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Pullman, Washington

I t’s been a long day. Bryan is tired. He’s sitting in the back row in the class of Dr. Hillary Mellinger, a recent graduate herself, who teaches a course on the role of cultural issues like immigration and homelessness in criminal justice.

Bryan isn’t particularly interested in Dr. Mellinger’s course. Incels might consider her another Becky. She is an advocate for immigrant women and girls who are fleeing men perpetrating gender-based violence by knocking them around.

Dr. Mellinger interrupts his reverie. “Bryan,” she says suddenly. And she asks him a question about immigration that he hasn’t prepared for. Did he even hear it correctly?

Shit. He doesn’t know that one.

The Beckys have turned around and are staring at him.

So is Ben, who observed later, “You could kind of tell that he was trying to say something, but it just wouldn’t come out. He couldn’t find the words.”

Dr. Mellinger looks shocked.

Ben said Bryan looked like a dog caught in a thunderstorm. “If his ears could have been pinned back, they would’ve been pinned back. He was just stiff as a board, didn’t move, didn’t speak, just kind of wide-eyed.”

Fortunately for Bryan, this happens in the final few minutes of class.

He’s the last to leave the room, so no one sees his face as he heads to his car.

No one can see if he’s red-hot angry or red-hot ashamed.

Either way, the stuttering, awkward guy, the real self he’d tried to leave behind in Pennsylvania, just appeared like a jack-in-the-box.

He knows that you can put him back, but you can’t erase the discomfort in what just happened.