The Conclusion (
Helen's Concerto) is coming along nicely, but if I spend as much time on it as I should, it will take ages. I'll probably end up compromising, and spending
some time cleaning it up, but publish it with some significant flaws, and proceed to tinker with it over a year or two (but of course, you would automatically have access to those updates on
Smashwords.)
The main problem, of course, is that this Conclusion does draw upon numerous characters who knew Helen at one time or another. Some of the most delicious characters only appear in a single episode, or not in
any published episode. Or, I was too chicken to spell out what happened in detail, and only include a sanitized version of the story; this is what happened in the (actually, still unpublished!)
Helen Teaches Calculus. That story has a lot of explicit sex, and I was reluctant to put it up for that reason. At this point, I wanted Helen to take the blame for the split between Helen and Rain, because Helen was becoming too much of a nice person. Unfortunately, in some ways,
Helen Teaches Calculus pushes Helen too far in the
not nice direction, just as
Flowershop Girl does.
As I write this Conclusion though,
Calculus becomes important for yet another reason. The main character, other than Helen, in that episode is a student called
Angie. Helen comes dangerously close to having sex with a student, which is something no professor wants to have happen. But Angie, and another character, Stephanie Robbins, (who appears in
Sharon Vuehl) become important in the conclusion, and unless I include the entire
Calculus episode in the Conclusion, poor Angie would be left to bear too much of a responsibility in the conclusion, and make the whole thing less plausible, and dramatically weak.
(Some feeble-minded professors do have sexual relationships with their students,
most professors are tempted, but have the strength of character to resist. Helen does resist, but it is a close run thing, to quote someone whose name I forget.) I hate the thought that some readers might jump at the conclusion that Helen
did have a sexual relationship with a student, or that I
wanted Helen to have a sexual relationship with a student, or that Professors
often have sexual relationships with students. If I ever do publish the
Calculus episode, you would have some insight into the whole issue of faculty-student romantic entanglements, and if not an objective perspective, at least
my perspective on the issue.
I did say that many professors are tempted, but have the strength to resist. That last is hard to decide one way or another. I, for one, was never approached inappropriately by any professor. But of course, I was no great beauty; would a professor stalk you if you were a babe?
Of course, Helen is
suspected of sexual harassment, right after
Helga, a parody movie in which the main character,
Helga, (played by Helen) has an affair with another woman. If Helen is a lesbian in the movie, and if she is a confessed lesbian anyway,
she is probably harassing her students, the reasoning went.
This is why it is
so important that gay and lesbian rights be given: to engage in sex appropriately, to marry, to be allowed to have all reasonable rights that straight people have. The vast majority of horror stories that have been discovered with sexual harassment have a
closet homosexual, or a closet sexual predator at the center of it, such as an In-the-closet teacher, or a priest who is required to be celibate.
I put into Helen's mouth what I feel about the whole issue.
It was the last couple of weeks of classes. The President had just had a press conference at which he had, with barely restrained anger, said that Westfield was an excellent institution, and that he deplored the baseless accusations that were being made (against the school, and against Dr. Helen Nordstrom).
Helen was persuaded to appear on a news interview. Was she a lesbian? Yes, she said; she was bisexual. Was she a threat to her students? Absolutely not, she said. She had never approached a student sexually.
Had she ever had sex with a student?
Helen had thought for a while.
“If it ultimately helps the College and the students,” she said with a tight smile, “I think I could steel myself to answer questions that are a little more invasive than is customary. But …”
“Dr. Nordstrom, please; I want to make it clear that I don’t want to …”
“Let me finish,” Helen interrupted. “The students come first, and then the College, and then other lesbians and homosexuals out there in my position. The more it becomes normal to cross-examine a person like me about my relationships, the more it seems as though we’re perverts and predators. There’s always a temptation for a teacher to become emotionally involved with her students. Teaching is an invasive thing, a loving thing. I sometimes hug my students—when they’re comfortable with it. But that’s not sex.
“Now, I’m comfortable making the following statement: I have never had a sexual relationship with any student whom I was teaching. I think any college professor should be able to say that. To have such a relationship is a betrayal of trust. But I would refuse to answer a more general question about my sexual habits on principle. I don’t see myself as a threat to any institution, and I invite you to ask anyone, my friends, my students, my enemies. Anyone at all. Every relationship I have had has been based on mutual respect and love. I have never forced myself on anyone!”
The interviewer nodded, letting Helen wipe her eyes.
Teaching
is a loving thing. It is
an invasive thing. After all, you're trying to persuade your students into thinking in unfamiliar ways, and in more senior classes, these ways, these thought-patterns, might be far removed from those the student came in with, and so
it is invasive, but of course, in a benign way. (Some professors are probably guilty of
enjoying this invasion, but one hopes that there are few such professors, and one hopes that his or her colleagues soon straighten him or her out quickly.) In college and university, ideally, professors engage in this sort of earnest persuasion because they love their subject, and because they are convinced that their perspective is the most productive one for their students. (Of course, this is a problem in politics and sociology, because often parents do not share the same political or social philosophy as the professor does, as we have seen above!)
I must make clear that I did not deliberately set out to write these stories in this way, with the conscious aim of educating my readers; but having been a teacher myself, I sometimes agonize over the fact that students and their parents, may not understand my motivations.
Why does Miss Brown teach
this material, and
in this way? Why does she look so unhinged sometimes? Ideas matter to teachers, (at least, they
should,) and often it is not possible to present the ideas as if the teachers were automatons. I addressed some of these ideas in an as yet unpublished story called
Emily, which I might never publish; it is a little too autobiographical!
Well, the problem with Angie Connors and Stephanie Robbins illustrate the problems I have to deal with in almost every page of the conclusion! But I'm about two-thirds of the way through.
Kay Hemlock Brown
