University of Lost Causes

Introduction

All psychological pain can be derived from not being able to reconcile the world as it is from what we would have it be.

—Anonymous psychiatrist, obviously intending to teach me a lesson

I have a dilemma. I’m an avoidant sod with an unavoidable metaphoric wedgie. I have to move my apolitical posterior and stand up to the maelstrom of university politics, pain in the ass as that may be. Worse, I have to be discreet and diplomatic, tempering my bull-in-the-china-shop tendencies. The four horse-persons are coming for me in my non-equestrian electric wheelchair. And worse than worse, the unidentified they, of they say fame, are coming for my beloved work crew stranded on our island of the misfits. I—who cannot walk—have to outrun those who want to take down civilization in the name of fairness and virtue.

I once was heralded as among the oppressed. Not my assessment, but a widely held view from university folk who divide the world between armed camps. I could have held court while holding sway, indignantly claiming crimes against humanity, if not for that thing about being human. I just couldn’t or, as colleague Luna says, wouldn’t go with the flow. And being antithetical to flow, I’m salmon-like, flailing upstream to my inevitable demise. Which qualifies me as an oppressor, I guess. Nice to finally achieve an identity.

Though not yet fact, there is no doubt we are being rejigged, reworked, and restructured; could be shut down and replaced by more progressive people. Been close to this before, and never sweated it before, never sweated much of anything, but something is different this time. Flaky as feelings might make me, something is really up, something really not good, and I can feel it with every ounce of my unfeeling body.

Somehow, I need to protect the Center, my peeps, and our students against the machinations of this place, which is becoming weirder every day. I need to move head and spirit with stealth and cunning, even if physical movement is denied.

Paralysis is not necessarily stasis. It no longer haunts me, hasn’t for years. Surprising what you can do without if you do without. Still, my dreams are far removed from the unmoving carcass that inhabits this bed. I dream about movement, always movement, not vague and effervescent, but as it was in the flesh, with a vividness I don’t indulge thinking about during waking hours. Which is strange because when I could move, besides actively chasing women, I mostly moved to the couch. Only self-indulgence moved me. I worked as little as possible and pursued pleasure as much as I could get away with.

Until I was hugged into life—and yes, there is a story there—with the revelation of simple. In the mix of all the complexity in which we live and breathe there really is only one thing, one move, one response that matters. The human touch—with feeling fingers or not—is it, is our only it, is our meaning and mission, even if contrary to every aspect of university functioning.

So we have to choose. Either we play politics, or we hug someone into existence. That stark, that simple, that which either elevates or diminishes.

University life and how it plays out in the progressive world does not elevate. Case in point: today’s meeting could change everything, and my peeps are worried. Luna and my brother Iggy will work, worry, and scheme, but I just don’t have it in me. I should worry, I suppose, but am oppressed by UIS (unbounded indolence syndrome). Crisis, this crisis, should move me, but it just seems the stakes are so small. I’ll let them wring their hands while I merely resolve to flow upstream. It is enough, and it is an enough that will require everything I have. These are my thoughts in darkness, in bed, in this moment with false dawn verging on first light, waiting for Brenda, my attendant and lover, her lovely presence soon to grace this space. I will drift off again, prisoner to a thousand pillows, as I move through time and across the universe, fending off attacks, defeating villains, and alleviating the many vicissitudes of the people for whom I would lay down my life, or least hug into one worth living.

As sincerely as I can muster,

Phelim O’Neill

Chapter One

Some of the animals remembered—or thought they remembered—that the Sixth Commandment decreed, No animal shall kill any other animal.

And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing

of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this.

—George Orwell

Four hours later, Halloween morning, Phelim’s bedroom

My long-suffering attendant, Brenda, has me sitting up in bed trying to shake off the cobwebs, and she’ll be back in a minute with strong coffee in my trusty mug, replete with paper straw. She’s thrown a bathrobe over my rhinoceros belly because there’s some problem with school so she had to bring her eight-year-old daughter, Pearl. Pearl always hangs back at first, feigning disinterest before sliding into the room and asking a question or ten. Brenda shoos her out for most of the morning routine—well, midmorning routine, since, as alluded to, I am pathologically lazy. Pearl always inches back in with an intense look of nonchalance and a slew of questions and answers waiting to be born. Not that she’ll admit it. I feel like reversing the question-and-answer sequence today.

Hey Pearl, is that a green dress you have on today?

No answer.

Can’t remember the last time you didn’t wear either pink or purple.

No answer.

Have you switched your favorite colors or something?

No answer, but she is moving toward the foot of the bed.

Guess there’s nothing wrong with switching favorite colors.

Brenda returns, and together we place my fingers around the handle of my coffee mug. She then admonishes her daughter with a single word, Pearl.

Pearl knows this is a warning to leave the room, but she practices selective hearing. Once she reaches the foot of the bed, my dog Zigo gets up, stretches, and leans over to receive Pearl’s hand on his ears. Zigo’s tail crashes into her face as he turns around and faces Brenda. Pearl giggles as Zigo jumps off the bed and follows Brenda to the kitchen for his morning gruel.

Hum, I ponder.

What? Pearl erupts, curiosity displacing nonchalance.

Well, it’s just that I’m surprised Zigo recognizes you, since you’re not wearing your favorite colors. Don’t think he’s ever seen you wearing green.

Big breath, hand on hip, said with absolute confidence, Everyone knows that dogs are color-blind.

Is that what you learned at university today?

Exasperation. I don’t go to university yet. I’m in the third grade, which you know.

What’s the difference? I ask and realize I really don’t know the answer.

Pearl thinks about this. She is always thinking, and her responses, all her responses are deliberate and serious. The more important the pronouncement, the more air she exhales, In the third grade you have to do what the teacher tells you, and in university you get to do whatever you want.

Good answer, I think. Hey, what’s that book under your green arm?

Pearl adjusts her glasses and sighs, having mastered the art of exasperation. You should know since you gave it to me. She holds the book with outstretched arms for all to see.

"Ah, right, The Big Book of Dinosaurs, a classic. So, when you grow up do you want to work looking for dinosaur bones and researching stuff, you know, like a—"

Paleontologist, she enunciates with the confidence of, well, a paleontologist.

Brenda walks back in the room and gives Pearl a dismissive glance.

Before you leave, Professor Pearl, do you have any questions for me?

Pearl shakes her head and starts out of the room, but then she turns and asks, How come you work at a university and you don’t even know what a paleontologist is?

I gotta admit, I like this kid. Well, it’s because I work at a university that I don’t know what a paleontologist is.

Pearl considers this, serious and thoughtful, as she always is. I am definitely not going to go to university.

I really like this kid.

I also really like my work peeps who are terrified about today’s meeting. It was rescheduled from nine a.m. to eleven a.m. because of my affliction. Been allowing sympathetic speculation around what that might mean for thirty years, and it is rarely challenged. Still, some people keep trying to schedule me for nine a.m. meetings, knowing my attendance is unlikely. I guess people feel good, accommodating, compassionate even, about making a change from what they knew would never be for what was always going to happen.

Our Center has been shamed for having insufficient Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, whose acronym, under present circumstances, fittingly is DIE. Not sure if that means students or staff; could be both. Never mind that the majority of my staff and all our students were well within DIE parameters five minutes ago. And if that isn’t enough, it has come to people’s attention that we require students registering for inclusion at our Center for Students with Disabilities to actually have a disability. Our office, created to help students with disabilities, has always required students to provide a letter from a doctor to prove they have a disability, but in the new woke world that practice is deemed insufficiently inclusive. There is a movement afoot to forgo such arcane practices and simply and without question believe poor, oppressed students. Always. Not always believing is to place our staff among the oppressors. Today’s meeting is ostensibly about making damn sure we do something about it, without the infamous it ever being defined. Our Center is lauded internationally for innovative programs and includes every disability and humanoid variation under the sun, but that is not enough. Not knowing that is not enough is more than enough: we are to be made an example of.

All of which is funny for anyone with a perverse sense of humor. No one was more surprised than I was that our Center became famous. The short version is we did real stuff for real people who needed help to succeed. They started to succeed and then succeeded in ever increasing numbers. In the early days before our center became the Center, I had an office with some regulars visiting on a daily basis because they didn’t quite fit in anywhere else. I once heard a faculty member—taking an elevator up one flight of stairs—refer to my office as island of the misfits. Sitting and being at a lower level—both physically and metaphorically—he hadn’t noticed my presence which I reminded him of with a mighty belch before blocking his exit from the elevator. Oddly, island of the misfits appealed to me, and once I informed the gang, my misfit friends adopted this kitschy term. We didn’t kid ourselves about inclusion then, just as we don’t pretend that bandying the term today neutralizes the reality of, say, blindness, schizophrenia, or quadriplegia. It’s one thing to reside in this chair; it’s quite another to listen to someone—whose knowledge of disability and life is theoretical and aspirational—tell you that that their notion of inclusion excludes the prejudices of other, less enlightened people. And, most offensive, they offer the caveat that if they were in charge, with all their progressive ways and access to other people’s money, they’d fix all the deficiencies and liberate us from our unenlightened, non-defective selves. How nice.

As our Center’s reputation grew, and I became a sort of ad hoc national spokesman for getting students with disabilities the stuff they need to succeed, I often felt like a fraud. I knew less and did less than people assumed and gave me credit for. It took me a couple decades to figure out that not doing much is still a couple notches up from what most people do who inhabit the hallowed quarters of higher education. It finally dawned on me that at least I am an honest fraud, and my fraudster accomplishments pale in comparison to the people who do the real work in our Center.

Being apolitically avowed, I’ve always been amused by university politics. My mantra has been to never take too seriously people who take themselves too seriously. But something has changed. I am no longer content to be coy, ironic, amused, and bemused. I’m not getting serious, growing up, or any of those horrible things, but I’m also not willing to remain static. I want to move even if I have to do it sitting still. The world has moved all around me, taking with it most of what I thought was decent, in the name of higher, stronger, wiser. In other words, wokeness.

Iggy—brother, not to be confused with dog Zigo—and Luna—colleague extraordinaire—will agonize about strategy and their frustration over my inability to see the need to agonize and strategize. But neither agony nor strategy will work. Mostly, I think our purpose in life is to take in, look, and listen. No strategy, no agony, that simple. As mentioned, I like simple. Did I mention that I’m lazy as sin?

I shouldn’t take advantage of this fact, but the fascinating combo of laziness and university politics has made me a creature of avoidance, to be avoided. Laid-back indifference seems a good way to mask intentions, but the thing is, I do have some fight in me. Timing will be tricky, and the landscape seems to both change every day and revert to what was with delightful predictability. Meanwhile, Iggy and Luna suffer. I could say it hurts me more than it hurts them. But in the university world reminiscent of Madame Bovary, wherein left is right and up is down, I am determined to fight the flow and tell the truth, even if packaged in my kitschy, corny take on life.

Brenda comes back in, all business today. In that other life, the one that slipped away on the night of my accident, I would have been oblivious to the obvious. I was for exteriors, frivolity, basically what appealed to my pecker at any given moment. I would not have seen Brenda, and I would not have allowed her to see me. My mask was impenetrable then. I would have squandered the opportunity to have a family of two or ten, which to my everlasting astonishment turns out to be what I want most of all. I wasted that life, but Brenda is here now, and though we have an uncertain future, we have a nice arrangement with potential for more.

What’s Pearl up to? I ask.

Oh, you know her, reading. She asked if I could hand her one of your books from high up on a shelf that probably hasn’t been opened in thirty years.

What book?

"The Complete Book of Auto Mechanics."

Makes sense.

Yup, that’s my girl. Now, first thing, we’re going to roll you over so I can see your backside.

Naughty.

Did you get Bill to check your skin in the last few days?

Nope. He once said that these sheets make my ass look fat, so I’m kinda shy.

You really don’t want to spend a week on your stomach again. With a big, practiced heave and strategic lift of the sheets, I am on my belly, ass pointing north.

Brenda does a thorough inspection, and I luxuriate in that space between wakefulness and the eternal pull toward slumber. Brenda says she needs to treat my skin, and she leaves the room to get something.

I appreciate Brenda, the conscientious attendant, but I especially appreciate that we are more than a business arrangement. My morning routine with Brenda takes longer than with other attendants, except for those times when Pearl is around.

We are not so much an item as a thing, though what that thing is is not clear. Yet. Still, it endures, and it feels good. Mostly, she and I can talk, really talk. Apparently, laziness is an appropriate bedfellow for listening skills. An attendant/lover relationship is discouraged and unlikely as hell, for many reasons. But for us, talk became cuddling, and yes—unlikely as it may seem—sex. What? How? Sorry, but my determination to tell truth does not go that far. A gentleman never tells. There are clinical books that will itemize what and how disability and sex can become bedfellows, but they will not tell you anything about me and Brenda. Suffice to say, intimacy is not prescribed, sex is not predictable—well, not good sex at least—and friendship might just be the most important ingredient in a good relationship because it involves seeing and being seen. Scary concept to be avoided by most. On a planet of eight billion, on an insignificant speck of the universe for a life that is over in the blink of an eye, we rarely see and are seen. And people think I have the dysfunction. Interesting.

Brenda in full utilitarian mode admonishes me for letting my skin get so close to breakdown, and I am drifting, floating on a thousand pillows, promising myself I will listen to Brenda if she ever stops talking about my negligent habits. Through the din I hear Pearl’s name, something about her difficulty relating to eight-year-old kids who do not read books on auto mechanics.

I force myself to resurface, vaguely thinking that Pearl could probably better relate to paleontologists. Brenda, promise you’ll let Pearl keep all her quirky ways.

Okay, so what do you mean by that?

She has inexhaustible curiosity and blistering drive, and I don’t want her to lose that.

I can feel Brenda’s smile through the silence. She likes you, you know.

What’s not to like?

Did I tell you she said something interesting the other day. Something like, when Phelim stops kidding, which is almost never, he’s the only adult who doesn’t treat me like a baby.

I really like that kid. Brenda can feel my smile through the silence.

Chapter Two

Halloween, at the Center for Students with Disabilities, our Island of the Misfits

The mosh pit that is our Center is in full tumult. A10:35 a.m. arrival is early for me, due in no small part to Brenda not being available for post-attendant naked cuddling. The waiting area is overflowing; interns scurry to meet frantic students, and staff—with a tad less enthusiasm but more skill—greet their next appointment. No amount of carrying students off to appointments seems to diminish the number of students wanting to get appointments. Front desk staff are students working for that minimum wage under the supervision of a force of nature we call Edie. Her name means prosperous in war, and in happily dealing with our many, many students and solving their many, many crises, she is. There isn’t one in a thousand who could attend to our battleground with prosperity as the outcome, but Edie does just that every day. Her uber happiness is balanced by being seriously wacky, making her my exemplary employee.

Hey, boss, admit it. You’re here early because you couldn’t bear life without me! Edie says with faux drama-queen histrionics. Then she is gone to calm a student employee who has just made a student un-calm, for which there has been wailing and gnashing of teeth. Edie’s declarations of love and well-trodden innuendos enrich my life this and every day, for no particular reason. As one of her main peeps I give back as much as I take—that is, once she gets a few minutes reprieve from reception at crisis central. And in calmly attending to the un-calm between bawdy barbs, she is magnificent. My peep of peeps until my dying days.

It is the very end of October, midterms in full flight, November blahs encroaching, with winter blues on the horizon, and a theoretical Christmas break too far away to give relief. The next three days, remnants of a Christian tradition that is no more, were unceremoniously canceled some years back—unceremonious cancellation having to do with removing the scaffolding of civilization without thought to its replacement. Substituting the word utopia doesn’t do it. Nietzsche, an atheist, predicted that the leveling and stripping of Christian civilization would lead to pernicious and unintended consequences. But he was a moldy old white guy, so give him a pass.

Halloween was mostly canceled a dozen or so years after protests at Yale inspired postsecondary enlightenment across the country. Twenty-five percent of our students wear masks—medical that is, and not of the Halloween variety—years after Covid has waned, for fear, for protection, for an identity with which modern people silently scream, I exist.

No one dares appropriate cultural icons like Mickey Mouse or Bart Simpson anymore. Rather than trick or treat like savages on city streets far removed from parental prying eyes, kids are taught to passively revere all other cultures and to disparage their own. Without knowing what one’s cultural heritage is, it is difficult to know what one is disparaging, but that doesn’t discourage enlightened people. All Saints’ Day, November 1, once celebrating those who have achieved spiritual maturity, and All Souls’ Day, November 2, once commemorating the souls of the faithfully departed, drowsily pass, somnambulist captives to the woke nightmare that has descended upon us. This world without rules or context, which promises as a human right what can never be delivered to mere humans, creates anxiety and depression. Without knowing any of this, it is why students come to talk to me every day. They so desperately want something but cannot begin to articulate what it might be. Life for our many, many students is tragic, unfair, and in need of immediate correction. Many come to me with demands for correction if only I will listen. I do listen and gently try to suggest that in the correction mix, introspection might offer surprising results.

Luna and Iggy usually pounce, but neither thought I’d arrive at such an unlikely hour, so neither is ready to greet me. I pass Luna’s open door and notice she and Iggy in full strategic flight, so I continue as if there is an option not to engage. Iggy emerges first, running as he always does, with Luna a few quick wheel rotations behind. I stop in front of my office until my transponder clicks the door unlocked.

We don’t have much time, Iggy begins,

to fill you in on the options we have come up with, Luna finishes, her rotating sport wheelchair flashing in the brilliant morning light.

I call them Frick and Frack when I’m not calling them Ying and Yang. Either way a dynamo duo, gratefully indentured to keep the world from seeing the obvious: that I’m lazy. Poor things don’t realize I’m okay with my affliction.

I’m early, I protest.

Hey, good morning, David says, sticking his head into my office, Let me know what you think about my suggestions on website changes when you get a chance. Another devotee to shielding the world from seeing the obvious in me.

Lucy, full-time student, part-time front desk minimum wage wizard stands at my open door waiting to be noticed. The Special Adviser to the President’s EA wants you to call. Do you need the number?

Nay, it’s all up here, I say, lifting and leaning my coffee mug in the direction of my head.

Iggy’s eyes betray acute anxiety. I’ll close the door, he says, springing up.

We don’t have enough time; we should start walking, Luna cautions.

We have all the time in the world, I say, with my trademark silly grin.

Phelim, this is serious, and we really should be on time.

I’m never on time, and if I suddenly change my lifetime habit, people will think I’m running scared.

You should be scared, Luna admonishes. We’re in trouble.

Really? Starving is trouble, Ebola is trouble, and tsunamis are trouble, but this … not so much trouble as annoying.

Phelim, they might take us apart.

You need to take this seriously.

Okay, so how’s this? I ask, with my best, Finest Hour Winston Churchill pose.

"You are so frustrating," Luna exclaims. She of Spanish name is of Chinese origin, where she contracted polio as a toddler decades after it was eradicated in North America. Luna is the hardest-working person on the planet, making me the most frustrating.

That’s true actually, I say, appealing to Iggy. I’d pay attention to that girl if I was you.

I do, Iggy responds, And so should—

So whaddya got?

Iggy pounces. The way we see it, we’ve got to write a statement about pulling together a committee with all stakeholders so that we can come up with a policy to balance the human rights directive with our need to objectively assess who actually has a disability.

And if you propose it today, Luna emphasizes, it can seem like a proactive move instead of a chickenshit reaction.

I get that, I say, not wanting to prematurely cut up what has been so carefully conjured.

We’ve written some notes, a draft paper actually, which could be edited into a full position paper by the end of the day.

Hum, one problem, I say, in a soft voice, which catches their attention, and they wait for me to finish the sentence: we don’t actually believe in putting in place the human rights directive that would surely flow from the position paper of the stakeholder committee culminating in the grand policy of compliance, do we?

No, but we have to be strategic, Luna argues, and Iggy agrees.

The door opens, and David says that we should go. Luna asks David what he thinks about their strategic plan, and being the opposite of moi in the frustration department, he says, Oh yes, it’s a good strategic plan.

Bet you say that to all the boys, I say, leaning back to stretch my back and correct my awful posture, a practice of every ten minutes or so these thirty-five years and counting.

You are so frustrating, Luna says, a catch-phrase practice said every ten minutes or so for these fifteen years and counting.

You are so right, I say, and then, Let’s take our time, talk hockey, express our mutual admiration, exchange recipes, arrive fashionably late, and see what befalls us. Then over drinks tonight maybe we’ll come up with something, or not.

Luna and Iggy look at each other, worried and anxious. Told you, she says.

Followed by Iggy’s He really is so frustrating.

Yes, but you do love me, I punctuate our closing line, and we are off.

Three guys from the attendant program are waiting along the corridor near the Center reception, reasons unknown, earlier than any one of them is usually up, and yet here they are as a gang. Coordinating their collective earlier than normal morning routine must have created a scheduling stir among attendants, so something is up. I’d be mildly curious if not for the fact that someone will frantically let me know what is up soon enough. I like these guys, little shites that they are, and I lift my unfeeling hand to slap their equally unfeeling limbs, as if we have just scored the winning goal in game seven of the playoffs. They know me, and they know better than to try to explain what the problem is as we high-five our fictitious goal, me in full flight, off to an important meeting to change the world for the betterment of personkind. Luc is a mid-level quad, Ben a few notches higher on the spinal column, and Doug has cerebral palsy, so we share a life that moves slowly and places us on display, always. I won’t tell them that the prospect of getting older and being in a chair adds up to the kitschy contradictory combo of perpetual exposure and complete invisibility.

I lead Luna and Iggy down the long narrow corridor to the elevator. As always, the sound of Kevin precedes the sight of him. His erratic driving, due to an endearing mixture of spasticity and inattention, means the sound of his chair hitting the walls gives us forewarning to duck for cover. I slow and drift from my center position to as close to the wall as I can manage. Kevin sees me, and though we are friends all these years, he frantically tries to steer toward the other wall. Which he does, but rather than squeeze closer to the wall, he hits it and bounces back beyond the center of the corridor, where I just happen to be trying to slip past.

This is not a unique event. The long narrow corridor of about a hundred feet has an equally long continuous black smudge on both sides, recording the many years that Kevin, and more accurately, his chairs have graced our corridors. Our chairs hit, with Kevin doing a mighty full-body flinch—half nerves, half spasm—as ever, not quite believing what mischief his driving has gotten him into. I anticipate our habitual collision and slow, so no damage, except possibly to Kevin’s self-esteem, as ever. Poor thing. Being beyond the middle of the lane, it is incumbent upon Kevin to back up, which he eventually figures out, to no avail. Somehow our wheelchair controls are entangled, and neither of us can move. When Kevin gets flustered, he gets more spasmodic and is more prone to do the exact thing that exacerbates the present problem.

His swearing is legendary, his frustration palpable, to which I simply say, Wait.

This d-d-damn—

Wait. This time with authority, and then looking over my shoulder, Iggy. Who, being a quick study, sees the entanglement and reaches over with a lift of Kevin’s controls for the fix.

Oh, says Kevin, unaccustomed to things working out, oh.

I understand when he says oh because of our long years of banter, but to most people everything Kevin says is incomprehensible. Neither hearing nor listening contributes to people’s incomprehension. Not caring completes the uncomprehending trifecta.

Then, as a face-saving exit, Kevin mutters, P-p-papist bastard, to my comprehending, slightly amused departing backside.

The single elevator that services our floor is slow this time of day. Young, fully functioning bipeds often stand for ten minutes to take the elevator up or down one floor. I never question or make faces at those who unnecessarily clog the elevator. I always smile or exchange pleasantries, secure in the knowledge that there are people on this earth who can challenge me for the title of world’s laziest person.

Should I go ahead? Do you want me to let them know that you are stuck at the elevator? Iggy fusses and fidgets.

Nay, I say, perfectly content to be late for all occasions, whether preventable or not.

But it’s already eleven a.m., he counters.

And the Special Adviser to the President always gives you a dirty look when you come in late, Luna adds.

She just admires my consistency.

Iggy swears mostly to himself, and Luna says, You are so frustrating.

Ain’t it the truth, I say, agreeably.

The concept of sneaking into a meeting in progress does not apply to an entourage of misfits led by a 250-pound quadriplegic in a squeaky electric wheelchair of equal weight followed by a completely unnecessary and yet kitschy companion dog, Zigo. Besides, the effort and desire to sneak is not in me. Luna and Iggy die a thousand deaths under silent scrutiny as we enter, whereas I glory in the profound silliness of this and, well, all of life’s silliness. To my perverse mind, the holy moment is equal parts holy and humor. Taking life seriously can be toxic.

The SAP gives us a withering glance (having perfected the art of withering) and continues talking. Nine times out of ten at meetings, she is the only one talking. Luna and Iggy scurry, trying to be and remain small. Zigo wags his tail, and I sit up in my chair and stretch my spine, canine pal and I unwilling to wither under withering intent.

The SAP’s strategy of ignoring us, thereby reinforcing our collective insignificance, becomes problematic once I try to find a place to park at the back of the room. Most chairs are occupied, and those that remain empty lie scattered across my path. Iggy jumps to clear two chairs away while I ram two more and pivot around to face the front of the room. The ensuing high-pitched screech is painful and long, which I alone find amusing. Well, not exactly true, since the commotion causes an extra wag from my loyal canine. Zigo then rolls over, hoping to a get a belly rub, to no avail.

The SAP stops, almost speaks with annoyance, but it probably occurs to her that not clearing obstacles for a quadriplegic is a no-no for those holding progressive views, even for one you detest and want to exclude. She of withering glance withers. In equal proportion, my grin expands.

The SAP’s attention shifts back to business, and she continues, St. Jude’s was never going to be satisfied simply being progressive ….

A little context. St. Jude’s is not just any university, though we seem determined to accelerate efforts at being the best at being just like everyone else. We were conceived and born a Catholic university of necessity, in response to the need to educate and provide health care to any and all citizens of our fair city. This concept was acted upon, and later reflected in our charter, to provide educational opportunities to the poor, with specific emphasis on serving Native Americans. This singular feature, a first in American history, grew from the work of a convent first established in 1759. Twenty years earlier, Samson Wolf, the first Native American ordained minister, of the Mohegan tribe, cofounded the Indian Charity School. The convent and Samson Wolf pooled resources to run the school, which was very successful, and consequently ran out of funds after its first few years.

A small party was organized and went to Britain to raise funds. But interest in Native Americans not doing what wealthy Britons expected them to do did not garner much interest, and insufficient funds were raised to continue the school. For reasons unknown, the party traveled to Montreal, intending to continue south to New England. Somehow a connection was made with the Gray Nuns, a Roman Catholic order founded by Marie-Marguerite, Canada’s first candidate for sainthood, in that city in 1737. The order’s first ministry was feeding the poor, which quickly spawned a hospice for the sick and elderly and, interestingly at a time when no one else cared, included looking after children who had been abandoned by their parents, especially children with disabilities. Though the Gray Nuns, also known as the Sisters of Charity, were not formally recognized until 1775, and though they more than had their hands full doing charity work in Montreal, a small group of nuns agreed to move to New England to run the Indian Charity School.

It is hard for people to get their heads around this fact today, but early on, the Gray Nuns didn’t just contribute to education and later health care; they were the only game in town. In 1864, in continuing the spirit of altruism bolstered by concrete actions, the Gray Nuns gave most of their adjoining land, some 380 acres, for the establishment of St. Jude’s University. The convent only kept thirty acres, just enough land for the nuns to continue their school and indulge in their passion for gardening, which doubled as a means to feed themselves and the poor. Though thirty acres seemed a paltry amount of land in 1864, as the core of the city grew around it during the ensuing decades, the garden property with its one solitary residence building seemed to grow in size as well as exponentially in value.

Of course, the history of St. Jude’s, particularly its early education of Native Americans, has been desecrated in recent years. A key point lost sight of is this: for a time, St. Jude’s was not a lost cause. The school’s history does not refute American racist history in relation to Native Americans, but does reveal that a pocket of enlightenment—in deeds, not virtue signaling—can exist as the spectacular exception to the general societal pattern. History is what happened, not what we assume or would like to believe happened.

Over the objections of prominent Native American elders, the singular contribution of St. Jude’s to American history has been turned into a singular narrative of colonialism, racism, genocide, and murder. The narrative, created and sustained by St. Jude’s faculty, has been amplified in the media, despite playing seriously fast and loose with the facts. And the elders, whom we are told to treat with deference and respect, were sidelined and ignored (for their own good, poor things). When unaccounted graves of Indigenous children were suspected to be on the sites of former residential schools in Canada, it was taken as fact that much worse had happened at St. Jude’s. Falsehoods were fully and enthusiastically embraced and a revisionist narrative greater than truth came to prevail.

St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. Seriously. Which conveniently parallels a forgotten and elemental fact of life: we are all lost causes if not for our redemptive commitment to others. In recent years, that reality has been expunged from all aspects of university life. St. Jude’s, still a Catholic university on paper, has become aggressively atheist in its new progressive configuration. Any notion of spirituality has become a lost cause. Progressive thinking includes a moratorium on irony. We have become a lost cause unwilling to be found. Maybe our patron, Saint Jude, was a former student.

Our revolutionary mental health strategy, which celebrates intersectionality and personal truth over diagnosis and medical model reductionism, is complete after extensive consultation with marginalized stakeholders, and we will be going to Senate by the end of the month, right, Tim?

Yes, and under your leadership, it is a super strategy! Tim was conceived, born, and lives to serve the SAP. He is a member of her inner sanctum. He is among those few behind the wall of knowing and power. Hell, he is the guardian at the gate who takes the password and gives access to the queen. His passive aggression and hubris are legionary. Still, my view is that only those can hold sway whom we acknowledge as having sway, which if ignored, doesn’t exist. Tim doesn’t exist for me, which probably makes me so frustrating.

It should be mentioned that our SAP’s full and proper title is Special Adviser to the President, Exceptional Student Experience. As you ponder that, it is worth noting her specialness presides over everything, her rule is absolute, and in fairness to her stature at St. Jude’s, her recently acquired lofty title should be further lofty-ized into Empress for Life.

Interesting connotation to her SAP title acronym. I almost fell out of my chair when I first heard it. Webster’s dictionary defines the word sap as 1. A body fluid (such as blood) essential to life, health or vigor. 2. A foolish gullible person. 3. Blackjack or Bludgeon. Our sap is the lifeblood of our university; our president is a foolish, gullible person; and the metaphoric instrument she wields to maintain power is a bludgeon, which Webster’s further defines as something used to attack or bully. All of which, from her pointed point of view, is graphically, picturesquely perfect.

In the old days, universities were run by presidents, who consulted with and sought permission from, first, the ever-vigilant senate then the more distant, nonacademic, but powerful Board of Governors. Not so these days. Our ivory tower is typical of the great change that has swept power from the academics into the burgeoning arms of the student service world in the name of equity, customer service, diversity, inclusion, student engagement, funding, marketing strategies, mental health, student satisfaction, and synergy. Okay, so kidding about the last one, but it does seem to be the word most often used when two parties compare notes on how to aspirationally advance all the notions that preceded it. Academic programs take a back seat to the multiplicity of student concerns in the modern university, with academics passively providing the vacuum for nonacademic synergistic ascendency. Basically, busybodies rule.

There were recently three, but there are now are six vice presidents in our gilded tower. Senior position creep is just one aspect of the great nonacademic takeover happening across the land. Sure, there’s a president too, but he mostly waits for his instructions from the VPs, who all take their instructions from our SAP. Our token president and the six VPs have never existed a day outside of the unreality of university life that began when they were first-year undergraduate students a millennium ago. Rumor has it that the real world is filled with deplorables who do not appreciate the superior intellect that follows from having a PhD. Still, someone has to occasionally descend from the castle, cross the moat, and deal with the peons. Consequently, the real-world (exceptional) experience our SAP brought into her portfolio is treated with uber deference and respect. Her ability to read the woke tea leaves has made her the ultimate university influencer and therefore the most powerful personhood at St. Jude’s. That power is exceptionally effective at exploiting the prevailing mood of the times. Radical opportunist equates to visionary in the exceptional world in which we almost live.

The university has structured itself in deference to unexceptional students’ perception of their exceptional experience (which if so, is ubiquitous and therefore unexceptional) in order that students not assert their full and expanding rights, many entitlements, and propensity to take legal action, which would make for an unexceptional experience for the senior officers of the university. So indistinguishable senior university careerists compete to come up with synergistic innovations for managing and bribing students with tricks and party favors within the expanding student services cartel at St. Jude’s. As such, it is simple math. Our SAP has the most party favors, and though no one cares about math anymore, she is the undisputed queen of the castle.

Universities live in fear. Fear of students and their fragile states, fear of parents of fragile students, fear of human rights bodies whose mission is to protect same said students, fear of not living up to daily claims of diversity, inclusion, and equity for all groups except for former oppressors, and fear of the media reporting any deficiencies on the part of the university to protect and provide the best student experience possible.

Word is, the next relevant Act of Congress, based on a recent Supreme Court ruling, is that human rights will be extended to a student’s right to have an exceptional experience. As such, our SAP’s Exceptional Student Experience title was extended to position our university as the progressive leader for this coming trend. Luna, Iggy, and all my peeps are seriously upset by this rumor, but predictably, I find it funny.

Of course, I have a distinct advantage over my peeps on the funny front, because I regularly meet Professor John Staffal for lunch and for beer. In addition to possibly being the last faculty member to actually speak his mind—about all subjects, at all times—he is the funniest man to have ever lived.

He is universally hated at this university, but then so am I, just less blatantly so. I know we are sitting ducks, watching the approaching tsunami from the shore, but I don’t much care. The value of humor is at an all-time low, and I must admit that there is a certain perverse humorless logic to the progressive buzz that has infected this room, our university, the world. Kill that with which people identify—family, community, God—and we are left with the politics of identity—me, myself, and I. The progressive trinity of self does not do stand-up—or in my case, sit-down—comedy. Protecting my peeps is going to be tough because challenging this woman’s power is a sure route to defeat, as many others have found. I grin at the Special Adviser to the President, Exceptional Student Experience, seemingly in agreement with all her proclamations, a crazy compliant fool. Still, this old boy is not dead yet, and may have a trick or two up his unfeeling sleeve.

Chapter Three

Decades earlier on the spinal cord unit, Rehabilitation Center

The meeting ends with a stern warning of coming change coupled with a sterner look in my direction. I’m not sure what else is said, because I rarely know what is said at meetings. Checking out at meetings while sitting in attendance with a frozen, compliant grin is a solid survival skill. But I didn’t develop it at the university; I just refined what I’d learned years earlier.

I dissociate therefore I am, not dead. I was once close to death, desperately wanted to die but didn’t, and in time didn’t want to. Thirty-five years ago, I was an arrogant, irresponsible drunk who some people actually found charming. I lived for seduction and sex and, well, alcohol, too, with the former lit up by the latter. That is, while not exactly shy and retiring when sober, I was a pick-up-chick virtuoso when drunk. To this day, I don’t fully understand how I did what I did and got what I got so easily and often. And yes, it raises the question, and no, I was not careful about what I wished for.

My intake was prodigious. A full bottle of any hard liquor or a case of beer, no problem. And then I’d wake up, treat a hangover with a midmorning beer, and back to business. I considered restraint to be drinking an early recovery beer slowly. So how was I able to drink all day and night? To this day, I’m not sure where my drinking tolerance came from, and I kind of wish I had it for people instead. Believe it or not, I was a carded athlete with Olympic potential. That’s right, the world’s laziest guy was good enough to earn a modest track income, while being fueled by not Gatorade, but Jameson. My twelve-years-younger brother, who runs marathons, still cannot talk about the waste of my potential, but I can and do. I was what I was, and only in taking responsibility for what I was, was I able to become who I am, whatever that is. I learned early on not to carry the specter of the other on your back, what you might have become, who you might have met, those children you might have had, the life you might have lived, which was yours for the living, if only you’d made different choices.

In high school, I set the state record for 400-meter hurdles, and though at university my potential for greatness was compromised, I still managed to hang in as a contender. After my third year at St. Jude’s, I was offered a summer job in the university athletics department. There were parties; I was a fixture. Hookups were frequent, opportunity endless, and I was a six-foot-three-inch good-looking sports hero who just happened to be both the life of the party and, as mentioned, charming as hell when drunk.

One night in June—on my birthday, in fact—I drove my decrepit 1969 Volkswagen Beetle with bald tires fifty miles outside town to a big party at someone’s parents’ summer home.

I was on. Funny, irreverent, the conversationalist of choice, the guy who moved like a cat and was as a petable as a dog. All I needed was a focus, that is, a great-looking woman to pounce on, directing predictable charm toward predictable results.

The problem, if it can be considered a problem, was overchoice. The women, all university students, all seemingly unattached, outnumbered the men two