The director of Saint Anthony, Sebastien Arrow, told this story to Lohbado one afternoon during a beer drinking session at the Bleeding Bull Tavern. Sebastion, or Seb for short, put it blunt, “I tell new instructors, get your meat elsewhere. Don’t touch the students.”
Inappropriate interaction with students complicates things, creates tension, power imbalance, jealousy, accusations of favouritism and sometimes makes the professor a laughing stock. When Jason the basketball student started seeing Og, his grades went up. Og advanced Jason to the top of the bean-stock and tried to turn him into a star player. Ben Irons couldn’t accept how a little bum fondling, ass licking and sucking up could advance a basket case like Jason. Scholarships were at stake. Ben wasn’t going to be fleeced and let Jason take all. No way! Ben Iron’s passion was to make it as a professional athlete. His ambition was to by-pass nepotism and achieve recognition and awards based on his own merit. Boy, was he naive! That’s not how it works in the carnival of the word. Integrity rarely gets rewarded in the land of the Almighty Dollar. The best seller takes the money, while the good book gathers dust on the shelf. The teacher, Ogden Thor, let the golden locks of Jason Onyk blind him to the biceps and rippling torso and legs of Ben Irons... a huge mistake. It cost Ogden Thor his job and resulted in a downward spiral culminating in a homocidal cannibalistic episode.
Og accepted the severance package. He was ok for a year, twelve months to find another job. Too bad for him, Bleeyooga was too small for a guy with his kind of reputation to find redemption. No employer even wanted to look at him. He would have done better to leave town. Og was fine for the first three months. He enjoyed a well-deserved rest before the depressive inertia set in. At six months he was starting to lose it. He stayed up all night drinking and slept all day. After a negative gestation of nine months, the monster was born. The cannibal inside Og took control. The end began when he had an affair with Todd Higgins, a bank manager.
Og worked out at the gym two hours a day. At forty he looked trim and picturesque. His vitality exuded a peculiar charm. Bank manager Todd Higgins could be forgiven for allowing lust to get the better of him. Their paths crossed at an art opening, an exhibition of penis paintings and androgynous dancers at a trendy arts centre. The building housed a gallery, plus offered art studios at subsidized rates. On a Friday night, an art opening was a good place to meet people. Og had been feeling pretty lonely. He was drawn to the monumental confidence and cheerfulness of Todd Higgins. They gazed at each other across the room a few times, then found themselves standing in front of a surreal phallic image. Todd had taken a few art courses before switching to business administration and accounting, a decision that paid off. Be close to the source of the money and you'll never have to worry. Before long, Todd longed to deposit money in Og’s orifice. He wanted nothing more than to stick it in and to do the crouching and lying down dance. Og was ready for anything. They found a studio. The door wasn't locked. They slipped inside. They consummated their lust on a yoga matt in a studio while hipsters and art connoisseurs buzzed about the gallery. Todd said he hadn't felt that good in a long time. Todd and Og got on famously for about six weeks, until a bank robbery at the branch Todd managed soured things.
Six professionals walked away with a hundred thousand dollars. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. Todd thought he'd handled the situation quite well, but the people in the enquiry weren't happy. The bank robbery resulted in detailed enquiries, enormously stressful for Todd Higgins. Even though the robbery was not Todd’s fault, it cast a shadow over his reputation. Nobody came right out and said it, but he could see it in the eye of the district administrator, the accusation of laxity. If Todd Higgins had been more present, more vigilant, more up to date in his security measures... if he had been more this and more that the robbery wouldn’t have happened. That was the implication.
Thieves are attracted to the weakest part of a wall. Why did the bank robbers penetrate the Higgins branch... that was the unspoken question. With his hostile, increasingly aggressive tone and expression of mocking insolence, Brian Walaby might as well have come right out and said it. Todd Higgins was not up to par.
Todd’s blood pressure went up. He could no longer sustain an erection. He couldn’t eat or sleep. In three weeks he lost twenty pounds. He was a nervous wreck and had bad breath. Stress hormones gave off a foul odour. He lost interest in Ogden Thor, who at this point was virtually living with Todd. It was no big deal for Todd’s cook to prepare meals for two men as opposed to one. There was plenty of room in Todd’s queen-sized bed.
Todd’s stress got on Og’s nerves. It brought out the beast in him. Todd’s stress odour reminded him of his hot-tempered father who used to beat him with chains and hang him from a hook in the barn. Ogden Thor’s father, Jim Thor, was a school principal who lived on a hobby farm. He believed there could only be one boss. Jim Thor was boss. As long as Ogden lived under his father's roof, he would abide by his father's rules or face the consequences. Og liked the farm. He didn't want to be disowned. He did his best to do the right thing, so his father wouldn't blow a valve and beat him. The hobby farm consisted of a huge barn, several acres, three goats, a few cows, chickens and pigs. Ogden learned the facts of life from mixing with the animals. At thirteen he put on a pair of rubber boots and lost his virginity to a goat.
Og’s mother Ena didn't like it. She was allergic to just about everything. She accused Jim of neglecting her. She found her husband a huge disappointment. Jim later told Og how Ena had cried the first few days of their honeymoon and wouldn't tell him what was wrong. That's when he realized she would have to work things out on her own. If she wasn't going to talk to him, there was nothing he could do. They quarrelled frequently, then Ena began losing control of her emotions.
Later they found out she had a borderline personality disorder. Her treatment began when Ogden, at the age of thirteen, showed up at school with blood-caked hair from where his mother had walloped him with a cast iron frying pan. They sent Ogden to a doctor. A social worker visited the farm. Ena was admitted to Daisy Heights Recovery Institute. And so began her long career, in-patient, out-patient, bi-weekly meetings with a therapist, the day program, monthly monitoring of the medication. She took twelve pills a day. They never quite managed to find the right cocktail. Some pills made her gain weight and caused her skin to become blotchy. She had diarrhea and even soiled her panties a few times. She went into a depression. Her hands trembled. Everyone agreed she had to be on medication; otherwise, she could be a royal horror.
Og remembered a few times when his father Jim Thor struck Ena hard in the face to get her to snap out of it. His violence only made things worse. Og screamed at his father to stop. Couldn’t he see she was not well? You don’t fight someone who is in a crisis. Violence makes a psychotic episode worse. Violence is never acceptable. When Jim hit Ena, whatever shred of respect or affection Og felt for his father turned to hatred.
Jim Thor seemed to think if he yelled loud enough he could knock some sense into Ena and make her stop acting up. He didn’t believe she was ill. He said she looked normal to him. He called her a spoiled princess, a brat, too good for the rest of the world. Jim thought Ena was being ill on purpose, to piss him off. He felt no empathy or understanding. He got angry when the social worker tried to explain how mental illness is the result of many biological and environmental factors. He felt the worker was blaming him for Ena’s insanity.
A rage welled up in Og as he sat across the dinner table from Todd Higgins, who slumped forward, elbows on the table, chin in hand in a posture of defeat. He tried to get Todd to look at him. Todd’s face was frozen into a stoic mask. His eyes were glassy and appeared unfocused, like he was on the verge of losing it, just like his mother had lost it. For a moment, in his rage, Og could understand how his father had been frustrated with Ena. The angry spirit of Jim Thor entered into Ogden Thor’s brain and hardened his heart. Og couldn’t take it anymore.
Og leapt up from the table, threw his chair against the wall so hard, one of the legs came off. He picked up the wooden leg and whacked Todd so hard on the forehead, Todd tumbled backwards on to the Persian rug. Og bludgeoned Todd’s skull to the point of no return. The steam of rage began to dissipate. Og could see he’d gone too far. Todd lay in a pool of blood, broken nose, broken teeth, eyes swollen shut, a deep gash in the forehead...
The cook had already left. There was nobody else in the house. Og cut a steak from the back of Todd’s neck. Todd was overweight, even though he’d lost weight. He wasn’t morbidly obese. Og fried flesh from Todd’s neck and ate it. He cut a few more steaks and put them in the fridge.
Bold headlines bled over the front page of the daily rag the next day... cannibal killer, the Wrath of Og! Murders happen every day, but not cannibalism. Suddenly people got excited. It was a hot topic on talk radio shows. It generated endless hen-cluck chatter. An election campaign was underway. One of the candidates promised, if elected, to hunt down and disable all cannibals in the region. He spoke of the growing threat. Indiscriminate killers, driven with a lust for human flesh and blood, raw, boiled, roasted, fried or stewed... nobody was safe from the menace to families, loved ones and friends of friends and loved ones as long as cannibals were on the lose. The very fabric of society was under siege. The election candidate declared a war on cannibalism.
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