Chris Plowe

Mama Told Me Not To Come George Pflug probed his dry mouth with his tongue. Swallowing produced no secretions. He felt depleted. Utterly. Like an alien had drained his vital fluids before ejecting him from the trash chute, he was tumbling through deep space to land…where? Somewhere comfortable. Lying on something soft. He stretched all four limbs, feeling his heart surge—not faster, just stronger, punching his left chest from the inside, like Bugs Bunny in love. He arched his spine, then collapsed back into the darkness. Wherever he was, he would just stay here a while. No rush. It was dark. Faint music played, far away. Something doleful, maybe from a Spotify sleep playlist. As the calm gave way to a sense of unease, fragmentary sights and sounds from the previous night flickering and fading, Pflug rolled to the left and pushed himself up on one elbow. Blinking his dry eyes, he could make out a fuzzy horizontal line of faint light, down low. A door. He was in a dark room. On a bed. He felt around for his glasses. He thought he heard a footfall on the other side of the door, which then opened slightly, or so he surmised, based on the blurry appearance of a vertical bar of dim light and an increase in the volume of the music. “Hello?” His voice broke from a whisper to a rasp. He coughed and swallowed. The room darkened again and the music got quieter. He thought maybe he heard movement outside the door over the ringing in his ears. He nearly fell to the floor when he tried to swing his legs off the bed. Hidden under a tangle of sheets, his left ankle had a strap around it, apparently attached to the foot of the bed, or a bedpost, it was too dark to see. His thumping heart sped up. This is not right. This is not the sort of situation in which the dean of an elite public health school finds himself. He tugged at the strap and freed his leg with a scritch of Velcro. He took a shaky inspiration, releasing the breath through pursed lips, trying to push more oxygen back up into his brain. What had he gone and done now? Freed from the restraint, both feet on the floor, he rubbed his bearded cheeks and then pressed his palms into his eyes. He felt a brief spin of vertigo, his torso listing to the right as multicolored lights flashed and scooted up and to the left in both visual fields. Not daring to stand yet, he checked his appendages. Arms intact, still in the shirt he’d been wearing earlier that evening…or was it last night by now? All the buttons—cuffs and front—were unbuttoned. Legs, intact. But bare. Sweeping his foot in a semi-circle Pflug found his pants, and tangled in them, his boxer briefs and socks. He gently tucked his fifth appendage into the briefs. It felt chafed, the thin skin and subcutaneous tissue puffy and tender. What in the living fuck went on last night? He remembered arriving at the Japanese restaurant downtown to find that the newly retired hedge fund magnate he was meeting, his school’s latest benefactor, had brought an unexpected guest to their get-acquainted dinner. And that the big donor had put away several sakes and a tall Sapporo with his sushi. He remembered the president of Dupont University, Robin Englund, greeting their trio at the door of his palatial residence on the edge of campus. And that the president’s pupils had been so dilated Pflug couldn’t make out the color of his irises. He thought he remembered dancing. That seemed implausible. These are serious people, at a serious university. Then again, something implausible, something bordering on unbelievable, must have happened, based on the evidence in his lap. Pflug could not imagine how he ended up in a bed in a dark room, tangled in straps, parched and dizzy. How did a working dinner with the incoming chair of his school’s board of advisors followed by a nightcap at the president’s home turn into some sort of all-night debauch? Ah. It was starting to come back to him. It all started in his office. With a migraine prodrome and aspirin that wasn’t aspirin. A wave of dizziness interrupted his analysis. Right now he needed to replete his fluids. He pulled on his socks, then his pants, buttoned his shirt to mid-sternum. He felt around on a nightstand, found a reading lamp, and switched it on, blinding himself. Once his eyes could tolerate the light, he found his glasses, stood slowly, tucked in his shirt, buckled his belt, and shuffled toward the door. He pushed it open and peeked out. The empty hallway was lit from one end, still too dim to make out the framed art on the walls. Pflug padded toward the light, past closed doors. Feeling wobbly, he traced the wall with the fingers of his left hand to steady himself. Following the scent of strong coffee, he emerged into a chef’s kitchen, lit only by the hood light above an eight-burner gas range, to find his host, dressed for the gym, turning off the flame under a six-cup espresso maker. The soothing electronica was playing from a Bluetooth speaker on the granite island, the sky starting to lighten outside the bay window above the breakfast nook. The president glanced in Pflug’s direction then quickly looked away. “Good morning, George! Feeling better? How about some caffeine for that migraine?”

Story statement A conflict-avoidant university dean needs to figure out why his colleagues are suddenly out to get him, and make them stop. Sketch the antagonist (200 words max): Dean George Pflug’s initial antagonist is Dick Dickerson, his immediate predecessor as Dean of Dupont University's public health school. Dick is an arrogant, manipulative narcissist who deeply resents being excluded from the process of choosing his successor. Then the new dean starts dismantling the old boys' club culture in the school, and Dick starts to fear that Pflug will expose his secrets, namely that he participated in procuring international students for the pleasure of wealthy university benefactors. One such benefactor is the recently retired hedge fund magnate Gordon Bates. Gordon, a former Dupont math professor and now a drug-snorting high-speed trading billionaire, has been tapped as the incoming chair of Pflug’s board of advisors. As Pflug starts to bumble into discovery of their bad deeds, Dick and Gordon cook up a scheme to blackmail Pflug, setting him up to be accused of the same crimes of which they themselves are guilty. The Pitch: Dr. George Pflug is dean of the public health school at Dupont University, which aspires to be known as the “Harvard of the South.” A conflict-avoidant divorced epidemiologist with an enlarged prostate, Pflug also suffers from imposter syndrome after being recruited to Dupont from a state school up north. Unused to the academic dirty dealing at Dupont, his trusting Midwestern nature is tested by the machinations of back-stabbing fellow deans, mealy-mouthed administrators, and entitled billionaire board members. Then he stumbles across evidence that international students are being exploited for sex, and matters threaten to spiral seriously out of control. After a night of debauchery at the home of the president of Dupont that may have involved an attempt to get blackmail material on him, Pflug teams up with his ex-wife, along with a Mother Earth-like social justice warrior and a local civil rights attorney. Putting his career and reputation on the line—and maybe his life—he faces his fears and musters the will to fight back. Who said it was safe at the top of the Ivory Tower? Titles Campus crime novels - examples: Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan The Secret History by Donna Tartt Confessions by Kanae Minato Dare Me by Megan Abbott An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian Tell Me Everything by Cambria Brockman Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison She Was the Quiet One by Michele Campbell The Resemblance by Lauren Nossett If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio Bad Habits by Amy Gentry The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn Current title: Pflug Figures It Out Other options considered Pflug Fights the Power Pflug Flunks Out Comparables & genre See attached spreadsheet for detailed analysis of comps and genre Genre: Comedic Campus Crime Novel -or- Upmarket Fiction Comps Lucky Hank meets Bad Sisters Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (satire, 2019) Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer (literary fiction, humor; tone rather than genre, 2023) The Lecturer’s Tale by James Hynes (academic satire, 2007) The Pamela Papers: A Largely E-pistolary Story of Academic Pandemic Pandemonium by Nancy McCabe (closest recent comparable, 2024) Logline A conflict-avoidant dean at an elite university is targeted by an X-rated blackmail scheme after he stumbles across evidence of the illicit shenanigans of his predecessor and a major donor, forcing him to muster the will to fight back, putting his career and reputation, and maybe even his life, on the line. Conflicts Inner conflict: Unprovoked attacks by his academic colleagues rattle the defenses Pflug developed to survive violent bullying in childhood. Just like his parents did back then, his two bosses at Dupont University, the provost and the health chancellor, both pooh-pooh the danger and fail to stand up for him. Pflug’s initial reaction is shame and despair. Even as he tries to protect his students, he himself must be unworthy of protection, even of love. But after being unwittingly dosed with MDMA, and with support from his still-affectionate ex-wife, his fear transforms into righteous anger. He enlists allies and schemes to use the same kind of subterfuge his enemies use on him to fight back against them. Secondary conflict: As he climbed the academic ladder, Pflug became socially isolated, more so after a divorce. His stressful job and high rank at the university make it hard to make friends or find romantic prospects. Most of the people around him care only about their own status in the campus hierarchy, but he finds one sympatico professor, a charismatic queer social justice warrior who has herself been targeted by some of the same nefarious actors who are now tormenting Pflug. She in turn connects him with a local attorney, the son of a civil rights icon, who has tangled with Dupont in the past. Pflug has to choose whether to preserve his high-status, highly-paid career at all costs, or to risk it all to protect vulnerable students, and his own integrity. Setting Pflug Figures It Out is set mainly on and around the campus of the fictional Dupont University, an elite university that aspires to be “the Harvard of the South.” The protagonists of most academic satires and campus novels tend to be untenured creative writing lecturers sequestered in shabby basement offices. In Pflug, most of the action takes place in the corridors of power--lavish office suites with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on meticulously tended quads, or mansions like the posh president’s residence on the edge of campus. As the story progresses, Pflug roams from an exclusive private club in Manhattan, to the glass-and-chrome Hamptons beach home of one of his foils, to the regional FBI office in the state capital. At a time when the curtain has been pulled back on the foibles and follies of presidents and provosts at top American universities*, the reader is drawn into a world that many are curious about but that few get to experience firsthand. *E.g., presidents forced to resign after contentious Congressional hearings or violent protests; the dean of a leading medical school getting fired after using drugs with a young sex worker in his office. Pflug comps & genre 26Nov2024.xlsx