ROBERT

     I first met Robert when he walked into our Toastmasters meeting at Warner Creek Correctional Facility, a minimum security prison. We were a small group of ten to twelve reliable members. On that particular night we were expecting a new member to give his Icebreaker speech. People usually take a few weeks to write that speech, partly to overcome their shyness and fear, and partly to compose a speech that will withstand the inevitable critique. That person did not show up. Robert offered to step into the spotlight with no script or preparation. He gave a remarkably good speech. Funny, self-effacing, and honest. Robert was a full-blooded Native-American, an Ojibwa from the province of Ontario, Canada. He had left school in the fifth grade and run away from home. First Nation tribal members were given dual US and Canadian citizenship, mostly because their ancestral tribes may well have been forced to move north by the US cavalry. An additional factor was because, prior to the arrival of the white man, they thought of that entire region as their ancestral lands, Lake superior was a place where they fished, hunted, and was a travel corridor. 

     He was not an articulate speaker, not surprising given his truncated educational history, but it's fair to say he was no worse than a recently elected Republican soon-to-be president. He was a gifted story-teller, that drew us into the circumstances of his travels between Ontario and Florida, and eventually to Oregon. Along the way he was frequently under the scrutiny of the courts. 

     The club president asked me if i would mentor Robert, and I volunteered. I had recently achieved my Master communicator, Silver and mentoring was one of the conditions of Gold status. We began working together on the yard. My deepest wish was to encourage Robert to get his GED, and beyond. I gave him a book by a Native-American, William Least Heat-Moon who had lost his professorship at a small college in the mid-west during the recession. The result of that job-loss was to fracture his marriage. So he bought a Plymouth Voyager van and tricked it out as a camper. His purpose was to travel the old market-roads of the United States and document the changes that resulted from the interstate highway system bypassing those towns. Those roads are indicated by blue lines on a road map, the Interstates are red. They gave birth to the title of the book, "Blue Highways". The narrative was a sensitive look at the affected communities, with a pace that could be read as reflecting native speaking tempo. I figured this might be the book to jump-start Robert's education. It jump-started a different desire in Robert. I'm not terribly perceptive in same-sex issues. I'm not turned off by it, I just don't speak the language. Robert had admitted early on that he wanted me to be his Big Daddy. I interpreted this as him wanting a father-figure that had gone missing in his formative years. I eagerly sought to fill that void, only to learn much later what void he wanted to fill. 

     I urged Robert to write his life story, telling him that I would help him. He jumped at the chance and soon started bringing me pages of cramped and poorly-written narrative about his travels and the bath-houses where he sought out companionship. None of this was appropriate to Toastmaster speeches, but it was heartfelt. My mentorship was short because Robert got out on an early-release, and was shipped to Portland. He started sending me letters that not only continued his story but stated in much more graphic ways what he wanted from me. I suppose most women are familiar with that awkward place between healthy and unhealthy relationships with men. I now understand. Robert was interested in what is called, the "rough-trade". He liked to be dominated by a larger man with all that that implies. I had had an experience with a woman in my 20s that gave me a taste of that world. We were drinking in an after-hours bar, above the Christian Science Reading Room in northwest Portland (I always liked that connection). We went back to my apartment to continue to deepen our acquaintance. As things heated up, she wanted me to spank her. I could not comply with the forcefulness she desired. It was a short-lived relationship. In brief, my sexual tastes were much more vanilla than she preferred; not even French Vanilla. I tried to keep my relationship with Robert on a more conventional footing in my written replies to his letters. In time the letters went from weekly to bi-weekly and eventually petered-out. I never knew what happened to Robert. Perhaps he is traveling the country living on his wits. Perhaps he is behind bars. Maybe some day I will bump into him, with the awkwardness that that implies.