“No! Nothing. I probably never should have told him I was raped. He got all squirrelly when I told him that. All . . .
“That’s not so great,” Cathy said.
“No. It’s not. But I can’t get rid of him, either, because he’s incredibly nice to me, and I really do love talking to him.”
“You’re sort of into him.”
“Exactly. Maybe even somewhat more than sort of. But—”
“But not wildly more.”
“Exactly.”
Walter was interested in everything. He read every word of the newspaper and
“Yuck,” Walter said. “This sounds like one of those middle-aged profs who can’t stop talking about sex.”
“Well, but he’s talking about fertility figures,” Patty said. “It’s not his fault if the only sculpture we have from fifty thousand years ago is about sex. Plus he’s got a white beard, and that’s enough to make me feel sorry for him. I mean, think about it. He’s up there, and he’s got all these dirty things he wants to say about ‘young ladies today,’ you know, and our ‘scrawny thighs,’ and all, and he knows he’s making us uncomfortable, and he knows he has this beard and he’s middle-aged and we’re all, you know, younger. But he can’t help saying things anyway. I think that would be so hard. Not being able to help humiliating yourself.”
“But it’s so offensive!”
“And also,” Patty said, “I think he’s actually really into thunder thighs. I think that’s what it’s really about: he’s into the Stone Aged thing. You know: fat. Which is sweet and kind of heartbreaking, that he’s so into ancient art.”
“But aren’t you offended, as a feminist?”
“I don’t really think of myself as a feminist.”
“That’s unbelievable!” Walter said, reddening. “You don’t support the ERA?”
“Well, I’m not very political.”
“But the whole reason you’re here in Minnesota is you got an athletic scholarship, which couldn’t even have happened five years ago. You’re here because of feminist federal legislation. You’re here because of Title Nine.”
“But Title Nine’s just basic fairness,” Patty said. “If half your students are female, they should be getting half the athletic money.”
“That’s feminism!”
“No, it’s basic fairness. Because, like, Ann Meyers? Have you heard of her? She was a big star at UCLA and she just signed a contract with the NBA, which is ridiculous. She’s like five-six and a girl. She’s never going to play. Men are just better athletes than women and always will be. That’s why a hundred times more people go to see men’s basketball than women’s basketball—there’s so much more that men can do athletically. It’s just dumb to deny it.”
“But what if you want to be a doctor, and they don’t let you into medical school because they’d rather have male students?”
“That would be unfair, too, although I don’t want to be a doctor.”
“So what