The Gossip: New Wave Newsroom

by Jenny Holiday

  Manny nodded.

  My chest was so heavy and uncomfortable, I almost felt like I was having my own heart attack. “I can’t.”

  “Why not? A couple years ago, you were talking like a move was imminent. Pops was even making inquiries in C-6 for you,” he said, naming the district that served South Boston, where all the cops in my family—except me—had started their careers.

  I sighed. “I’ll come home for a visit, but I can’t come back for good. Not yet.”

  “Why the hell not, Art? Come on. Playtime’s over. Come home and make your old man happy. Be a real cop. What is it about this place that’s got you so on the hook?”

  I looked up. She was like a goddamned magnet.

  And she was looking right at me.

  Dawn

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one around campus with daddy issues. Though it seemed like Officer Perez’s were kind of the opposite of mine. Whereas I couldn’t get my father to give me the time of day for longer than it took to write a check, it sounded like my favorite campus cop’s dad was all up in his face all the time.

  I laughed to myself as I hurried out of the bar. Since when had I started thinking of Officer Unfriendly as my favorite cop? Since he rescued me from Royce’s evil clutches? His take on that night was that I had been in the process of rescuing myself. And maybe I had, physically. But the way Officer Perez cut right through my borderline hysterics, the way he gathered up all the fleeing pieces of my self and smooshed them back together with those three little words: I see you… Well, eight months later, it still made me shiver.

  “Officer Perez!” He was about half a block ahead of me, and I broke into a jog to catch up. He stopped when he heard me and turned. It was so strange to see him in normal clothes. Strange and…affecting. He wasn’t wearing anything remarkable, just jeans and a plain white shirt T-shirt. Like his cop shirts, it was tight. I’m sure it was an XL, but those arms. The poor shirt wasn’t up to the task of containing them, and his bulging muscles stretched the fabric taut.

  I wasn’t sure what to say as I approached him. I hadn’t thought this out beyond bailing from my confab in the bar and coming after him, and now I felt weird. He was wearing an unreadable expression, and I was huffing a little from my jog. But who was I kidding? That’s not why I felt weird. I felt weird because the last time we were alone together, I kissed him.

  I felt weird because I wanted to do it again.

  “I, ah, couldn’t help but overhear in there. I wanted to say that I’m sorry. About your dad.” It was the truth. Seeing him so broken up in there had been strange. And the way his brother kept getting on his case had made me want to jump to his defense, to tell this Manny guy that his brother was doing good, important things at Allenhurst.

  He kept staring at me with an even, inscrutable expression. It was maddening. I wanted him to say something.

  “Thanks,” he finally said.

  “I was, ah, thinking maybe I could drive you home.” I adjusted the straps of my backpack. “You know, because of all those times you’ve taken me home after bad stuff has gone down?” It sounded stupid when I said it like that, but I was seized with the need to make sure that he got home okay. That he was okay. “My car is around the corner, and I barely had anything to drink at the bar.”

  To my surprise, he smiled. “I walked. I’m only a few blocks from here.”

  “Oh.” I had always imagined him living farther from campus. Or, let’s not pretend—really, I had imagined him living in a magical mountain where he watched campus happenings from on high.

  “But you can walk with me if you like.” He reached for my backpack. It was super full because I’d had a big day with three classes, an editing session with Jenny, and my meeting in the bar, all with no time for stops at home in between. “But let me carry this.”

  “I can carry it, I—”

  He tugged it out of my grip and slung it over one shoulder like it was nothing.

  I sighed. I actually audibly sighed. Was I officially perving on Officer Perez now? I’d tried to tell myself that ill-advised kiss last winter was because I was all discombobulated and out of sorts. It had been a weird, organic reaction to a stressful situation, I’d assured myself. But really, I think, I had just wanted to do it. I saw my chance, and I took it. And I’d been thinking about it ever since, about the way he had simply sat there and let me. There had been a kind of harnessed strength in him, like there was a snake coiled inside his chest that was more powerful than anything I could dish out.

  Dang it, I was perving on him.

  “What were you doing in that bar?” he asked after we’d covered a couple blocks in silence.

  “I told you, I’m legal now!” I protested. “I was just having a drink—”

  “But you hadn’t actually drunk any of your drink,” he pointed out. The street we were on was full of large houses subdivided into student apartments, but they were gradually giving way to tidy bungalows that looked like they were occupied by regular people. “Your friend had nearly finished hers. Were you working?”

  “I wasn’t working. I was—”

  “Do you ever turn off the inner gossip? That’s what I’m asking.” He stopped walking and turned, squinting at me under the yellow glare of a streetlight. “Can you live without constantly building your so-called social power?”

  The way he said “social power” made me uncomfortable. A lot of what I said or thought sounded wrong when he repeated it back to me. Seeing myself through his eyes was unsettling.

  “Do you ever go out to have a drink with someone just to have a drink with someone?” he asked, since I hadn’t answered his previous questions.

  “Is that an invitation?” I asked, though I couldn’t believe I had the guts.

  “Would I show up in Dish with Dawn tomorrow if it was?” he countered right away, almost like he was angry, and started to walk again, faster this time.

  “Of course not.”

  He sighed, slowing to let me catch up with him. “You do a lot of good work with that column, but I’m not sure it’s serving you.”

  I blinked, struggling to adjust to the change of topic. I’d thought for a minute he was asking me out, but apparently not. But then my brain stalled on “You do a lot of good work with that column.” As with the time I’d seen him at parent orientation, I was too pleased by his praise.

  “It’s only a silly gossip column,” I said, seized with the need to deflect the compliment, perhaps because I was so pleased by it.

  “Sometimes. But take that football scandal. You can’t say justice wasn’t served there.”

  “Wow. Justice served. Coming from a cop, that’s saying something.” I was still trying to downplay what he was saying, but I wasn’t sure why, because I was super proud of that story.

  “It’s a different kind of justice. That’s what I’m saying. You did something we couldn’t have. None of those girls ever came forward to talk to police. We had no idea that was going on. You keep saying that your column isn’t important. If you believe that, why do you do it? What drives you? Are you going to be a journalist?”

  “No.” Jenny was always asking me that, too, telling me I had talent and pointing out that because of my father, I’d have my pick of plum jobs after I graduated. But I wasn’t interested in journalism, not really. The column had started for shallow reasons and had grown into something I was proud of, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my whole life. “I think I want to be a psychologist or a counselor of some sort,” I said, voicing the desire aloud for the first time. “I think people are fascinating.” I paused, unsure how to explain. “I just don’t think…”

  “You don’t think what?” He looked at me while we walked, his eyes drilling into mine.

  I don’t think I’m smart enough. I don’t know why anyone should trust me to help them sort out their problems. But I didn’t say that, because I knew, somehow, that it would anger him. My face flushed, and I broke with his gaze, no longer able to withstand
his scrutiny.

  But he kept pressing, even though I kept staring at the pavement passing beneath my feet. “So you don’t think the column is important, and it isn’t related to your chosen career path. Here’s my question, then: Is it worth it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re always with people—you’re at the center of everything—but you’re always alone.”

  I heard my sharp inhale of breath. “I have a huge story coming out next week,” I snapped. It was the truth. I finally had Professor Daniels. I had a girl who had spoken to me anonymously about being blackmailed to provide sexual favors in return for grades, and her roommate had been able to corroborate her story. Jenny had the story lawyered, and we were ready to go for the last edition before summer break. By the time I left to go home for the summer, it was going to be huge news.

  He smiled weakly and shook his head as he started walking again. “Well, good luck with that.”

  I was annoyed. I’d come after him to see if he was okay, to say I was sorry about his dad, and now I was somehow on the defensive?

  “This is me,” he said, and I realized we’d stopped in front of one of the bungalows, a small, yellow-brick thing surrounded by a tidy lawn and a pretty flower garden.

  Was he going to ask me in? Was that what that comment about having a drink had meant?

  “I’m going to drive you back to your car.”

  Apparently not. But also, how typical was that of him? I walk him home, but then he has to drive me back to my car? I knew enough to know that arguing was futile. There was an Allenhurst PD squad car parked out in front of his house, so I got in and let him drive me the few blocks back to the bar. We didn’t speak until he turned and said, “I’m not going to be around the next couple weeks, I don’t think. So have a great summer.”

  Chapter Six

  The Allenhurst Examiner – May 29, 1983 – Page 1A

  Dish with Dawn – Special Report

  * * *

  Communication Professor Bribes Student:

  Sex in Exchange for an A

  [Editor’s note: Those of you who follow Dish with Dawn in its usual spot on the back page of the paper will have noticed a series of blind items over the past year alluding to an unnamed professor preying on students by offering them academic outcomes in return for sexual favors. Blind items have long been a staple in the world of gossip. A blind item is a piece of news that is reported without revealing the identity of the individuals involved. Sometimes that identity is withheld out of fear of lawsuits. In other cases, as with Dawn’s recent blind items, the basics of the story were known but the identities of the individuals involved were not. We now know the identities of the parties in question, and what was gossip has become news. The story reported here has been verified by two independent sources, both of whom asked that their names be withheld. We have given them pseudonyms for the purposes of this story. Dawn has retained her conversational style of writing, but all the highest standards of ethical journalism have been employed in the reporting of this story.]

  The first time it happened, Pamela was a little bit flattered. She’s embarrassed by that sentiment now, but she’s committed to telling the truth about what happened between her and Professor Gary Daniels of the Department of Communication.

  “I was taking Intro to Media Studies,” says the sophomore. “I’d recently decided to switch majors. I was catching up on some of the intro classes in communication, so I was a year older than most of the other students.”

  Pamela had been a sociology student prior to switching to communication, and when asked why she made the switch, she blushes and admits that she was kicked out of sociology because her GPA was too low. “I needed to salvage my college career, to be honest. I come from a conservative, old-fashioned family. I can’t disappoint my parents. Flunking out of college would shame them. So my plan was to double down and take extra courses to make up for declaring comm so late and try to catch up. I figured I’d still need to do at least an extra semester, but at least I had a plan.”

  One afternoon, Pamela stopped by Daniels’s office to ask some questions about an assignment she was struggling with. “He locked the door behind me,” she says, visibly upset over the memory. “And then he kissed me. There was no lead-in. He just kissed me.”

  Pamela reports that Daniels then undertook a campaign of flattery, telling her she was so much prettier and more mature than the other students, that he couldn’t help himself. What followed was an escalating series of sexually charged banter and several heavy-petting sessions.

  Then Pamela tried to break things off. “It was tearing me up inside. On the one hand, I was flattered that this smart, older guy was so into me. But I knew it was wrong. I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head. That wasn’t how I was raised. Also, I was struggling in several of my classes, including his, and I felt like the whole thing was distracting me from my studies. I asked him if he would wait until I was done with college for anything more to happen between us.” She shakes her head and angrily swipes away tears. “I was so stupid.”

  At that point, Daniels laid down an ultimatum. Pamela was on her way to failing his class. If she had sex with him once, she’d get a C. If she had sex with him on demand throughout the semester, she’d get an A.

  “I figured an A would go a long way toward upping my GPA by balancing some of my less bitchin’ grades. And if I was going to do it once…” She chokes up, as she does several times during our interview. “I am such a ditz. That wasn’t how I was raised,” she says, using a phrase that comes up numerous times during our time together.

  Despite her misgivings, Pamela agreed to Daniels’s demand, and the two began having sex, usually in his office, but sometimes in his apartment and once in his car. She thought she was handling it but was surprised when her roommate forced an intervention.

  Pamela’s roommate Kathleen agreed to speak to me, too, separately from Pamela.

  “I could tell something was wrong with her, but I didn’t know what it was,” Kathleen says. “She wasn’t eating. She wasn’t usually much of a drinker, at least not outside of organized parties. But then she started bringing home these bottles of wine, and she’d drink one almost every night. Pamela comes from a really traditional family—they’re big into church and all that. To be honest, she was kind of a goody-goody her first year here, so I thought maybe she was letting loose a little, you know? Shaking off the chains of her background or something. But then she started drinking a bottle of wine before she went out for the evening. She’d leave stumbling and slurring her way out the door to study sessions—and there were a lot of study sessions all of a sudden.”

  Kathleen confronted Pamela, expecting that she was forcing the issue on an eating disorder or an addiction.

  “I had no idea that these behaviors were about coping with what was really going on.”

  Kathleen encouraged Pamela to go to the police, but Pamela was still committed to “earning” her A. She was also terrified of anyone finding out.

  “It sounds ridiculous now,” Pamela says, “but by the time I told Kathleen what was going on, the semester was two-thirds over. I felt like I was so close. But, really, the biggest deterrent was the idea of my family finding out. They would never get over it. They would…” She trails off, clearly fighting tears. “I don’t even know what they would do.”

  What was the event that finally pushed Pamela to talk to the Examiner?

  “I walked in on him having sex with another girl,” she says. Her previously tearful demeanor turns angry. “It turned out that after everything, somewhere deep inside, I still thought I meant something to him. I knew I was going against every moral I was raised with, I knew I was disappointing my family and God, but I guess I thought…it was okay if he loved me.”

  Pamela did briefly consider going to the police then. With Kathleen’s help, she even recorded a conversation with Daniels. She ultimately balked at taking it to police, though.

  “I could
n’t do that to my family. They would never be able to forgive me. They’d be shunned, kicked out of our church. They would have to move.”

  Pamela allowed me to listen to the tape once, though she would not let me make a copy or transcribe it. It contains a conversation between a Pamela and a man who answers Pamela’s greeting of “Professor Daniels.” In the recording, she confronts him about the other girl she’d caught him with, and he tells her she’s overreacting. The tape is short, and the recording stops after the man tells Pamela, “You’ll get your A.”

  Pamela did get the A.

  “But,” she says, “I didn’t think he should be allowed to keep doing this. So…here I am.”

  * * *

  The Boston Voice – July 15, 1983

  Regional News – Page 2B

  Allenhurst Student Takes Own Life

  After Sex Bribery Scandal

  Julianne Lansing, a twenty-year-old student at Allenhurst College who had recently accused Professor Gary Daniels of the college’s communication department of offering her favorable grades in exchange for sex, has been found dead in her off-campus apartment of an apparent drug overdose, though a medical examiner has yet to rule.

  Lansing, using the alias “Pamela,” told her story to the campus newspaper’s gossip columnist, Dawn Hathaway, and the resultant article, published on May 29 in the Allenhurst Examiner, rocked the campus. Lansing, who was failing the Introduction to Media Studies course she was taking from Daniels, claimed that Daniels offered her a C to have sex with him once and an A in exchange for sex on demand.

  The college immediately opened an investigation. Daniels claimed the story was fabricated, though Hathaway reported that she had listened to a tape Lansing made of Daniels referencing the end of his sexual relationship with the student.

  In the Examiner story, Lansing repeatedly referenced a conservative, churchgoing family who would be devastated to learn of her behavior and cited her family as the reason she never went to police with her allegations.