. No, I don't."

"Well, all I know right now is I want to give us a try. I've spent time with you twice now, and I think I know the feeling. It's not just about sex, okay? It's about what you said. Wanting to wake up next to you. Do things together. Have a life. I want that. I don't have that now. So yes, I'm confused. I'm confused but I think I know what I want."

"Is there anyone on campus, a health service maybe, you could talk to? Someone familiar with these types of issues?"

"Yes, there is...there was. Not right now, though."

"Oh? What happened?"

"Michele. She was."

"What?"

"Michele."

"What are you trying to say? Did she work there?"

"Michele. She taught classes in gender studies, and worked at the mental health center."

"Is she, what, is she a clinician? A PhD?"

"Yes."

"Damn. Well, I'll be..."

"What did you think she was?"

"Jordan's girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Whatever."

"What?! Who told you?"

"Sharon Hastings."

"Oh, no."

"What? What's the BFD?"

"There isn't any, not really, I just didn't want you to know what I did to her."

He shook his head, things not adding up. "So she was the one person here on this campus you could talk to about the thing that's bothering you, is that about it?"

"Uh-huh."

"And when she shows up you tried to rat-fuck her?"

"Yes." She looked down again.

"And she knows you were behind what happened to her?" he asked quietly.

She looked up. "I don't know. Maybe."

He got up, left the room, left Laura sitting there, sifting through the ruins, so he missed her smile. He went to Secord's office, and they talked for a long time.