He’d asked me the same thing the previous fall: Was I going to take another course from him in the spring? But back then the stakes were different. They felt different. In the fall, his question hadn’t seemed so loaded. Just a simple, innocent inquiry. I was so wrapped up in my excitement about graduate school that if there was anything other than plain curiosity in his voice I didn’t notice. My response to him of “I don’t know—maybe?” wasn’t fraught, it was earnest. The schedule I’d needed for that spring semester conflicted with his teaching, so I wasn’t able to take his courses—though I would have happily done so if the schedule had worked. It would have been nice to have a class with him again that first spring. It would have been fine.
But there were so many professors from whom I wanted to take classes, so many exciting possibilities and topics, that I was happy with any and all courses available. It wasn’t even a blip to me that in the following semester he would not be one of my professors.
What I hadn’t counted on was that not taking another course from him would be such a loss to him. It never occurred to me that he might be disappointed or, frankly, that he would give it much thought. He had plenty of other students clamoring for seats in his classes. He was a popular professor, and someone helpful to have on your side. The kind of professor who was good to have on your dissertation committee, not only because he held such sway, but because he was important to the field beyond this graduate school. He was connected enough that he could help you get a job somewhere after you finished.
That prior January, around the time we’d gone to the theater together, he realized I wasn’t taking a course with him again and confronted me about it, wanting to know why. My answer was little more than a shrug, an unworried “It just didn’t work with my schedule” and a noncommittal “Hopefully next time it works out.” I wasn’t concerned at all. I didn’t feel like I’d failed him, or that he’d see this as a failure to meet an expectation he held for me.
I soon learned that it was very much his expectation—and that I had let him down. That he was woefully disappointed in me and was not inclined to hide this. Maybe he thought I was ungrateful, that after all the time he’d spent with me during his office hours in the fall I should show more respect, that this respect should come in the form of seeking more of the wisdom only he could offer. Maybe my lack of concern or awareness that I’d failed him made him realize I was less invested in him than he was in me, or that I was more invested in the program as a whole than in one particular professor who was a part of it.
So that spring, he tried a new tack.
He wanted to make sure there was no reason I wouldn’t be able to take a class from him. He expressed a clear desire to accommodate me in every way he could. He would even wait until I had planned my schedule to figure out his; that way we wouldn’t run into the same problem again, where his courses conflicted with mine. Because for him, I soon realized, it was absolutely a problem that I was not currently taking one of his classes.
“So I was considering teaching this course,” he would say on one occasion, handing me a paper he’d printed out with a description of a topic and a list of thinkers. “What do you think? Would you want to take it?”
“You know that I haven’t taught this one in a while,” he’d say on a different afternoon, opening up a flimsy booklet the department published with a list of available classes in the graduate program and short paragraphs about each one. “Maybe you’d like it?”
That’s a requirement for you to graduate. What if I do that one in the fall so you can get it out of the way?
What about this? What about that?
You told me such-and-such thinker interested you. Perhaps I could develop a seminar around his work?
These questions from him, the angling to find out which course, which topics, which philosophers and theologians and thinkers I wanted to read, were never-ending. On the one hand, this was flattering. A part of me believed his pressure and maneuvering were due to the fact that I was special.
But this was also among those initial moments when I began to detect something else. Something off. Underneath his persistent questioning about my schedule, if I wanted to take another class with him, if I planned to sign up for whatever he was teaching, I could sense a need simmering. He needed me to be in his classes, even though he was trying to mask that need. And it wasn’t just need, it was neediness. Like the kind I sometimes detected in one of those boys I’d date, a clinginess that surpassed the relationship as it stood so far, a desire to move faster and grow closer than I was ready for or closer than I wanted.
Everyone, at some point, experiences that kind of imbalance in a romantic relationship. It is a common feeling, the result of a difference in power, sometimes barely there or sometimes fairly great. One person is more excited about things than the other, and this tips the balance. It was something I often dealt with in the ups and downs of flirting, of entangling myself in a fleeting romance, where one person pulls back suddenly or wants out. But I’d never before experienced this imbalance with an adult, and by adult I mean someone far older, someone I regarded like a parent or a grandparent, an authority figure, a professor, a mentor, a priest. To detect a new boyfriendlike clinginess, a desperation of sorts, in the attentions of my professor seemed wrong, it didn’t make any sense, or at least I couldn’t make sense of it. Why would someone so much older and more powerful act as though I held power over him? It was clear to me that, because of his position and professional stature in my field, he held all the power and, as a grad student, I held none. He was not my equal, he was far above me, so what, really, could he need from me? I had nothing to offer.
This made it easier for me to dismiss whatever seemed off. I chalked it up to my imagination. To my overblown self-esteem. I thought I must be mistaken.
But it’s also true that I developed an allergy.
I became allergic to this aspect of our interactions. His inquiries about my schedule, what classes I hoped to take, and what I wanted to read. It became a kind of pollen floating in the air at school, especially concentrated in his office. I began to defend myself against it, to anticipate it before I walked through his office door, make sure I wouldn’t be there so long that I would begin to suffer a reaction. I would stop by, say hello to him, then try to get out before I was affected. Soon, I visited him less and less. By the end of the semester, I would stop going entirely.
It was easier to lose myself in the boy-dramas and friend-dramas in my life outside graduate school, things other than him and his persistence, his ever-intensifying need. More and more I allowed myself to be swept up in these welcome distractions, I held out my hand to them freely and hopefully, let them pull me along like a current, happy to go wherever they led. And I began to build a wall between the good parts of my life and this man, though I didn’t realize I was doing this at the time—but it was a wall that would eventually become impermeable, like steel or iron, so strong I was incapable of taking it down myself. Decades later I would still be taking a hammer to it, trying to break it enough that I could see through it to the other side, so I could try to become whole again, one woman, not two.
Somewhere in those conversations between us that spring he also began to raise the subject of my dissertation, and how he absolutely planned to be my dissertation director. He assumed this would be the case, and of this he had no doubts. He didn’t ask if this was what I wanted; he just talked about this future where we would work together on this pivotal part of my PhD as though it were a given.
In mid-April, registration for fall came and went. Despite his constant pleas and the fact that he did actually arrange his schedule around mine, I didn’t sign up for anything with him. It wasn’t long before he figured out that I wasn’t on any of his class lists. I remember how perplexed and dismayed he was when he realized this and how he confronted me about this stunning failure.
After all he’d done for me, I’d ignored his efforts. Maybe I had forgotten? Maybe it was a mistake?
I remember not knowing what to say or how to handle his upset.
Why didn’t I just add in, then? I still could, if I wanted, he told me.
I didn’t want. I definitely didn’t want.
This I knew for certain, but I also didn’t tell him as much. And I didn’t know what to do with the helplessness I sensed that he felt. That, no matter the things he’d done and all of the maneuverings on my behalf, he still couldn’t sign me up for one of his classes himself. That was my job and I had failed to do it. By then he’d already gone into my file several times to retrieve information about me, my home address, my phone number, which now, looking back, makes me wonder if it crossed his mind to do just that, to go into my file and change my schedule of classes so at least one of them would be with him that next fall.
But I also didn’t quite grasp why so much resistance to him was building inside of me—resistance growing by the day. I wasn’t sure how to articulate it or what, exactly, was causing it. On the surface, everything he did was a kindness, was benign, seemed to be about helping me or investing himself in my intellectual future. So, what was my problem? Why was I beginning to turn my back on him? He was so much older than me, and not only my professor but a celibate priest. What was wrong with me, to be so unkind toward someone who obviously had my best interest at heart, someone who was, by definition, safe?
It wasn’t a conscious decision to begin to avoid him, it’s just what I found myself doing. It’s not that I suddenly disliked him or wanted him gone from my life for good. But by May of that spring semester, I began to remain at a distance. The enthusiasm I once felt about his interest in my life, my studies, the attention he paid me, had dissipated. It was no longer something I was excited about. It had become something I tolerated. He became something I tolerated. I found myself dodging him.
This bothered me.
I wanted to go back to that happy place where I was eager to have his advice, his knowledge, to learn from him. I wanted to fix whatever was happening inside of me that made me dread seeing him, even for five minutes, dread anything to do with him. I wanted to make things better again, but I didn’t know how, couldn’t seem to make myself want to see this man, talk to him, as I had only a couple of months before.
This bothered him even more.
He must have sensed I was treating him differently, holding him at a distance, even though if I agreed to see him outside school I acted like nothing had changed, that I was as happy to spend time with him now as I had been early on. Just as my resistance to him was growing, his dismay at my resistance was also growing. The fact that I was going to his office less and less really upset him, and he pressed me as to why.
“I’m really busy,” I’d say.
“I stopped by the other day,” I’d lie. “You just weren’t around.”
He tried to make sure I knew exactly when he would be there so I wouldn’t miss him, so I’d never miss him. It became an obsession with him, making sure he was available to me at the right times.
My allergy grew worse. But as with the fall and spring seasons, when the leaves turn and all the flowers begin to bloom and the pollen is thick and floating in the air, what else is a person supposed to do but endure?
I never did take another class from him. And he never forgave me for it.
7
At the end of May, he asked me to go away with him.
I’d just finished my second semester of graduate school and I was flying. I’d done well, I was full of ideas, I was one step closer to my dream of a PhD and becoming a professor.
What’s more, I landed a job in Residence Life at Georgetown, and I was thrilled. The position was designed for people who were in school. I could make my own schedule, work closely with the students who were my RAs, and help with programming in my hall, all while prioritizing my classes. Better still, I would have no living expenses. My resident director apartment was free, electricity, gas, everything included, and it was mine and only mine. I’d even have a partial meal plan, and the position came with a decent monthly stipend. Between my RD job and my TA work, which also came with a stipend, I’d be able to graduate with my PhD debt-free.
Life was good. My new apartment was perfect. It was big and beautiful and full of light. One entire wall was lined with windows. The building was next to a gigantic parking lot, but my place was high enough that when I sat on the couch I couldn’t see any cars. Only endless sky and the trees that stood between Georgetown, the parkway, and the Potomac River beyond it. Those first weeks after I moved in, I would sometimes just sit there, staring out the windows.
But by then, my professor had taken to calling me at home. He’d called a few times at the apartment I’d shared with my roommate, and now he called at my new one as well. The shift of his calls from one place to the other was seamless. I never gave him my number. After he started calling me once I’d moved, this knowledge registered somewhere in my mind. But I buried it deep with the rest of my unease, with the related knowledge that he also had my new address and my fall schedule and I hadn’t given him those either.
When he called and I would pick up, he began using his first name to tell me who it was.
“Hello, Donna, it’s L.,” he’d say.
I remember feeling immediately uncomfortable. My parents had raised me to use Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. with my elders, Dr. and Professor and Father. Not only was this man my elder, but he could claim two honorary titles, Professor and Father. I wasn’t about to call him by his first name. It was improper.
But it became his new norm with me.
“Hi, Professor,” I’d say in return—always.
In my new apartment, I had two phones, each with its own line. One was in the first room you stepped into on entering the apartment, which served as my office. The office was separated by a door from the living space, the area I considered my real home, which was where the second phone was. The office phone and the home phone had different numbers. Both of them were those old-school, clunky, ugly beige phones with push-button dialing. They had enormous, heavy receivers, and those awkward spiral cords attached. These were not state-of-the-art phones, and there was no caller ID. They rang, you had no idea who was calling, and if you wanted to know, you had to pick up and say hello.
In the Office of Residence Life, where I now worked, the expectation was that you always answered—both phones. While the first-year students in my hall did not and would never have my home number, my colleagues had it, and so did my RAs. It was normal that work-related people called you on your personal line. In the beginning, I didn’t care, this seemed fine. The perks of the job and the apartment were so fabulous that even the fire alarms pulled by drunken students at 3 a.m. seemed a reasonable price for my new living situation.
And early on that summer, I was absorbed by moving and settling in, by setting up my apartment the way I wanted it to look, with arranging the university furniture the way I liked it, making it appear prettier than it actually was. There were trips to Ikea and Bed Bath & Beyond, and invitations to friends to come over and check out my new place. I was busy, busy, busy.
Maybe my professor was annoyed by this. Maybe he felt I was slipping away from him. Maybe he was daunted by the long stretch of summer ahead, which he would have to endure without the assurance that I would be walking the halls near his office before class or stopping by to say hello when I had a break. Maybe he’d noticed that I was stopping by to see him less and less, that by the end of the semester I’d stopped stopping by altogether. Maybe he didn’t like my having gotten a job that would take me away from graduate school, that would divide my time between my work and my studies, that would erode my ability to be around the department as much as I had been the first year. Maybe my preoccupation with moving and showing off my place to friends reminded him how young I was, how fickle I was, compelled by the shiny new toy that was my first real apartment. Maybe he became envious.
Regardless of his reasons, he called me on my new home phone one d
ay, I picked up, we said hello. It’s L., he told me, using his first name yet again.
“My abbey owns a retreat house,” he began.
I remember standing near the square table I’d set up by the windows, the cord stretched as far as it could from the base of the phone, as I listened to him propose what he did next.
His abbey had a modest house, in a beautiful, remote place, where he and his fellow monastics could go to be away, to pray, to work. He had reserved it for a week in mid-June and he thought I should join him there, that it would be a lovely time, a chance to do some writing, to discuss my studies, to begin to think about my dissertation.
“Who else is going?” I asked.
Just him. It would be the two of us and no one else.
I listened as he talked, the way he made everything sound perfectly reasonable, the way this invitation seemed a totally understandable one to extend. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I did give it to him as I had so often already, and would continue doing for many more months, or try to. I reminded myself that he was a celibate priest, and I reminded myself of this fact several additional times during the phone call. He was older, he was kindly, he was investing himself in my graduate work. I told myself how lucky I was to have a professor who cared so much that he would want to spend an entire week with only me, helping me consider my future and what would get me there. These justifications fought to the surface of my thinking, creating a hard shell over the other, less appropriate things that roiled in my gut, keeping them out.
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