Mr. C

Image credit: Photo by nimou on Flickr

Today my daughter was chattering away, chattering to herself or her toys, chattering things that have meaning only to her. "Mr. C, C Mr., Mr. C...," she chanted.

And I could see his too-friendly grin approaching, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood: my high school English teacher ready to bend a little too close over my work, place his hands on my shoulders, touch me a little too long and a little too intimately... His full name was multisyllabic and difficult to pronounce, so he went by the initial: Mr. C. But we teenage girls had other names for Mr. C, names like "sleazy" and "perverted" and "gross." Mr. C. Behind his back we called him Mr. Creepy.

I forgot about Mr. C for the most part, until many years later when I read in the newspaper that he had resigned from his teaching position amidst controversy regarding inappropriate sexual relationships with some of his students. While this came as no surprise to me, I wondered now, as an adult, why it never occurred to any of us to do anything other than whisper amongst ourselves about our discomfort. We never told an administrator or a parent, and we never told him no. While we were younger than Mr. C, we weren't children anymore, at least in the eyes of the law; his pupils, his targets, were all above the age of consent. So, I suppose we assumed that everyone knew, that we were supposed to take care of ourselves, and above all that there wasn't anything wrong enough with someone who touched just a little too much or a little too long, with someone who looked just a little too hungrily and complimented our looks a little too eagerly.

Of course, something else has changed about the way I look at Mr. C now. I have a new name for him. Yes, if you've spent any time reading here at all, you probably guessed it: sex addict. I know that there are still plenty of people who would stick to calling him a creep or a pervert or simply a misogynistic jerk. There are plenty of people who would explain his actions as those of someone who is morally bankrupt or recklessly hedonistic or lacking in self control. There might even be those men, um, I mean, people who would defend his advances toward female students, and his romantic relationships with some of them, by saying the girls were legally adults, capable of handling themselves, and he was "just doing what any guy would do."

But for me, all those labels and explanations dismiss him without changing anything. They all say: he is what he is. Born or made, some people are just disgusting jerks (or bold and lucky dogs), right? But I call Mr. C a sex addict, and while that means much the same thing to most people, to me it doesn't mean dismissal or judgment; it means hope. Sex addiction is a disease, a type of compulsive behavior, and diseases can be treated. There is no hope for Mr. Creepy, but when I think of him as Mr. Compulsive instead, the door to change is just waiting to be opened.

"Mr. C, C Mr. Mr. C...," she chants on. Someday my daughter will encounter a man like that. We all do at some point. And when she does, I hope she greets him with both with firmer boundaries and more compassion than I did. I hope she can say no and speak her truth to the world without dismissing him as worthless and hopeless.