I, a male research assistant, sit in my office. A meeting with various professors is to take place there later. A sociology professor shows up a little early and chats with me. He tells me that before he had become a professor, he had been less able to ‘pick up’ women in bars. A good friend of his had always held the upper hand in their competition to pick up women. Now that he was a professor, he tells me, he was ahead of the game. They had made a bet as to who could produce the most amorous escapades at the end of the year. The winner would then be treated to a visit to a brothel by the loser.
When I annoyedly say that I did not like such stories and that this was no news to him, he says, that we were now between ourselves and that I could therefore drop the leftist attitude and speak my mind openly.
The same professor lives in the same city as his wife and their two children. However, he had rented a separate apartment in the city to have peace from his family and more time to work. This irritated me because while I can understand looking for a secondary residence if the city you teach in is too far away from your home, I think that having a second home in the city you already live in simply reproduces the division of tasks, etc.