Unplug the phone

The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating. - Cesar Chavez

I was in my early 20s, in graduate school studying literature (mainly American) and art history (mainly the figure of the artist in fiction). There’s a huge employment market for people who have studied the figure of the artist in fiction, of course. My thesis was entitled “The Solids of Uccello: Near Recognitions of Reality in William Gaddis’ The Recognitions." It was a heady time, indeed. I was studying in an English Department then ranked first in the nation, in a school known as Mr Jefferson’s University that until 1970, just twelve years before, had been an all-male bastion.

The competition was fierce in the English department, though I didn’t realize just how fierce for quite some time. I thought it was all about the love of literature—and it was, in large part, but with an undercurrent of beating the other M.A. students for the few, precious slots in the Ph.D. program. It was particularly competitive if you happened to be a woman (though I didn’t know that either), because many longtime professors there still weren’t sure if going co-ed had been such a good idea after all.

There was only one tenured female professor in the department who, in a memorable conversation, told me that she had suffered deeply to get there and her intention was not to help other women by making it easier for them, but to ensure that every other woman suffered as much as she did so they would understand and appreciate the journey.

Evidently you cannot help without torturing the ones who follow you, I thought. I, myself, would rather sweep a path for them, show them the landscape, be—as Sun Tzu says in The Art of War--a local guide.

Friends like these you do not need, I thought as I sat across from this woman. “Is this what Walker Percy had in mind when he wrote about ‘handing one another along?’ I asked sweetly. Having studied his work in her class, it was a fully appropriate question, I thought. She was less amused.

One American literature professor stood out for me—I took many classes with him during my time at Mr Jefferson’s University—smart, demanding, a man who knew how to teach—in an institution that, frankly, put more emphasis on research and publishing than teaching. But this professor was a shining light, sure to get tenure. I loved his classes—funny, hard, smart. I would use the word “brilliant,” but you and I both know that word is taken.

I did well there, made all As my first year, and was named a DuPont Scholar that January. I noticed a difference in how the old guard treated me afterwards, as if I had emerged from the swamp of first year to become a Real Possibility for the Ph.D. program. It was a culture built on achievement and a department in which—quite literally—a “B” was equal to a “D” and even an “A-“ was nothing to write home about.

Those were heady days. My best friend there, Ken, used to crack me up with his Marlon Brando “On the Waterfront” impersonation: “I could-a been a critical theorist,” he would wail as we worked on papers that very nearly sucked all the life out of Melville and Eliot and Yeats.

My biggest learning there began on the evening of February 28, 1983, the night of the last M*A*S*H episode. I lived in Tucker Dorm at the time and those of us in the dorm had planned a party in the basement to watch the two-hour finale together.

Just as the episode started, my roommate ran down the stairs.

“Patti, your professor is on the phone.”

“What?” I shouted across the room. “Who?”

“American Lit,” she said as she ran up the stairs. “Says he needs to talk to you.”

What on earth? I couldn’t imagine. I had taken a lot of classes with him and never had he called me. Was something wrong with my last paper?

I ran up the three flights of stairs, two stairs at a time. Of course, that would make my heart explode if I did it now, but it seemed easy at the time.

I was nervous when Pat handed me the phone.

“Uh, hi?” I said.

“Hi Patti,” he said.

He was, he said, just listening to music and having a nice glass of wine and wondered if I’d like to come over.

Blink.

I’m sure I must have cocked my head to one side in wonderment. I felt nervous and slightly adult and flattered in a confused kind of way. So nice of him to think of me! Perhaps he wanted to talk about my thesis, then in its developmental (i.e., undone) stage.

“Oh, thanks,” I said, “but we’re all having a party here in the dorm to watch the last episode of MASH, so I can’t. Thanks, though.”

Pat stood watching. “What did he want?” she asked.

I explained his invitation, saying, “well, maybe he’s just lonely—I mean, his wife works out of town during the week, so maybe he’s just lonely.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly, “he’s lonely all right.”

I, evidently, had cornered the market on naïve.

I went back down three flights of stairs to rejoin the party.

Less than 20 minutes later, she came back down (this was in the Stone Age before cell phones). He was on the phone again, this time more insistent. I declined again, and went back down.

This happened, no exaggeration, a total of 21 times. Each time his words were more slurred, what he was suggesting we might do was less innocent, his tone more demanding.

“I’ll pick you up,” he said. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes. Meet me out front.”

“It, um, it really doesn’t seem like you should be driving…”

And so it went.

There is a fine line between naive and not, between politely declining and flat out refusing. My roommate got to that line before I did. At call number 11, she stopped coming down to tell me. At call number 13, she threatened to call the R.A. in our dorm if he didn’t stop calling. At call 17, she threatened to call campus security. And at call 21, she unplugged the phone.

I called his office the next morning. “Can I come over and talk with you?” I asked, nervously. “Sure,” he said loudly. “I’ll be there for an hour or so before class.”

When I got there, he motioned for us to walk outside. I can still vividly remember the sunlight on the steps, the stillness of the chilly day, the way we both sat facing the same direction like passengers on a bus.

“I’m a little uncomfortable about what happened last night,” I started, so nervous I could barely speak the words.

His response sounded like a large metal door closing, shutting me off from all I knew before, bringing me to a realization of what it is to have power, and what it is not to have it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said calmly.

"Your calls, inviting me over," I stammered.

“I was just grading some papers and asked you if you wanted to come over. That’s all,” he said.

“But you called 21 times—I think there was more to it, and since I’m still in your class, it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Patti, I'm shocked and disappointed. You are reading way too much into this,” he said calmly. “I’m flattered that you find me attractive, but that’s absolutely not what happened. You really need to think twice before accusing someone of something so outlandish."

You are, he was saying to me, the one with the problem. You are, he was saying to me, the one who is misinterpreting an innocent invitation. Poor Patti, he was saying to me.

My face went instantly hot. I knew in an instant: This is what power really is. The power to deny the whole reality of someone else.

This is what it must feel like when a white person says to a person of color, “you’re just overreacting. That wasn’t a racist joke.”

The pavement was swept out from under my feet in that one fell swoop, taking me on a ride of anger, self-doubt, and—ultimately—of impotence. There was nothing I could do in the face of his blank denial. He was the one in power, not me. Or that’s how it felt at the time.

Did I read too much into his 21 increasingly drunk phone calls? It is so easy for us to doubt our own perceptions, particularly when our “superiors” tell us it is not so. It is so easy to have others place doubt in us, to suck away all the power and hold it themselves.

I knew, in that hot-faced, hollow moment, that he had the power, that he had used it by telling me I was the one with the wrong intentions. You are the one reading into this what you wanted to have happen. It is not so, he was saying. I am the innocent one, he was saying.

On my next paper in his class, I got my first “B” at The University. I made an appointment to see him about it.

I felt I was trying to climb a glass, sheer wall, a slippery slope of denial, one without any crevices for a toehold. He couldn’t admit my grade was connected to an event he denied had happened, now could he?

Maybe, I now realize, this was less about him, and more about me. What can we do in such a situation but stand true to what we know to be right? He might win in the smallest definition of winning, but I would know. And sometimes knowing trumps winning. In the long-run, if not in the short-term. At the time, I didn’t know any of that. I just knew, in some ineffable way, that I had learned something terrible about human nature.

My dorm R.A. happened to be a shining star in the same department. After I left The University, he sent me a note, telling me of the professor’s departure. “He was ‘let go,’” he wrote. “Asked to leave.” Turns out, he had a reputation for exactly what he said he didn’t do to me.

A brilliant addition to The University, he was nevertheless denied tenure. Not because he hadn’t written his “tenure book,” but because he had finally taken it too far, finally going after 18-year-old undergrads when all the grad students had said either yes or no.

37days Do it Now Challenge

I have puzzled over the lesson that I would pass along to my two daughters from this story—is it to be less naïve? No, I don’t think I would have changed my naivete for the world. Hold on to your naivete. It will open great possibilities where others might have shut them out, or down.

Perhaps the lesson is to hold to your own truth even when others deny it. Perhaps it is to give up your attachment to being right, to winning, while still standing tall, speaking up, a delicate balance.

Life is hierarchical. There are always people who assume positions of power over us. Even in that structure, don’t let others take away your power. Trust yourself. Don’t let a grade or a promotion stop you from telling your truth. Tell people when they are making you uncomfortable, ask them to clarify their intentions, speak up. Even in their denial, they will know. And, after all, it is themselves they must sleep with at night, not you.

From such a situation, it appears, you can only emerge with your dignity or with revenge. And since, as John Southard has said, the only people with whom we need to get even are those people who have helped us, let’s choose dignity, our own self respect.

Sometimes, honestly, truthfully, after all is said and done, you need to simply reach down and unplug the phone.

And perhaps we should ask ourselves how often we negate someone else's reality. In what ways do we tell others that their reality isn't so?

Comments

[caro]

This inspires me to have a conversation I've been putting off...not the same situation, but the same sort of power and denial from the person I need to confront. "It is themselves they must sleep with at night, not you." That did it for me. Thanks.

[Rick]

There is such a thing as naiveté accompanied by open eyes and mind.

You did not lose your passion for seeing the best in someone first, even after events which have transpired in your own life which, for a less-determined soul, might well have killed any hope for goodness in people altogether.

So, naiveté gets a different name as one moves through the age of callow youth into adulthood. Faith, or hope, or an indefatigable will holding to a promising image of humanity regardless of the evidence sometimes seen? Call it whatever you like. You have it, Patti.

It's one of the reasons I keep coming back here: your reminders of just how much good we can do if we keep our heads up and arms open.

Thanks, Patti.

[chad alice hagen]

Hey Ho Patty,

Just a note about the copy of your website that comes through the email. Apparently all the '''-s are reading as ????? making it increasingly harder to figure out what the message is. It has been doing this for a while but I was too lazy to write. Now I am powered up with coffee. I get another blog from the same'blog company' as your's and there is no problem with the '/????? transposition.

yers in easier reading,
chad alice hagen

[brandi]

dear god, this post sucked the life out of me. Oh how I gave my power away to that 'one' that kept insisting I was the one with the problem. You know what? He's long gone but I am effing taking my power back.

[Rose]

Just a note to inform you that, once again, your e-mail is there, but there is no body and no message. It did that you a month and suddenly last week started back and today in the May 5th message there is nothing there. Can this be fixed?

[Sally]

I think the word "dignity" is key. Keep your own dignity, act in a way that you can live with, and don't let those who think they have real power (they don't really, do they?) make you sway. You acted with dignity, standing up to his suggestions and not compromising yourself. I worked in a pharmacy as my first "real" job -- the space behind the counter was tight, the pharmacist was an old lech. I shrugged off his lasciviousness, and when he challenged me to a tennis match, I beat him soundly.

[Ann Moore]

Hi Patti:

Ouch. I had filed that chapter away a long time ago. We held sexual harassment workshops for our Profs..guess who was the first one at the door? We poked further to find that more than 45% of our science PhD females abandoned ship before earning their degree. It turns out living and working in remote field settings with male profs was not all about pedagogical development.

[Susan]

Your work continues to shape me own, Patti.
Denial spoken aloud is interesting to compare to denial even to consider a thought, a person, an identity. Thanks!

[Becky]

I've learned to be extremely forward in situations like this. Uncomfortably so. I have outwardly asked an older coworker who was always to close to me, "Why are you always so close to me? You need to keep your own space and if your body 'happens' to brush mine one more time I am reporting you. It is not appropriate and I won't put up with it."

He did much the same as you said, Blowing it off, creating his own reality.

But let me tell ya. He never touched me or got to close again.

[Frivolitea]

Great post!

[mary Jane]

Bless your heart and your words for they have both helped me today to cope with a 20 year relationship I am letting go... to understand in a round about way where a pure heart and skewed power shoot it out at the OK corral and only flowers are left to bloom in the desert night...

[t]

Cesar Chavez was not a mother.

(responding to the quote)

OK, now I can read the entry.

[t]

Teach your daughters that they can go to that professors superior with their B paper and the RA and the girl who answered the phone and had to unplug it
and DEMAND that the grade be reviewed and changed in fairness.
You can tell your daughters to defend themselves verbally.
You can send your daughters to self defense courses led by and for women that teach us to YELL, "NOOOOOOOOO!"
so that we can get over our conditioned, "yes, yes yes yes" responses.
You can teach them to use that first line of defense and follow it up if necessary by going to the immediate authority- and continuing until the problem is solved. Teach them to physically defend themselves so they are less afraid in situations that generations past wouldn't allow themselves to think of.
You ca take the course with them.
Women suffered and paved the way before us so that we can take these courses and defend ourselves.