Memory, p.6
Memory, page 6
“Groomed,” Ryan supplied.
Steve nodded. “Often groomed younger men to be soldiers and sex was a part of that. Boys.”
“Yes, younger than we’d find acceptable today,” Ryan agreed.
“But isn’t that the right term for what the student government leaders think you’re doing?”
Ryan looked at him incredulously. Saw that he was serious.
“OK,” Ryan said, a bit pissed. “Let’s walk through this a bit. First. They aren’t being descriptive. They’re accusing me of being a sexual predator. Or McShane being a sexual predator. But here’s the thing, Steve. How old do you think Will is?”
“Twenty-one or 22?”
“So hardly the pre-adolescent that the Greeks groomed,” Ryan pointed out. “And I’m 25, three years older than he is. Until April, I was a student just like him. So even if I was trying to seduce him last term — I wasn’t, because he’s straight — but even if I was, what would be the problem?”
Steve opened his mouth to say something then reconsidered. “If it were a condition of his advancement?”
“I wasn’t in the chain of command at the time, and the Media Board hires the EIC,” Ryan said. He was getting madder about this. “So, their accusations are homophobic and quite frankly offensive and defamatory. And the fact that you can’t see that pisses me off.”
Steve said nothing.
“Second lesson in this master class of sexual inclusivity,” Ryan said. “How many male professors leave their wives at 40 and marry a student 20 years younger? And it’s shrugged off as a midlife crisis?”
“Besides McShane, you mean?” Steve interjected sarcastically.
“Abigail McShane is the same age as her husband; they’ve been married for nearly 40 years,” Ryan said, puzzled.
“Really?” Planck sounded startled. “I would have thought she was in her 40s.”
Ryan laughed, momentarily diverted from his anger. “I’ll tell her that, she’ll appreciate the compliment. But back to the topic — do you get all upset about ‘grooming’ with those professors? And let’s face it, it’s common. And it’s sexual harassment. How many of the cases that went before the Judicial Code Committee were about faculty sexually harassing their female students? They’re Will’s age. You get all up in arms about them?”
He was silent.
“So, third lesson. Let’s get to McGee. McShane told you a bit of my story?”
“Yes,” Steve admitted.
“So, here’s a pedophile, teaching in the Honors College for decades, who is known for his classes where only young white men are admitted. You want to tell me he wasn’t grooming any of them?” Ryan said hotly. “Just what do you think grooming is?”
Steve looked sick. Ryan kept walking. Stomping really.
“But people looked the other way or called it mentoring. It’s pretty prevalent in the Honors College culture actually,” Ryan said. “They all want to be English dons from the Middle Ages with their coterie of acolytes. That’s grooming, Steve.”
He took a deep breath, let it out. “Next lesson: Eugene Cathcart. You knew his history, you’re the one who told it to Will after Hill House.”
“Probably shouldn’t have,” Steve admitted. “But I thought he deserved to know.”
“But you knew when Eugene came here, didn’t you? Part of his records from his previous institution. Put him on a watch list?” Ryan was guessing, but he was pretty sure that was how it worked.
“How did you...? Yes,” he admitted.
“So, here’s this dangerously unstable young man, who finds McGee as a mentor and falls into McGee’s influence. McGee is losing it because he’s terrified I’m going to remember him as a pedophile, and he’s seeking to discredit me. Hell, I don’t know what he wanted, but he’s creating a weapon out of Eugene Cathcart, and no one intervened. Even though you in Student Affairs knew, you knew, Eugene was unstable. Instead? You maneuvered to get him on the Media Board — our oversight board — knowing full-well that McGee has applied as well.” Ryan could hear his words tumbling over themselves, and he willed himself to slow down.
“So, at some point winter term,” he said slower, “Cathcart transfers his fixation from McGee to Davis. Who also grooms him? I mean, what else would you call it? Davis uses him as a weapon against me, against Will, against EWN. Really against McShane, I suppose. Were there protests? Accusations of pederasty? I don’t know if there was sexual grooming, as well, but really? That would have been the least of the damage that was being done to an unstable young man.”
Ryan choked up a bit. “Last lesson. What happened at Hill House? I’ve seen the police report that your students pass around and snigger about. Snigger about torture, Steve. Think about that. It says sex scene, so let me tell what that looked like. Davis had found himself a new weapon, a man from my own past, and they staged a BDSM scene. When I got there, they’d posed Will in a kneeling-slave position in the display circle. Davis and Jake were seated in the chairs doms use to command the scene. And kneeling at Davis’s feet was Eugene Cathcart — kneeling as Davis’s submissive.”
Ryan swallowed and grimly continued, “So if you ask Will about the scene, he’ll describe it as ‘they forced us to make out’.” Ryan laughed. It sounded harsh even to his own ears, and he saw Planck wince. “He’s such an innocent, and he makes it sound innocent. Afterwards, he was too in shock about shooting Davis to be particularly bothered by the ‘making out’. We’ve had more conversations since as he’s worked through it. But that’s not a complete description. Jake and Davis forced me to teach Will how to arouse and please a man and to make Will experience male-male arousal. And if I didn’t? They were going to put Will on that wall, and he’d have lash marks instead of me.”
He considered that. “Probably they would have gotten around to lashing me too,” he conceded.
“So, you tell me. How are you so blinded by your homophobia that you didn’t see the real monsters? And you allow your students to target me, as a student, who they thought might be having sex with another student? And allowed this malicious, rampant gossip to go unchecked?”
“I’m not homophobic!” Steve Planck protested.
“Of course, you are,” Ryan said disgustedly. “Just as all white people have racist attitudes. They’ve absorbed them from the culture. You and all the other straight men on this campus are homophobic — it ranges from blatant to unconscious — but it’s there. And that’s the underlying motive of why that accusation of pederasty — sometimes they’ll use the word boytoy — works as an ugly weapon against me, Will, McShane, even EWN. Until you come to grips with why you looked the other way, why you didn’t even see this other stuff, you can’t fix the hate that’s spreading through the exec branch of student government. So, you can just fuck off, Steve. Because I’m done. Done with all this fucking shit!”
Ryan veered off and started west at an easy lope.
“Ryan, wait!” Steve called.
Ryan didn’t even look back. He heard someone to his right, and he whirled defensively.
“Easy bro,” Cage said quietly. “I heard. Come on, let’s go for a run.”
“You stalking me, too?” Ryan fell into a pace beside him.
“No, actually, I was out for a run to clear my own head,” he said. “I heard your voice and was going to ask you if you wanted to go along, and then....” He shrugged.
They ran down the path toward the waterfront. Ryan tried to gain some composure. “Why are you needing to clear your head?” he asked at last.
Cage was silent for a bit. “I was flattered when OPB offered me a job,” he said. “I didn’t really think through what it was going to be like. They want more diversity. So, they hire me, a Black videographer who has already started to make a name for himself. Win-win, right? But they don’t want a Black man, not really, they want a man who looks Black, but thinks and acts just like them. And if I don’t? Then I’m letting my background — read being Black — interfere with my objectivity.”
Ryan winced. Objectivity was such a loaded word, and EWN’s Death of a Downtown project demonstrated that yet again. Objectivity was subjective. Who you were and where you came from determined what you saw and how you reported it.
“What are you going to do?” Ryan asked as they ran along the waterfront. He knew this route. He thought of it as ‘Cage’s claiming of the city’ route. Cage ran it to remind himself that this city belonged to him; in all of its strengths and its failings — and in its weirdness — Portland was his.
“I don’t know,” Cage admitted. “I’m learning a lot, Ryan. My techniques and skills are improving. I love the work. But I’m also realizing that if they have their way, I’ll not be a Black man when they’re satisfied. I’ll be just like them. And they’ll do it as well-meaning liberals, who just want me to fit in and succeed in this business.”
Ryan nodded. “Lots more running in both our futures then,” he said with an unamused laugh.
“Yeah,” Cage said.
They were at Powell’s Books, now. Ryan stopped, attracted by the bright lights. A bar door opened, and he could hear the laughter of the crowd inside.
“Ryan?” Cage asked with concern.
“You go on,” he said. “I’m going to catch the bus home from here.”
“You sure?”
Ryan nodded. “We can run this loop every night, if you need it,” he promised. “But I left an unfinished conversation with Teresa, and I should head home.”
“Yeah, I’ve got one of those kinds of conversations waiting at home, too,” Cage muttered. “I’ll call.”
Ryan watched his friend head off, and he turned toward the Pearl District, to the bars and the music. The places he’d once felt at home in — Embers, Satyricon — had closed and wouldn’t be reopening. But there were plenty of other venues.
He looked down at his clothes and frowned. Why was he wearing this for a night on the town? Well, it was easily fixed — most problems could be fixed with a credit card and a confident smile. A store that catered to the kink crowd was right on the edge of the Pearl. He went inside. New black boots, not the highest quality, but he had those at home. These would do. A pair of the black trousers he favored, and a black T-shirt cut to reveal the dragon tattoo that curved up over his shoulder and presided over a sleeve of a Chinese garden. And a nipple ring, but that wasn’t on display. Yet, he thought with a grin.
“Been a long time since I’ve seen you in here,” the clerk said as he ran his card.
Ryan smiled politely. Hadn’t been that long, he thought, had it? Well, COVID, so yeah, he guessed it had been. “Where is the scene these days?” he asked. “Post-COVID?”
He was wearing the new clothes, and he shoved his sweats into his backpack. Not very classy to have a backpack, he thought. But it’s black. Maybe people will just see it as a kit? He shrugged.
The clerk handed him his card back. “Try Shake or the Stag. You’ll find people you know at either.”
“Thanks, man,” Ryan said. He walked out, heading in that direction. But really, it was way too early for either, he thought, as he wandered through the Pearl District, a collection of trendy stores and old-time hole-in-the-wall joints, nestled among the brick warehouses, many of them designed by the same guy who had designed the EWN building in the ‘40s, he thought with amusement. He started to go into one bar and get a drink to kick off the evening but turned away. He wanted to dance, he thought, not drink. Dance.
Eventually, he saw Shake, a newer dance bar, and he paid the cover, went inside, checked his kit. He watched the dancing for a bit, saw a woman who reminded him of someone, a small woman with brown hair, but he couldn’t put a name to her, and her face went back into his memory vault. But he asked that woman to dance and then another.
A woman mentioned a private party, did he want to go? And he did, but.... He hesitated and shook his head. Dance. Dancing was OK, someone had told him that. And massage and hugs. And touch football. He snorted. He didn’t think he’d ever played touch football, not even as a child. Not that he could remember anyway.
He shied away from that thought — where had touch football come from? Someone else, that was for sure. But? Dancing was OK.
So, he danced some more. And when the club closed, he got his kit back, and wandered north; there was a place there that would always take him in. He didn’t remember why he knew that, but he did.
He found the L-shaped warehouse and hesitated. It was late, really late, to go banging on people’s doors, he thought doubtfully. He sat on the loading dock, letting his legs dangle. He smiled at the fake palm in the corner, planted no less, in a big pot.
A man came out. A big man, Mexican American, Ryan thought. “Ryan?” he said.
He nodded. Yes, he was Ryan. “I am so lost,” he whispered.
The man sat down beside him. “You’re not lost; you’re here,” he said. “And you will always have a place here.”
Ryan’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t remember,” he said. “I can’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
Well that’s a dumb question, Ryan thought with an eyeroll. If he knew that, he’d remember, wouldn’t he? The picture of a woman flashed into his mind, and then it was gone again. Damn wonky memory, he thought savagely.
“Teresa!” he shouted. That’s what he needed to remember. She said if all he could remember was her name, he should shout it and she would come.
The man beside him looked at him for a moment. Ryan couldn’t remember his name. It would come to him, eventually. Or not. But he remembered that he trusted him. And for now, that would do. The man pulled out his phone and typed something. A text, Ryan guessed.
“Who are you texting?” Ryan said.
“Teresa,” he said. “That’s who you wanted, right?”
“Oh,” he said, and subsided. That made sense, he thought. Teresa would have to hear him before she could come.
“Yes,” he said. “Teresa.”
Chapter 7
7 P.M., MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2021, Portland State University campus — Steve Planck watched Ryan walk away, troubled.
Shit, he thought, now I really have fucked up. Seemed like he’d been making a series of errors like this lately. He started to go home, and then shook his head, and went to his office. He didn’t want his wife to overhear this call.
“McShane.” The voice said. Steve almost smiled. Older people would never get used to caller ID that rendered identifying yourself to a caller obsolete.
“It’s Steve Planck,” he said anyway. “I seem to start all of our conversations this way, but this time? I have really fucked up.”
He recounted the conversation.
McShane was silent for a moment. “He’s not wrong,” he said at last. “In fact, I’d say he nailed it. Nailed what’s wrong with a lot of academic culture, in one relatively short lecture. I almost wish you’d taped it.”
Steve swallowed. “I did, or at least most of it,” he admitted. “I often do with students when a conversation veers off into uncharted waters. In case of accusations later. Just habit. But you think he’s right? That it’s all rooted in homophobia?”
“You don’t? Remember when you said you were concerned the rumors might be true because Will is so innocent?”
“I was,” Planck said, somewhat defensively.
“And there it is — exactly what Ryan was trying to point out,” McShane said. “I didn’t think of it until later, because I’ve got my own ‘latent homophobia issues’ to combat. But Steve, Will is at least 21. Do you expect him to remain innocent until he marries?”
Planck started to say something, then he was silent.
“So, in the six years that Ryan Matthews was a student here, and according to the gossip, a major player, was there ever a harassment allegation made to the Judicial Code Committee against him?”
“No,” Planck said slowly.
“Any rumor that he’s ever coerced someone — before this crap in student government?”
“No.”
“So, you’re concerned Will might lose his innocence with Ryan?” McShane pressed on. “Why?”
Planck didn’t respond. McShane could almost feel him thinking.
“The irony is — if I’m reading the teasing right in their Zoom meetings — Will was propositioned by a staff member and is happily losing his ‘innocence,’” McShane said, and laugh a bit. “Are you concerned? And you know who is having a relationship with someone he supervises? Will is. Are you concerned about that? No? So, tell me how your concern isn’t tinged with homophobia?”
“Point taken,” he said with a sigh.
“And then let’s talk about student government. Try and tell me their gossip is out of concern for Will? The man they kidnapped and dosed with roofies? Tell me the gossip and the sniggering pederast comments aren’t malicious?”
“No, we know they’re malicious.”
“His comparison of homophobia to racism? That’s straight out of intersectionality theory, isn’t it?” McShane pursued.
Steve Planck was silent. “Yes,” he said finally.
“I kind of envy you,” McShane said. “You got quite a schooling there, succinctly, and for free. You might want to give his lessons some thought.”
Planck nodded slowly. He thought he’d probably be haunted by the words until he did. “But about Ryan,” he said finally. “The reason I called? He was not in a good place when he left. I couldn’t find him.”
McShane sighed. “I’ll call his wife,” he said. “Or, rather, I’ll have my wife reach out. She’s better with people. And we have breakfast scheduled in the morning, right? 8 a.m. in my dining room.”
“Yes,” Planck said, feeling better now that Ryan was McShane’s problem.
“But Steve? You need to listen to that tape, and ask yourself, is he wrong?”
He hung up. Steve Planck sat in his silent office in the dark. And then he pressed play on the recording.
Across town, McShane hung up and swore. Planck should have given some thought to what he might be putting Ryan through with that blasted question. It wasn’t that he didn’t know! He’d told him!
