Previously, we met the evil liberals who plan to act like conservatives in order to…do something! There is some sort of encrypted drive situation. Meanwhile, back with Jake, his grandfather shows up and tells him that he’s going to use his money to make Jake’s lawsuits disappear.
Most importantly, though, Natalie shows up at Jake’s dorm! Join me as we watch them robotically “flirt” with one another.
Trigger Warning Chapter 12:
Jake didn’t want to be impolite and stare, but it was difficult not to do so. Dr. Burke—or rather, Natalie, since Doctor sounded too stuffy for somebody who looked like she did—
We are off to such a good start. Can one of Kelton’s students come and start inexplicably screaming about the patriarchy in Jake’s face right now?
Still, he didn’t want to be rude, so he used her title as he said, “I didn’t expect to see you here, Dr. Burke.”
“Why? Do you think there’s something inappropriate about it? Female students and faculty have to follow the same guidelines as the males, as far as relationships are concerned.”
“I didn’t know we had a relationship, other than being acquainted. And aren’t you forgetting about the gender-fluid and all the other two dozen alternative lifestyles?”
I can’t even follow the thread of this conversation, but I think that whatever is happening it’s supposed to be flirtatious and sexy. Hey my ovaries, calm down. We’re just getting started.
“So you have read the guidelines.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t exactly studied them rigorously.”
“That’s all right. If you happen to violate one of them, someone will let you know, in no uncertain terms. Possibly even with a megaphone.”
“And the scarlet letters R, B, S, and H?”
You, the reader: Wait, this can’t be flirting, right?
The book: JUST WATCH ME!
What if I told you that this was all just a setup to find out if Jake is straight?
Natalie frowned a little and cocked her head to the side for a second before she understood. Then she said, “Ah. Racist, bigot, sexist, homophobe. You left out C for cishet. You are cishet, aren’t you?”
“That’s what they used to call straight?”
“That’s right.”
“Then yeah, you can add the C in there.”
That was smooth as fuck, and now they’re off to go grab a drink together. But first Jake goes on a multi-paragraph tangent about gun law and also global warming.
Kelton College had the right under the law to prohibit carrying weapons of all kinds. Public universities, which received tax funds, had to abide by the law of the State of Texas that allowed citizens to bear arms. The news media, the academic world, and the left in general had freaked out over that legislation, shrieking that the state’s colleges and universities were going to become the site of frequent bloody shoot-outs.
Of course, that hadn’t happened, just as all of the liberals’ doomsday predictions about all sorts of things from global warming to the population explosion had failed to come to pass.
I’m really concerned that Jake thinks about absolutely nothing outside of these things. Does he ever just like, I don’t know, think about Game of Thrones? This must be so exhausting for him.
Anyway, this is all to say that Jake decides to go to the bar without his guns but he does bring one of his knives with him. I know I’m supposed to be shocked here, but frankly he’s been attacked basically every time he’s left his dorm, so I can’t really fault him for this.
At the bar, Natalie and Jake fumble their way through some clunky dialogue.
“To a world that will someday be normal again,” she said.
“That’s an odd toast,” Jake said, “but I can’t argue with it.”
They clinked bottles together and drank.
“If you want normal, though, you’re not going to find it on a college campus,” he said. “Not these days. If Kelton is any example—and from what I read online, it is—those places are hotbeds of crazy.”
Natalie shrugged and said, “They’ve changed a lot, even in the short time that I’ve been teaching. Things that seemed over-the-top and ridiculous a dozen years ago are commonplace now.”
“You’ve been teaching a dozen years? I find that hard to believe.”
She smiled and said, “Maybe I’m a little older than I look. If you call me a cougar, though, I’ll report you for hate speech.”
SERIOUSLY THO WHY DOES IT ALL HAVE TO TIE BACK TO “LOL LIBERALS CAN YOU BELIEVE IT AMIRIGHT?”
Natalie notices that Jake has gone off into flashback land again, and she gets him to open up about his family. Yes. The transition is that bad. At least it leads to Natalie pointing out that Jake actually comes from a lot of privilege and he’s directly benefiting from it by accepting his grandfather’s money for the lawsuits. Jake contemplates this for a hot second and then decides it’s an efficient way to deal with the issue tho so shrug.
But what about Jake’s extended family you didn’t ask?
“Any other relatives?”
“Determined, aren’t you?”
“Nosy.”
“Well, you’ve run up against a brick wall now. My mother had two brothers, but they’re both dead. One went nuts and died in an asylum—I know, I’m an insensitive lout, but at least I didn’t call it a loony bin—and my other uncle was killed in an explosion.”
I honest to god facepalmed when I read “I know, I’m an insensitive lout, but at least I didn’t call it a loony bin.” WHO TALKS LIKE THIS?!
But also wait let’s find out more about this explosion??
Natalie raised her eyebrows and said, “An explosion?”
“Yeah. The blast blew up him and his wife. I was too little to know anything about it at the time, but later on I heard rumors that it was mob-related.”
Wait it was mob and not caused by liberals? Looks at rest of the book I’m skeptical that this was truly the case.
“That’s terrible.”
“I’m sure Uncle Barry and his wife thought so when they got blown up.”
“And now you’re being terrible. I think I’ve heard enough about your family.”
Uncle Barry deserved more than this!!! #JusticeForUncleBarry
We get one line of info about Natalie’s family and it’s that her family is Irish. So now ya know.
Chapter 13:
They split an order of potato skins to go along with the beers they drank—three for Jake and two for Natalie. She really didn’t talk much about her family, and he didn’t prod her for information.
Because she’s just here for awkward social commentary flirting and to defy Jake’s expectations about how doctors can look. And apparently to eat potato skins, which is my favorite part of this book because yum.
Natalie complains about how there are now special interest groups for everything, and everyone is creating drama all the time over nothing. Jake is charmed.
She also reveals some wild facts about some of these special interest groups.
“A while back, the Union of African-American Students refused to let students who were actually from Africa join.”
Jake frowned. “Wait. What?”
“That’s right. Black students who came here from Africa specifically to go to college at Kelton were told they weren’t black enough to join the African-American students’ group.”
“Well, that’s kind of . . . odd.”
“I wouldn’t have let them in because they’re not American enough. Gosh these liberals are nuts.” What Jake is thinking, probably.
Also, we get it, book. EVERYTHING IS OUT OF CONTROL! IT HAS ALL GONE TOO FAR!! WHAT IS THIS MAD WORLD WE LIVE IN WHERE PEACEABLE MEN ARE ATTACKED ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES AND HAS TO ILLEGALLY HIDE HIS GUNS IN HIS DORM ROOM!!!
Jake has an important story for us all to hear:
“When all these college kids started getting upset with everything and demanding safe spaces, I heard somebody say something I’ve never forgotten: When Audie Murphy was nineteen years old, like a lot of these precious little snowflakes . . . his safe space was behind a .50 caliber machine gun.”
Natalie is also charmed by Jake. She’s super curious about how someone so young can be so deep.
“…You’re full of contradictions. You’re a warrior, but you’re also a philosopher. You quote Shakespeare. You’re young, but you look down on people your age and venerate soldiers from a war that was fought three generations ago. You’re quiet-spoken and gentle, and yet you’ve been one of those rough men ready to do violence on other people’s behalf. When you need to be, you still are a rough man.”
What can Jake say? He’s just a deep, peaceable man. Who quotes Shakespeare. Defying all our expectations!
After more awkward–and I hesitate to call it this–flirting, Natalie tells Jake he reminds her of a warrior monk, and he confirms that he’s not celibate. They start making out, but then it’s time for Jake to get attacked again. No, seriously!
That was when the rush of footsteps came from the darkness behind them, and Jake knew that hell was about to break loose, yet again.
See, told ya he should have brought his guns with him.
I don’t really think any of the things we’ve seen inside Jake’s head qualify him as “gentle” but okay Dr. Burke, you exposition me too well
We’re just no match for this high-quality exposition!
I can’t remember who said this, but I read a good counter-point once to the whole “well when MY generation was your age we didn’t have safe spaces WE HAD A WAR” thing that a whole generation with wartime PTSD probably could’ve benefited afterwards from some safe spaces
When Jenny Nicholson read this book on her channel, she did a little research about Audie Murphy’s longtime struggle with PTSD that pretty much gutted Jake’s whole point here.
“You’ve been teaching a dozen years?”
No, Jake, she’s been teaching students.
Okay, look, I live in Texas and the Tower Shooting at the University of Texas – Austin is a collective scar on the city. Everyone who lived there in 1966 knows exactly where they were when they heard about it and plenty of people knew someone who was at the university that day. A school shooting in the 60s was fucking unheard of, not a weekly event like it is now. It left an incredible mark on the city.
And since this dude had a sniper rifle and was holed up in a tower, no, I’m gonna stop you right there, a righteous bystander with a gun wouldn’t have been able to do shit. So FUCK RIGHT OUT OF HERE for calling people hysterical for NOT WANTING GUNS ON UT CAMPUS.
deep breath
Nah, never mind, I”m gonna hold on to this rage for a minute and say that it’s a hell of a thing for people to sneer at “safe spaces” while “shell-shocked Vietnam war veteran starts yelling when his granddaughter drops a toy, ho ho ho!” is still an acceptable form of comedy and has been for years.
Hey quick question why does every book you guys read have the mob in it
OH MY GOD IT’S A CONSPIRACY I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WE WERE INVOLVED IN!!
Okay I had to stop mid-post to make my mob joke but
“You’re young, but you look down on people your age”
Okay look, this is in no way a contradiction. Teenagers are pretty young and they are all looking down on each other constantly. The real contradiction here is that Jake is young and therefore to some degree in touch with Youth Culture (TM), if only to disdain it more effectively, but still thinks “special snowflake” carries any weight whatsoever as an insult.
Also wow it is really something to act like school shootings never happen in a book published less than a year ago.
I think the truth is that Jake is actually the one who believes he’s a unique and special snowflake because he’s a peaceable man who stands alone and sees through the sea of bullshit around him.
“Also wow it is really something to act like school shootings never happen in a book published less than a year ago.” It truly is astounding.
Uh yeah, Audie Wilson, the guy he was talking about suffered hugely from PTSD. After a particularly bad episode, he made the decision to spend the rest of his life campaigning for better emotional support for the men who were forced to suffer silently through their illness. He believed holding it all in worsened the symptoms and he also wrote poetry I think. Go fucm yourself, jake.
i graduated from UT-Austin in the 90s and lived there for a few years afterwards, and they basically won’t even let people up into the Tower except under very special circumstances BECAUSE of that shooting. (if you look at the Tower up close and personal, you’ll see why.)
i’m pro-audie wilson on this one. (my dad served in Vietnam, my grandpa served in WWII, my bff’s dad is retired career, and i live in a city that’s got a LOT of current and retired military people at least some of whom probably have PTSD and all of whom are real folks as opposed to “let’s make fun of mental health issues” jake.)