Joneve McCormick - Close Conspiracies (a memory of Bakersfield) lyrics

I believed teaching was one of the last resorts of the noble mind. I was young and prideful, just arrived in town. At a party welcoming new faculty an instructor in my department (I'll call him Ben), bragging about how far he'd come, told me he had power and could get me fired while a teacher with tenure stared at the floor. I was stunned. The next morning the dean of instruction summoned me to her office and remarked pointedly, looking me over, that purity is very small. I left speechless. The next instructor I met taught art. As a child, he confided proudly, he tore wings off bu*terflies but now hunted down black widow spiders instead on a daily basis. He relaxed between cla**es in the faculty lounge, tossing barbs laced with obscenity at one woman or another (taking care to cultivate one as well).Having responsibilities, I stayed and dodged and critiqued Ben's attempted novels. I listened while he described various crimes he'd been savvy enough to pull off, like faking a fall for an army discharge and a pile of benefits; facilitating drug runs... He wasn't satisfied with my responses and said I didn't do enough for him, that some women didn't know their place and, too, it looked like I was biased against his ethnic group. He told me I could stay out the year because that was expected, that I could start looking because I didn't belong there. By then I knew he had a power network in the system, and outside it. Learning the folly of expectations, I was knocked for a wallop. When the old dean from Ben's network left, her successor, famous for philandering, told me I needed a power base (like Ben had) and said he wanted to be my friend. He bragged at a new welcoming party, as though conferring a favor, that I would soon be on his plate. Some there thought I should have moved into a better neighborhood upstate after I resigned (still nearly penniless) because, after all, where I lived reflected on them.