Strange Bedfellows

Erwin did not like me.*

When I joined the Pasadena City College faculty in 1994, I was twenty-seven – and by far the youngest member of the social sciences division on the tenure track. I worked hard to befriend my colleagues, both because it was wise and because, I figured, I might easily spend decades working alongside them.  I made friends with several other professors, became a cordial if distant acquaintance to others,  and acquired exactly one enemy.

Erwin taught Chicano Studies and Latin American History. He was a Vietnam vet, a son of East L.A., and the first Hispanic to get tenure in the department. He was only in his early 50s, but his bald head and gray mustache made him look older. Erwin was a Marxist, contemptuous of liberal pieties and libertine conduct. He took one look at me, assessed that I was likely guilty of both those horrors, and probably a pompous intellectual lightweight into the bargain. When, in my second year, I became the first male instructor to teach women’s studies, Erwin considered his initial appraisal confirmed. In my third year, when rumors began to spread about my cheerful lack of boundaries with pretty female students, Erwin took to openly glaring at me in the hallways.

“He called you a payaso,” a student reported. I looked blank; my Spanish was years away from becoming adequate. “It means a clown,” my student continued, angry on my behalf.

“I always appreciate being complimented on my excellent sense of humor,” I replied. That’s the training I’d had all my life. (You know the drill: never let them see they’ve hurt you, respond to insults with insouciant forbearance, and convey through your lightheartedness the sense that the person who mocks you is not the gentleman you imagine yourself to be.)

My student shrugged. “I don’t know, Prof. Hugo. He just really seems to hate you.”

Eventually, Erwin’s contempt for me became widely known. Neither his animus nor my own indiscretions were sufficient to deny me tenure, though, and after a while, I learned to ignore this man who regarded me as an intellectual, moral, and political offense.

In 2001, three years after I got tenure, Erwin and I found ourselves serving together on a departmental hiring committee. In academia, grudges are common, petty, and long-lived. Generally, you go to great lengths to avoid serving on committees with people whom you know despise you, but sometimes, it can’t be helped. In this case, it couldn’t.  A third faculty member and two administrators rounded out the little task force.

Our job was to select a new Americanist.   In those days, we did two rounds of interviews to hire a new professor. We’d interview ten or twelve applicants in the first go, and then winnow that number down to a final three who’d be invited back for a second interview a week later.  There were several excellent aspirants, but one was especially outstanding. Steve was a bit older, having served in the military before going to graduate school.

An hour or so before we heard from the final three, Erwin knocked on my office door.  In my seven years at PCC, we had gone out of our way to avoid each other. I was confused and suspicious, but I tried to be pleasant. Erwin strode in, sat down in the chair normally used by my students in my office hours, and got to the point.

“I can tell you know Steve is the best candidate. For once, you’re absolutely fucking right. But I think the others really want to hire Mark. We need to make sure Steve gets this.  When it comes time to discuss our views, I’m gonna speak first because of seniority. When I’m done, I want you to speak up and say that you agree with me.  Everyone’s jaw will fucking drop, you know? If they realize that you and I agree on the same person, they’ll be so amazed that we see eye to eye on anything they’ll see it as a testament to Steve’s merits. We’ll get him on board. Capiche?”

Erwin really did say, “capiche,” and probably was twice as profane as I have recalled here.

I agreed, and tried to rise to offer my hand, but Erwin’s back was turned before I got the chance.

The meeting went as expected. The other committee members were partial to Mark, but when they witnessed this strange duet of praise for Steve, they were astonished – and, reluctantly, convinced. At the end of the meeting, one of the administrators, who knew very well that Erwin and I were not normally collegial, asked if this was “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“You never know,” I said.

“No fucking way,” said Erwin, and he was as good as his word. We barely spoke again over the next twelve years, until my own unceremonious departure.

I thought of this story when I read this tweet exchange between Riley Gaines and Martina Navratilova. 

Gaines is a former collegiate swimmer and conservative Christian activist; you know who Navratilova is. They are also prominent recent allies on the question of whether transwomen should be allowed to play women’s sports. Both Riley and Martina are adamant about protecting the integrity of sport by ensuring that those born into male bodies do not compete against women.  The trans issue is one that unites many traditionally left-wing feminists (most famously J.K. Rowling) with social conservatives. 

This is, of course, a rather old alliance. In the 1980s, both radical feminists and Christian conservatives found themselves making the exact same point: pornography did not deserve First Amendment protection. They may have come to that same mountaintop via very different paths, but they shared the conviction that pornography was dangerous and harmful. (It was a tenuous partnership, but even now, I know some very conservative Christians who proclaim a strange affection for Andrea Dworkin!)

 As Martina’s tweet suggests, it is always an error to presume that someone who agrees with you on one issue agrees with you on others.  When it comes to fighting to keep women’s sports for natural-born women, feminists and social conservatives are a bit like Erwin and me. It is not a beautiful friendship, but it can be if not a marriage, at least a temporary liaison of convenience.

“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” the saying goes. (The original line is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” Misery, politics, what’s the difference?) When we make these odd alliances, we attribute them to necessity and our sturdy commonsense. When someone we dislike makes a “strange bedfellow,” we sneer at their absence of conviction and their poor judgment. For example, many of my fellow ardent Zionists pointed out that two of the most vocal opponents of aid to Israel are congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ilhan Omar. The gentleladies from Georgia and Minnesota agree on little else, but they are united in their sense that Israel deserves not one penny more. I find both Greene and Omar immensely unlikeable, and regard each as possessed of positively vile political views, but I do not think there’s anything inherently disreputable about their working together to advance the one cause they seem to share.

The reality is, of course, that wherever we are on the political spectrum, we probably have one or two views that separate us from our fellows and put us into uneasy agreement with folks on the other side. It’s a nice reminder that we are autonomous, rational creatures – not just obedient soldiers following orders from party high command.  We would do well, I think, to be willing to do as Erwin did to me all those years ago: knock on the door of someone with whom we normally disagree, make no promise of warmth or reconciliation, but agree to a fleeting unity in service of the Good. 

And when we go back to disagreeing, avoid being surprised like poor old Martina.

*The names have been changed.