A LADY'S MAN, REMEMBERED

Years ago, in Kansas, there was a guy I used to envy, a big tall, loose-limbed guy named Bruce who was a basketball player in high school and who became an artist.

I heard years later that he started a bagpipe band that used to march in the desert. I have a painting by him, hanging in my living room. I've loved it for years.

All in all, Bruce was a hell of a guy. Or so I thought.

Bruce was a lady's man, extraordinaire. He married the most beautiful girl in school. We used to call her The Fox, because she was so lovely.

A few years ago, Bruce died, and one of our mutual friends went to the funeral. Bruce taught at a major university, and several of his female students were there. They said they liked him, and he was a good teacher, but the girls had to sleep with him to get an "A." It was disgusting, they said.

When I first heard that, I said, reflexively, I hope that isn't true. But thinking about it some more, I imagine it was true. Why would they lie, at a time like that?

And, years ago, Bruce had told me he had affairs with other women. Apparently, he couldn't resist them. Sounded like he didn't try.

Here are my questions: How should I remember Bruce, as a good guy, or a disgusting lech? Should we forgive Bruce? Or not? Was he the man I thought he was, or a user of women, a man who degraded his own students?

One of my beliefs that I used to tell my own students is this: If you want to be a man, part of your job is to protect women, even from your own worst impulses. And all the time, not just when it is convenient.

Yes, we men are attracted to women. We love the way they look and smell and feel. We love their voices and their touch. And yes, we love sex. And yes, there is even a part of us that would like to ride through enemy villages like Genghis Khan, and kill the men, and capture the women and use them for our pleasure.

But it is one thing to have affairs and another to get sex through power. The use of power isn't civilized, and it doesn't treat women as equals, and it doesn't protect them, like I believe we should.

So, no, I'm sorry to say, my memory of Bruce is tarnished. If these stories are true, and I think they are, Bruce didn't do what I believe every man should do.

It wasn't so much the cheating that was wrong. Of course, he must have cheated on his wife, The Fox. It was abuse of his power as a teacher. What he did amounted to coercion, which is a kind of rape, I believe.

He gave in to his own worst instincts. I have to say, as a teacher, I have never done that. It is a line I would not cross: Here's how you get an "A," baby. No, it's too disgusting. 

I still admire that painting, but sometimes when I look at it, I think about his students, and I feel sorry for them, and for him.

Bruce didn't live up to my image of him, but I don't know how much of that is his fault and how much is my own. Perhaps I formed my image too quickly. Lots of us do that.

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle