18. Tony
EIGHTEEN
tony
Tony
How is the email drafting going, pup?
Jaime
You’ve torn my last three attempts to shreds
You’re lucky I’m petty as fuck
Tony
You could work on your listening skills instead.
Jaime
Are you going to make me?
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Today was going to be a long day.
“Tony.” The panel’s moderator moved toward me, one hand in the air as greeting. “Ready to start?”
Mercedes was a woman in her sixties I’d been in panels with before. She wasn’t the worst to share a room with, but her age showed from time to time, either when it came to technology or the fact that the current political landscape couldn’t be simplified to a monolithic definition of left versus right. Still, she was ten times better than the panelists who had no shame in associating with far-right parties and ideologies.
“Mercedes. As ready as I can be.” Sometimes these conferences felt like a stifling networking retreat instead of an actual conference, but I still smiled and kissed both her cheeks once she was close enough. “I didn’t know you were in attendance.”
I didn’t like sudden changes in the lineup.
I kept that part to myself, but Mercedes and I met up in at least three conferences per year. She was bound to know things about me by now.
“I wasn’t.” She rolled her eyes, her grey-haired bob bouncing against her shoulders as she moved. “The plan was to send one of the PhD students, but such is life.”
From her tone, it was obvious that there was more to it, and that PhD student was nowhere near her good graces. I didn’t prod.
I was used to the small talk at these places, and I could tolerate it most of the time, but I had a sudden itch now to double check there hadn’t been any more changes. If the university organizing this hadn’t sent an email to let me know about the new moderator, I didn’t trust there wouldn’t be more they hadn’t sent an update on.
My role on the panel would be the same, but being prepared was the name of the game. Simply put, some professors were a pain in the ass. I’d rather know beforehand if someone was going to go for my throat the second I stepped on stage. Being the youngest tenured professor in the country? It meant lots of the older carcasses rejected me on sight. Back when I started, I’d thought it would get better once I looked older or my voice deepened more.
It hadn’t. I was the young guy who only had his position because of a beautiful combination of my family name and the governmental interests. Apparently, these people with doctorate degrees couldn’t stop for two seconds to realize that I hadn’t once said a word in favor of the government.
In fact, the reason why I was invited to talk at the European Parliament but not the Congress?
Every student who had attended one of my classes knew I made a living criticizing whichever party was in power. That included the party in power when I got tenured, and the party currently there.
“Well, it’s good to see you regardless,” I forced myself to say.
My last name meant manners were ingrained, but it didn’t mean I loved putting them to use. I wasn’t opposed to them. I enforced them while I was at the club or with a sub I had negotiated a dynamic with. In that context, they were freeing. Outside of it, they were mingled with too many flashbacks, too many restrictions within walls meant to provide safety. Manners equated false pretenses, manipulation. Outside of a controlled environment like the one kink provided, they didn’t equate respect, goodwill, or any of the positives that should be associated with them.
We exchanged a few more pleasantries before I could use my phone buzzing as an excuse to step away.
I frowned when I saw it was Jaime. I knew for a fact that he had class, and he knew I was about to start a panel.
“This better be important, Jaime.”
I’d moved away, but I was still surrounded by too many people to comfortably call them pup without raising any questions. Having people talk because I hooked up with men had been bad enough. If we added kink to those talks?
I shuddered.
“Um. Yeah, it is.” I heard them scoff as they walked past wherever they were. There were lots of voices in the background, so I was guessing college. “I faked an emergency call to get out of class.”
I frowned. Everyone milling around made it hard to focus. “Are you asking for something here?”
If Jaime thought they could rile me up before a panel for the fun of it, they had another think coming. It wasn’t going to work, but it was going to piss me off. Maybe I should really test that pain tolerance of them next time I saw them.
“No.” Jaime groaned. “Um, the professor you won’t let me email back? I had a class with him, but a TA swooped in. He’s on your panel.”
What the?—
I clenched my fist. This was why I’d wanted to get away from Mercedes and all the people who wanted to catch up as if we were old friends.
“Okay.”
Truth was, I didn’t know much about Dr. Gerlach. I’d read up on him a bit more since I’d tasked Jaime with the homework of writing an email in response that followed some kind of guideline and would hold up against a committee if it came to it. That was it. Up until last year, Gerlach had been at the University of Granada. It was a good university but not one I crossed paths with often. If we’d attended conferences together in the past, I’d done a good job of avoiding him before he could corner me. It either meant he had no interest in kissing ass, which I respected, or I’d been lucky for once.
It happened from time to time.
Men—and women, but mostly men—would corner me and kiss my ass for what felt like hours. They’d recite all the conferences we’d attended together and all the articles of mine they’d read as if that was going to get them a cookie.
Subs at the club were way more subtle about wanting praise.
Speaking of subs… “What made you think this warranted a call in the middle of your class?”
I appreciated it. I’d give them a visit to show them how much after I was back up north.
I hated Madrid with a passion. There was a BDSM club on the outskirts of the city I kept meaning to check out, but it was the only positive I could come up with about the capital.
“Um. Well.” Jaime cleared their throat. I bet they were scratching their arm, too. It was too bad I couldn’t beat the habit out of them right this minute. “So, you know how all you professors sometimes give us bogus tasks when you don’t wanna think too hard about homework and shit?”
“Yes?” I frowned.
People were starting to move toward the auditorium where the panel was being held. Tardiness was not something I accepted in myself.
“Well? Gerlach made us submit questions to that panel. Which I did.” More rustling in the background—probably from Jaime pacing. “The people attending hadn’t been announced yet, so I didn’t know it was you. Or him, for that matter. So, yeah, just so you know, I wasn’t stirring the pot or any of that.”
“What was the question?”
And why did this guy know he was attending weeks before I did? The names on the panel were announced almost two weeks ago, and there was no way he’d picked this panel at random when he gave that homework.
I’d been there. If I thought a panel was not going to gather a lot of interest, but I wanted it featured more, I’d make my students do the same.
“Y’know, something about trans rights. Obviously.”
Obviously.
The panel was on censorship in journalism within EU walls. I supposed it wasn’t too farfetched, given all the noise from Italy refusing to sign the treaty warranting LGBTQ+ people safety. Knowing Jaime, though? I bet that wasn’t the angle of the question. They actually had a sharp mind, but they tended to take it three steps farther without building up to their point. They had a point. The delivery just didn’t work at times because of it.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Jaime.” I really was itching to drop the name, but someone overhearing me call them pup or boy was not worth the short-lived reprieve the protocols would provide. “Now get your ass back to class.”
It didn’t matter how many times I tried to tell myself I was biased because of my connection to Jaime. Their professor? He was a fucking piece of work, and we hadn’t even gotten to anything actually juicy—such as Jaime’s question.
“We have another interesting question from one of the students watching us online,” Mercedes prefaced. I knew it was Jaime’s question the second her eyes twinkled when she looked my way. Thankfully, not everyone southward had heard about the article inadvertently outing me, but some had. Mercedes had been one of them. She’d tried to talk to me about it a few times, and I’d evaded her, but it seemed my luck was running out. “The question reads, what’s your take on erasing nonbinary identities when reporting on a gendered language and under an institution that rejects gender-neutral pronouns?”
I sighed. Gerlach took the question before anyone else could, making a joke about how he knew a few students in the last few years who could’ve asked that. I kept my face blank and let his words roll past me. In through one ear and out the other. There was nothing of value in what he was saying or what the others on the panel were commenting. Some tried to soften his words, but I didn’t care to bother.
“What is your take, Tony?” Mercedes asked. “You’ve been quiet over there. Anything to add to Gerlach’s words?”
I scrubbed a hand down my face before I repositioned the microphone in front of me.
“Having anything to add would imply I agree with any of what my colleagues here have said.” I focused on Mercedes as I spoke. Her shock was oddly gratifying, but it wasn’t why I kept my gaze on her. Looking at the others would misguide them into thinking I wanted a rebuttal of some kind. “So, if I may answer the question with a clean slate? We all know the Royal Spanish Academy is an outdated institution filled with dinosaurs who still think women should be shot in the head if they don’t conform to their gaze. Even if we ignore that, I don’t know one single journalist who hasn’t broken at least one of the Academy’s rules at one point. We understand that language evolves, and this isn’t a bad thing, so I don’t think the Academy should be a concern when it comes to using gender-neutral pronouns or language.
“That said,” I continued, doing my best to ignore the myriad of flashes that hadn’t been there before. I could already see the headlines everywhere. Jaime was going to pay for this. “I do think there are issues when it comes to reporting accurately on nonbinary identities, and I don’t have a clear fix for them.”
Mercedes gaped. I assumed the others wore similar expressions, but if I turned my head in either direction, I risked being blinded by the flashes. “Can you elaborate?”
“Gladly.” Not really. “As far as I know, nonbinary people in Spain use one gender-neutral pronoun, elle. I think there’s another one ending in i. However, other languages, like English, have at least a dozen neopronouns. More, actually. So, of course, we agree that using gendered pronouns to refer to a nonbinary person is erasing that identity, and misgendering, but what happens when the person we’re reporting on uses a neopronoun that simply does not have a translation in our language? Isn’t it erasing a part of their identity to default to they/them when describing them? And, can we consider that censorship, when it’s a result of our language’s constrictions?
“Personally, I think that’s a more interesting and productive question to answer, instead of the pointless and tiring debate on whether or not a reality is or isn’t a reality.”
The silence that followed was almost oppressive in nature. I sat back in the uncomfortable, worn-down chair the organizers had provided.
Not surprisingly, Gerlach was the one who recovered first. “Surely, you can agree that all this talk on gender identity is just noise to distract us from what really matters.”
It was a close call, but I managed not to roll my eyes. This was going to be bad, especially if anyone ended up learning about my relationship with Jaime. After the stolen pictures last year, I wouldn’t put it past the realm of possibility.
Which meant I had to tread carefully. “I agree trans people, and trans issues, are the first thing to be leveraged, by all parties, when fascist ideologies arise. But the fact that they’re being leveraged and weaponized doesn’t take away from the fact that they exist or that they are victims of an oppressive, violent system.”
I wasn’t an expert on anything that had to do with trans policies, for fuck’s sake. Most of what I knew about trans anything was thanks to Plumas and the people in the club. But because I’d quickly become the token queer person on the panel, every headline was going to champion me as the number one advocate for trans rights now.
At least I shut up Jaime’s professor.
Jamie was going to need to tighten up that email after this. Gerlach looked like the type who nursed a bruised ego for a long time.