My Writing Professor

I went to Brooklyn College in 1989 to get an MFA the same year my first novel was purchased by
Harper& Row. It was a little awkward because I started an MFA program with a book deal but I was assured I was still welcome.

The two professors, Peter Spielberg and Jonathan Baumbach were in charge of fiction writers. Both of them seemed like a dream come true, a dream I had deferred for a very long time since I was the daughter of a semi-famous literary critic/novelist and was afraid to reveal my writing hopes. I had been out of college for ten years. I was also in recovery from alcoholism, had lost my beloved eldest sister in a horrendous accident and had subsequently started drinking again, got married, beaten up, left my husband and started to rebuild my life in such a depression I told my shrink every week how I planned to commit suicide. But I didn't. I obtained a decent job in publishing and then was fired by a fiend who flattered me to the heavens while stealing all my ideas. She was exactly the age of my dead sister. She broke my heart.

I chose CUNY because I had no money and was told Brooklyn College was a good place to get an MFA. Jonathan would run the first semester as a workshop class and I would meet with Peter privately. They would switch the second semester. Except I never did switch because Jonathan was so inappropriate with me in our class I felt humiliated, betrayed and guilty. He used to ask me if I had a boyfriend during workshops, whether the protagonist in my writing had a boyfriend, he used to stop class to tell me I looked good and he used to call me at home but I always hung up on him. He would stare at me while discussions were held and gradually I began to realise his obsession was serious and I didn't know what to do.




One day his son called me, asked me to meet with him and informed me I was destroying his father's new marriage. Then he asked if we could go out again. I remember thinking, "What is wrong with these people?" but I refused and told him his father's behaviour was awful and I wasn't to blame. I didn't believe that. I felt ashamed and hurt and embarrassed. I went to my other teacher with whom I had private sessions and informed him of what was happening in the workshops. I discussed the situation with my workshop classmates and discovered they thought I had encouraged his behaviour. I wasn't a child, after all. I was in my early thirties and should have been able to handle things. But this was professor, my father was a professor and anyway, I was a slut. The other professor reacted by offering to keep seeing me privately. We wouldn't have to switch. if I had been forced to see Baumbach privately, I would have left the program.

When Noah Baumbach's debut film came out I was gobsmacked. Here was his father and here was a student and here was sexual harassment and yet nothing had happened, no one had helped me, I had felt guilty and also gas lit-like am I imagining this? A few months after I received my MFA I was waiting for a date on Union Square and Jonathan appeared with his wife. "You look like a prostitute," he told me. I was wearing a short skirt. I had nice legs. I was 33.

I'm still a writer. I have no idea if he ever understood how betrayed and hurt I was by his behaviour. I so longed for a mentor, for someone to help me be a better novelist and possibly learn how to write a short story. I was still grieving for my sister, recovering from a violent marriage and dealing with my demanding, grief-stricken parents. Instead I was degraded and blamed for damaging a marriage.
I told one person the truth and was given a solution that required silence and deepened my sense of myself as a provocateur.