Payback 102 (Fiction)

By Mark Lax

It meandered in, as gossip does in a small community. The small community was a commuter college and its inevitable receptacle of dirt a horseshoe shaped enclosed glass space in the middle of the west hallway—the offices of the student newspaper. The news bit in question was perhaps ten hours old, and the college day an hour old, when the first whiffs of detail began to trickle in.

Information began to compile in cafeteria conversations collected. Then there was the offhand comment from a professor in class: “The Student Council is a bloated inbred clique in the first place. All they do is spend money on themselves. And look at how they spend it. ”

To back up, the Student Council was arguably an elected body. Students who chose to vote elected students who chose to run. The Council’s basic job was to spend what the college collected as a mandatory ‘activity fee.’ This fee was to be used on activities, generally sponsored by student clubs. The problem was this is commuter college, so very few of the students had time to join any clubs. So there weren’t that many clubs to sponsor events. Hence the Student Council had taken it upon itself to run events without actual club sponsors. To help the Student Council put on these events, they formed a club called the Student Advisory Board. The Board had all the same members as the Student Council plus people who had run for the Student Council and lost, friends and relatives of members and a few amiable hangers on, some of whom probably were not students. The whole pack numbered about forty.

(Technically the Student Advisory Board was supposed to adjudicate packing fines and library fees contested by members of the student body. How it came to include the members of the council itself and their appointed friends, and came to be a club on its own, was a mystery of college history. The way it actually worked was that the Student Council planned the events and then those persons who were mere Advisory Board members did all the chair setting and paper hanging. )

Objectively they seemed well meaning folks, although they had a one track mind as far as events were concerned. This happy faction foisted three dances a semester on the student body. Two of these dances were held at a location remote from the college. And one of these dances was a full formal. About half of the student activity fee was consumed on these events.

Unfortunately these forty usually well dressed people—the Student Council and the Student Advisory Board were nattily indistinguishable from each other—comprised about 90% of the attendees at their dances. Not that I knew this personally, but students who had the chance to drop in on these parties reported being under the impression that they were private affairs---ones to which they were most distinctly not invited.

That was probably just a bad impression. Or a series of bad impressions. Sadly, making bad impressions is what the Council seemed to do best. When they were seen at all, it was usually in that fishbowl of an office of theirs right off the cafeteria. There they would mass in a conspiratorial lump, quoting Ayn Rand or Victor Davis Hanson at each other. Cursed be the lowly student who strayed into their area (it was marked Student Council on the door) thinking that it was an extension of the cafeteria, for they would be promptly shouted out.

That said, none of this really mattered to the average commuter college student. Most students teleported through the cycles of work, school and sleep—never forming an opinion on the college’s culture simply because they did not have the time to become aware of it. As a reporter for the student paper, I considered these people my bread and butter readers. I felt it was my job to compress that portion of the college experience that they didn’t have time for into quick readable bits. Rules changes, fee increases, the comings and goings of staff, new classes, new equipment, new hours for the day care center, college recruiter meetings, the occasional sports team score—those were my A-list topics. The dances being private affairs, the Student Council being a bunch of Republican politician wannabe bores—that was not news. Frankly, they would have to set themselves on fire before I wasted a drop of student subsidized ink recounting their shenanigans.

Or they could have done what they did. Which I could not ignore. No one in my place would have been able to ignore it.

The details compiled splat by splat. A hotel room destroyed in drunken violence. A hotel room paid for with student activity funds. A television broken. Police called—by the Council’s own faculty advisor. One drunken Republican intentionally vomiting into the open mouth of another passed out drunken Republican. A television thrown into a full bathtub. The faculty advisor on the receiving end of blows as she attempted to break up a fist fight between a Social Darwinist and a Libertarian. All of this in the immediate aftermath of the full formal dress dance. (FULL FORMAL DRESS DANCE FIASCO!) Although not quite immolation, it could not be ignored.

By 10:00 AM my nicotine drenched fingers had the story plucked out on the IBM Selectric. After carefully checking that I had the names of all of the parties spelled right, I handed it over to the beatnik who had found a wormhole back in 1950 and was now acting as our editor today in 1984. He took my piece in his pudgy hands and looked it over in that rat-eyed, face full of lunchmeat way of his and then said “Make sure you have all of the names spelled right.”

Of at least that I was sure, and said so. He then directed “Get some confirmation on this with their faculty advisor.”

Given that the entire piece had taken me ten minutes to research—eight of them on getting the names of the parties involved spelled right—I could hardly refuse expending this one last calorie on actual reporting work. So off I trudged to the tucked away on the second floor of the library office of Ms. Volt, the Student Council’s faculty advisor.

I caught her with her office door open. She had just completed a phone call, which from the tone of her voice sounded routine. She in no way looked as though she had been in any sort of altercation. Nor did she seem flustered in any way. I was afraid I was about to change that.

Ms. Volt was a thin, sandy haired woman, not much older than the typical student. Her primary way of differentiating herself from the student body (making herself look older) was to dress in ultra professional skirt suits of the Fall black and brown kind. (Note: I was never the fashion reporter.) Her conduct was that type of boosterish only an academic who doesn’t teach class can really pull off. Moreover, she was some sort of fast tracker admin, having gone from being in charge of the women manning the phones in admissions to also being in charge of the student aid department as well as part of the library. Word had it Dean of Something was to be added to her portfolio shortly.

I had run into this woman numerous times. She had been a source for my article on the academic cluster system. (Which I screwed up. I had no idea the faculty hated the cluster system.*) During her last promotion I had taken her official Year Book picture. The Year Book and the newspaper had the same staff. Still, in case she forgot, I introduced myself as a reporter and promptly told her I was here to confirm the details to an unpleasant story. She didn’t flinch, but she did ask me to close the office door before continuing.

I ran over my story’s details, itemizing and deducting who was and was not involved and established a chronology. The fight had started over politics—the only subject Student Council members spoke of in the first place. What philosophical nuance could bring a Social Darwinist and a Libertarian to blows was a bit beyond my depth, but booze is the wonder product what works wonders. Ms. Volt, for her part, confirmed the whole thing, including how she came to be physically assaulted during the altercation. About $2000.00 worth of damage had been done. The Council had been banned from the hotel. All of the drinkers had been over 21. There had been no arrests. There was no talk of expulsions…yet. And yes, all of this had been paid for with student activity fees.

At no time did Ms. Volt seem even remotely annoyed by what I was saying. She made it a point to correct my chronology, even added a detail or two that I did not have. In no way was she rushing me. Once I had talked myself out, I thanked her for her time and left.

I returned to the paper’s office with the bird in my mouth. Beatnik demanded a rewrite.. I know he was dreading having to move his challenge to all Christians to debate him as to the existence of a just and kind God that was slated to run on the front page of our next edition. (Don’t ask.) Heaven forefend that some actual news should get into our newspaper. I retyped the thing, dutifully adding another 200 words just for spite. The next edition would be out the next morning.

Imagine my shock when I found Beatnik’s Challenge to Christians still on the front page and no sign of my tale of woe. And no sign of it on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or any of the pages. I had gotten in about an hour early. Miffed, I blew off my Visicalc class and waited for Beatnik to show up.

He finally ambled in at 10:00 AM, still dressed in his service station uniform. I was still in my security guard uniform, having also come off a night shift. We were really quite the pair. As opposed to reporters, we were often mistaken for college janitors.

Without my saying a word, Beatnik acted the following out: “Ms. Volt showed her shiny hiney up here just after I finished paste up. Said she wanted to know if I had someone to cover the unveiling of the new painting in the student lounge on Friday. As she’s wandering around, she picks up the front page. Suddenly, she’s shocked. She’s never heard of this story before. It’s defamatory. Defamation of character. And she says you didn’t identify yourself as a reporter. So I had to kill it.”

We didn’t go to press for another three weeks, due to Year Book lay out. By that time this story would be nothing. Unless I wanted to hold a grudge.

“Eat it, Chip,” the Beatnik advised, meaning something that someone also worm holed from the 1950s might understand. The best I could do was pick up on it by context. He continued “The man is what the man does. That’s her nest. Those are her little birds and what’s it to you? You will eat it, eat it like a man. Anything bad, you just forget. When she pulls that veil off that painting, you take her picture and you make her look good. And if you ever feel you ever have something to say to her, sugar had best come out of your mouth. Now be a man and do what you are told, dig?”

I proceeded to cover Ms. Volt fairly much incessantly for the next two weeks. She looked radiant at the picture unveiling. The little blurb that went with the story’s photo was an act of stenography, from her mouth to my pen. I covered the award dinner the Student Council gave her, proclaiming her administrator of the year. She was then indeed promoted to Dean of Something, which prompted me to take pictures of her in her new office. Hell, I helped her move in. I was in all ways attempting to do as the Beatnik advised, at least to the degree in which I understood it.

Zen trip or not,: she still had flat out lied and attempted to sully my reputation to boot.

Strike that. It was hardly top of mind. Year Book lay out kept Beatnik and I hopping. As I recall, in the next edition I did a one page editorial on how wonderful it would be for our college to have a Division One basketball program. This was largely the result of my having been wined and drunk under the table by the Athletic Department at a local sushi restaurant. For bonus points, I had a half page raving review of the sushi place. Which in a manner of speaking is to say that I wasn’t exactly Mister Journalistic integrity to begin with.

Flash forward three months. I am enrolled in a Women’s Studies course. As a favor to a particularly nice professor (who was teaching the course) I made it a point to enroll early, so that she would have the minimum number of students needed for the course to actually go on. Now we were a little after the standard attrition period and the class was still a decent size. In fact, people had added to the class after its start. Things were going so swimmingly that this professor was thinking of adding a 102 to go with this 101 elective.

But there was a problem. Her cluster rooster didn’t believe in Women’s Studies. Not as an actual academic field. As it turns out, he was right, but at the time it seemed as valid as any other new academic venture. It was her thinking that it might help the cause of her 102 course if there was a student club formed in support of the subject. I immediately offered what assistance I could.

Besides my rough and tumble self, I attempted to skew what was destined to be the club’s demographics by recruiting two other men: one a very surly truck driver and the other a 30ish professional commodities broker. The rest of our initial ranks were filled out by what passed for Feminists from Central Casting: the entire eight girl staff of a ‘fashion forward’ boutique and half a dozen married women . Since the commodities broker was the most real world accomplished of us, I lobbied to have him appointed our spokesmodel. Sensing what I was up to (blunting potential opposition), the feminists agreed and he was appointed unanimously. He did not then and there give an extemporaneous acceptance speech, which was something of an ominous omen.

I was a little iffy about how to form an officially recognized club. Needing information, I made a lunch time visit to the fishbowl. Unlike so many others, I was not shouted out. Instead, one of the young Republicans pointed me at the washroom where a drain was clogged. It was at that point that I explained that I was here to form a club. As it should turn out, the Council member in question (whose mouth had been puked into) was a little fuzzy on the subject himself. He located an application and, after a swift scan of the text, informed me that I would have to pay a $15.00 fee to file the request. He then wanted to know when the drain would be fixed.

(I did alert janitorial soon after leaving.)

Having paid the fee at the front fee paying desk, I was told to appear with my group at the next Council meeting, which was Tuesday at 9:00 AM. Luckily the truck driver, the commodities broker, some ten of our feminists and I could show at that time. It seemed the stars were aligned in our favor.

Just to goose our odds a bit, the commodities broker showed up in a tailored black suit and tie. For my part, I was in non-security guard clothes. Three of the ‘fashion forward’ types were inexplicably dressed, as usual. Our trucker and the someone’s mom feminists essentially dressed alike. We looked serious. We looked like maybe a higher end of the usual student rabble. My thinking was that we were set.

As it should turn out, this was actually a meeting of the Student Advisory Board, a time spent denying appeals of parking tickets and library fines. We were being slipped in between the tickets and the fines.

The Council had the desks in the fishbowl aligned Congressional Investigations style. Us accused filed on in flush to the chalk board and stood there, like a police line up.

Once past the doorway, I noticed Ms. Volt, who was sat at an actual school desk right by the door, facing our profiles. She seemed to have been taking the minutes until we showed up. The moment she spotted me she stopped, she halted doing anything other than to lock eyes on me. Her gaze never wavered.

Our Council members were their usual selves, in ties and white shirts, each with short hair, some with goop in it, some not, all of them—including the women—far more serious than either the situation or their years on Earth called for.

That’s fine, We were going to Out-Republican them. Our man in the black shark suit and red power tie boldly strode forward.

He sputtered. He halted. He sputtered some more, much in the way a garden sprinkler does the first time it is turned on in Spring. And he didn’t get better.

I was certain this guy could talk. And he could. I was certain he could deal with adversity. He was probably pretty good at it. And he could convince people. His living depended on it. And he could do all of those things—on the phone. He was great on the phone. Unfortunately, he had never given a public talk before a live audience in his life. And he hadn’t prepared at all. The suit was going to waste.

Once it became clear that our ringer was dying, other members of the group chimed in to bail him out. All of this was much to the reunified amusement of our budding young Republican sophists, who pummeled our guy with glee and gusto. So, were you recruited off a bus stop? Our guy: No, I drove here. If it was possible to follow the meat of our debate, we were arguing that a Women’s Studies club was similar to a French club. It wasn’t for French people only. It wasn’t even only for people who were taking French class. It was for anyone who might be interested in the French language, history and culture. If you weren’t following the debate, it just seemed like our guy stopped talking in mid sentence—unaware that he had been laughed off stage and only dimly guessing how much damage he had done.

It was thankfully somewhat brief. I kept my composure. Ms. Volt kept staring at me. Finally Mister Puked Into called to me: “Chip, is it? I’m afraid the $15.00 is non-refundable.” Then he smiled.

The Council had other business and would post the results of their vote within an hour. They now had library fines to deny the appeal of. Thank you for sharing.

We did a dandelion seed dispersal out of the doorjamb. Two of the feminists clumped off to help our commodities broker mend his wounded self esteem. My own plan was to douse my defeat with an ice cream from the conveniently right there cafeteria. I got two steps into this quest when I felt a tug at my elbow.

It was Ms. Volt. I could still hear the Council in session behind her. She guided me through a doorway which led to one of those blind staircase landings our college was so infested with. After looking about furtively for a moment, she broke character in a whisper “Women’s Studies club, huh? You got it, Chip. Are we square?”

* In the Cluster system the various teachers do not have departments specific to their subjects. Instead they are randomly clustered into office space and randomly assigned a supervising member. Thus a senior Math instructor may be overseeing a cluster of Philosophy and English professors. How I managed to write anything positive about this set-up now escapes me.

***

Sorry about the wait for this post. Providing my English composition skills return, I should have the Anthony Norvell work done shortly. In any case, I am shooting for another post mid next week.