“Nov 05, 20xx

To:  

From: Sarah Sallem

Subj: Title IX – 

I would like to set an appointment with you, either my office or yours, if it is more comfortable…”

How much more does one need to read? Title IX, and I am employed by an institution of higher education. I am an older, white, male. I think I have my bonafides still sporting a Hillary bumpersticker, and equal rights window sticker, and a neat flag, which if you look closely is made of  flags and faces of many nationalities and ethnicities. 

Title IX – with all its Roman, gladiatorial echoes — the little I snuggling up to the domineering X. How does one stop the incessant chatter? Accused – walking back through time – was it X, oops, pick some other substitute. 

Walking back through time… what could the complaint be?  Guilt before innocence; it’s not supposed to be that way. Oh, wait could it have to do with the Empowering Women/Male Advocates lunch I sponsored two years back – before #MeToo?  Maybe, I am seen as an ally. Somehow, “your office, if it is more comfortable” indicates our meeting is not to salute my support for the cause. 

It will be ten days before we can meet — I am obligated, she is busy — my computer negotiates with her computer – we share our calendars – ten days from now is the first time we can have enough time for the issue. 

Wait — the 15^th is walk a mile in her shoes — the fundraiser that brings out the frat boys to teeter on high heels and wedgies across the campus, led by sorority sisters in flats or flip-flops. Some, well more than some, maybe most, go camp just to the edge of mocking in their public support. Am I to be the MC on the dias at the end with all the representatives of the alliance – the token for them as they have been tokens for so long?

I wake;  my sleep, normally deep at this season, where summer’s sweaty humidity is vanquished and the snuggling to beat winter’s chill has yet to come, is troubled. Was it a classroom interaction? No, it was a student who told the joke about down and a butt-quack — is allowing a joke sufficient grounds? I did ask another student, who demurred, to be more demonstrably involved in the class. She is shy. Seems unlikely that she would raise this. Plus, I saw her crossing the quad – she smiled, big enough to show her teeth, such public engagement tamped down among her peers in the classroom. 

I walk more warily across campus. The construction worker, under his hard hat, catching a butt, ogles. Is watching him watching them… no that must be too far a remove. But, if I look where he looks…. The male gaze might work for him; for me, it is irrelevant, has been for the last three years when age sapped glands and stifled virility. He’s there, every day, same time, change of class. Is it happenstance to take a smoke at the same time every day? He is well practiced at looking past the brim. I look towards where he is looking but become aware that he might sense me intruding on his space and snap back to focus on my walk. The sun is bright this morning. 

There is relief in my office. I can close the door. I am too high up to recognize faces out the window – I do know gaits – there is the provost walking with the new development hire. Students are just students, largely unidentifiable, except the tall basket ball player from my morning class or the girl, still trying to manage crutches since her pre-halloween fall. I reorder the piles on my desk. 

A year ago, drunk shopping, I bought a coffee maker at midnight, having been defeated in operating the existing machine. Did I email something or someone? I am not prone to selfies – that seems unimaginable – I never understood the fascination for self imaging, although deep in the attic are likely old polaroids – we all did it during romance or a summer fling. 

Now it is just to wait. Stop the swirl – stop the sense of guilt. Just stop.