Arnon Grunberg

Rooms

Tongues

About fear and misconduct - Nicholas D. Kristof in the Times:

'It’s 2006 and I’m traveling in the Darfur area of Sudan with my female researcher, Winter Miller, who persuaded me to let her use her own money and vacation time to join the trip for her own writing (she later wrote the play “In Darfur”). We’re also accompanied by a male video journalist, Naka Nathaniel.

The problem is that the first night we’re in an upscale hotel in the Chadian capital, which is more than Winter can readily afford. Do I let Winter sleep on the extra bed in my room to save money?

This really pained me. I wanted to help but feared stories about me sharing a hotel room with my researcher. Fortunately, Naka rescued us by letting Winter stay on his extra bed; at least she did not work for him, and they were simply colleagues.

I reached Winter, now a playwright in New York, and here’s her take: “At the time, I wanted you to be a hero and pay for an additional room. However, I thought you were overreacting; I trusted myself to be around you and I trusted you to be around me.”

Did I choose right in these cases? Wrong? I’m not sure. The challenge is less about maintaining propriety than about the image of propriety. I know I wouldn’t do anything improper, but I don’t want to leave the slightest room for innuendo.

That’s why men sometimes say they don’t dare mentor women; tongues will wag.'

Read the article here.

Interestingly, the main question is avoided. Imagine that Kristof and Winter would have enjoyed some innuendo in this upscale hotel room. Why not? Is sex between a researcher and a journalist, two consenting adults, unimaginable?

In the future all Americans will be nuns and monks, with a few exceptions, the whores and the johns.
Fear of sex in the US is bigger than the fear of the Apocalypse.

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