Clean Hands by Kim J. Davis

Brian spent the rest of the week trying to get back in the habit of doing the things he normally did: jogging around the Schuylkill, washing his laundry, shopping for groceries. In spite of his Saturday night fight, courtesy of Alan the Australian, his disposition had improved significantly thanks mainly to Olivia. Their meeting on Monday had gone better than he’d expected. When he’d called her that morning, his only objective was to see her and thank her in person for coming to his aid Saturday night, but after sitting and talking with her, he quickly realized that he’d like to have her as a friend. She was funny and sweet…just the kind of person he needed in his life to keep him out of trouble for awhile.

Brian was looking forward to seeing Olivia again Friday night and finding out more about her, but he was also nervous about their second meeting. He really wanted to establish a friendship with her, but he was worried that he’d say or do the wrong thing and blow it. He tended to stay away from women, preferring to socialize with other men, usually white, gay ones like himself. He’d never slept with a woman and he’d never had one as a friend. While he wasn’t particularly fond of women, he didn’t hate them either. He worked with many women and taught a lot of female students without any problems. Still, he’d never really had a close relationship with a woman other than his mother and even they weren’t that close. Brian told himself (and others) that his decision to remain primarily in the company of men stemmed from the fact that he was gay and just didn’t see the need to expand his social circle beyond its current parameters. But he suspected his reluctance to befriend or bed women had more to do with his dislike of them rather than his homosexuality.

Olivia’s race added yet another level of complexity in Brian’s desire to establish a friendship with her. He knew in his heart that he wasn’t a bigot. However, he did recognize a distance between himself and his black students who were, really, the only black people he had any association with since he didn’t date black men and didn’t have any black friends. He viewed his students as people separate from himself not only in terms of things like race and class, but also in terms of knowledge and intellect. Even though he couldn’t imagine having any kind of social relationship with them, he wanted to see them excel from their lowly station in life and hoped he would play a pivotal role in their educational and intellectual development. A former boyfriend once told him, “You don’t have to like them to teach them.” Truer words had rarely been spoken, but whatever dislike he had for any of his students was overshadowed by his desire to see them succeed. Yes, he was hard on them, but only because he wanted them to take their work seriously and do a good job. Was that too much to ask? And, more importantly, did that make him a racist?

Brian was encouraged by his meeting with Olivia and by the fact that she hadn’t run away screaming once he’d told her he was gay. Even though he wasn’t ashamed to admit his sexual orientation, he did hesitate before revealing the information to her because he worried how she could react to the news. He knew a lot of blacks disliked homosexuals. Olivia was practically a stranger to him and her opinion of him shouldn’t have mattered, yet it did. He wanted her to like him and he just couldn’t handle one more rejection in his life.