Page 109 of What Boys Learn

Fine. I was alone with this, just as I’d been alone with the hypnosis transcript. I needed to stuff those old memories back where they belonged, and I needed to find a way to contact Benjamin, not to confront him but to reassure myself he was okay.

But first, I had to get through my day at Grove.

I made a fifth call to the number I had for Curtis, but it always went to voicemail. I’d sent him an email as well. He’d never said he was taking his own break from screens or phones. Maybe his father had a landline. I’d feel better if I knew where Benjamin was, precisely. An address, an alternate phone number. I couldn’t remember Curtis’s father’s first name. With only a common surname, I couldn’t find any contact information online.

All of this was keeping me from my teaching obligations. My students had just left for lunch and I hadn’t finished adding captions to the “Mental Resiliency During the College Application Process” presentation I planned to show them at the end of the day. When I inserted a thumb drive, I was surprised by the document names that popped up. Where I expected to see slideshows and PDFs I’d developed for Summit, I instead saw a dozen unfamiliar documents.

Notcompletelyunfamiliar. There was the file, WBL52024, that I’d printed for Curtis. I pulled out the thumb drive to inspect it closer. It was white and generic-looking, with nothing to distinguish it from several I owned. I’d accidentally given Curtis the wrong thumb drive back.

I opened the file and started scrolling quickly in search of the acknowledgments, where I hoped he would thank someone local with a distinctive name—a close colleague or relative I could track down as a way of finding Curtis. But I was only halfway there when my eye started to fall on certain phrases.The war on masculinity. Halfway down the page:Honest talk about boys’ libido. Next paragraph:Defending primal urges.

I slowed down, reading more carefully, waiting for the moment Curtis would explain these were the ideas of misogynist influencers—arguments he was detailing in order to dismiss them. But the dismissal never came.

“Are you kidding me?”

The book was calledWhat Boys Learn. But Curtis wasn’t saying that boys learn the wrong lessons from social media or each other. He was saying they learn the wrong lessons from an “overly feminized culture, one that actively denies and suppresses the natural drives and rites of passage by which boys become men.”

He was blaming the #MeToo movement. Accusing girls and women of making false rape charges. Criticizing consent culture for prioritizing women’s “need to be coddled” over men’s “need for sexual expression and empowerment.”

I couldn’t believe this was the Curtis I knew. I didn’t have time to read any more. I scrolled to the end but there were no personal acknowledgments, only a dozen pages of endnotes justifying his claims. Lunch period was halfway over.

I recalled the other files I’d seen on the thumb drive. One of them was about Benjamin. I no longer gave a shit about confidentiality.

I found the Rosso2024 file and started reading. The first paragraph didn’t surprise me—“below average student”—yes, a fair-enough description of Benjamin.

Yesterday, when we met again by chance. . .

A little odd, that he had started entering notes just after we all re-met at the pool, many days before Benjamin had his first session.

. . .she disregarded cues that I was occupied reading and working. . .

She?

. . .moved a magazine I had placed on a lounge chair to maintain space intentionally between us so that I could focus on the work I’d brought, but she disregarded those and other cues.

What the . . . ?

Hedidn’t want to talk? The person who asked about Benjamin’s flip turns and talked about his divorce? The one who recounted a long story about meeting Benjamin when he was a grade schooler? The one who asked me out for a glass of wine?

Given what I recalled from the last time I knew her—elements of antisocial personality disorder but with significant traits missing and without the positive attributes we expect from non-impulsive ASPD (high degree of success, confidence, charm), I was admittedly curious from a research standpoint, especially given the possibility of making familial and even multigenerational comparisons.

Multigenerational comparisons.

I had to go back to the top and read again.

This wasn’t a document about Benjamin. It was about me. And not just about me, but about our whole family. Curtis had seen something in me, in college, and he saw something in Benjamin. It made him curious.

But if he’d thought I had antisocial personality disorder, it hadn’t stopped him from asking me out for wine. Or flirting. Or going to lunch. Or seeming on the verge of starting an affair that day in Ray’s that only fizzled out at the last moment.

I stared at the screen, remembering. He’d mentioned the hypnosis manuscript, challenging me to read it. That’s when things cooled off.

No, that wasn’t quite right. It cooled off minutes earlier, when he asked me to release Benjamin into his charge for the rest of the summer, and I said no. My refusal to grant him full control was the pivot point when charming Curtis became severe Curtis.

I reread the last sentence on the screen.

. . .I was admittedly curious from a research standpoint,especially given the possibility of making familial and even multigenerational comparisons.

Multigenerational.