April 14, 2026

While I was revising and editing "A Life In Words Mostly, Unread, Part Two," I was reading Sherman Alexie's stunning memoir, "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me," in which Alexie mixes poetry with story-telling and expository writing to process his grief about his mother's death. Given some sections of the memoir are previously published poems, Alexie creates a better version of the kind of life review to which this series aspires. More explanation does the book injustice. However, not only was I being humbled by a better writer describing his life in words (more read than unread), but I also was struck by one passing comment late in the book:

“Then I stood and shouted my angry and nostalgic poems about my lost youth. Afterward, I sat at a picnic table, feeling that post-performance emotional letdown (that I would later, thanks to Brene Brown, be able to more accurately describe as a ‘vulnerability hangover’)” (Alexie 384).

I immediately and completely understood. After all, just days before, I had written about my version of "vulnerability hangover" in Part Two of this series when I described how fast I got away after being "on stage" (in class or running a meeting or leading an academic panel). I just didn't know Brown had a term for it. (I have at least one very good friend who must be thinking, "didn't you ever watch those Brown clips I sent you?")

"Vulnerability Hangover" refers to the unpleasant feelings one experiences after opening oneself up to others (sharing deep emotions, for example). If a clip forwarded by my friend has Brown directly mentioning such a hangover, I probably dismissed it as "well, duh, that's pretty much men. Have you met us?" However, if Alexie can acknowledge it, I should finally own my "vulnerability hangover(s)" (I see no way I can call it a one-time thing.)

I think of Fall 2009 when I told my academic leadership team that I was stepping down as Provost to return to faculty status, voice cracking. In the immediate aftermath, I snapped at a Dean who took the first seconds after the announcement (and the end of the meeting) to advocate yet again for a program decision that we had tabled earlier in the meeting. As I tried to make my way back to my office, a few of my closer reports offered support in my moment of vulnerability, but I really wanted to be left alone.

I think of informational videos made with a bit of creative flair to hopefully hold the interest of my faculty between 2011 and 2018, videos where in order to present key information, I assumed various characters such as Donald Trump (pre-presidency), Gordon Ramsey, Bob Costas, only to be told eventually that “no one watches those, Dr. Fleming.” I knew that wasn’t really true, as I had a few faculty who always commented after watching them, but I recognized that many people who needed the information were not getting it. Talk about “post-performance letdown.”

And I think of over 1000 posts to this website that usually produced profound silence in their aftermath, especially ones (and they are most of them) where I was sharing some secretive fear, love, or idea. So I have been vulnerably hungover a lot, but have learned to hide it quite well, much like an alcoholic might hide her empty bottles in the laundry basket.

I suppose now I should confess to needing an obsessive control of invulnerability, seen in a lifetime of metaphorical face paint, masks, armor, and alternate identities. After all, the first story I ever wrote, in 1978, was “The Autobiography of Shawn Botskin,” about a guy seemingly nothing like me. In reality, he was too much like me with his obsession with rock music and general aimlessness. In my debut work, shared only with two or three of my best friends, I had hidden my identity.

Have I hidden behind masks and armor (and the sort) in my real life? I bet if you asked people who know me, they’d say I haven’t, which will be evidence of how I am a master of disguise. However, there is a reason why I so appreciate Brown’s use of the word “hangover.” If typical alcohol-induced hangovers can be controlled, albeit temporarily and completely incorrectly, by a bit of "the hair of the dog," then I would argue that my vulnerability hangovers were minimized in my moments "to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" (as T.S. Eliot wrote in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock). And from early on, even with the poetry written when I was in high school, I did my best to subtly acknowledge my hangovers.

I didn't make the above comparison with alcohol hangovers as a flippant joke. Especially in my writing prior to getting married, drinking and/or alcohol make plenty of appearances. After all, I am the guy who hosted not one but two notorious high school parties where I passed out drunk (trust me, there are correlated themes about alcohol that beg for their own blog, but we'll leave those for another day). I proclaim myself a self-educated expert on both alcohol and vulnerability hangovers. Ironically, even for a guy who allowed few people to see what he wrote, the writing still concealed further vulnerability. I guess in that way my writing resembled a Russian nesting doll, where my real identity could be found in the tiniest doll (I have a Lenin nesting doll from the Soviet Union that has a bottle of vodka in the smallest doll. See, these things are inextricably linked. I am sure my analyst would agree.)  It was when I tackled love and romance (boy, talk about a future theme) that my fears of exposure first came out. 1981's "Barren Trees" would be a bit better if I had been smart enough to apply a fig leaf/garden of Eden reference to the overall message. Still, I am dangerously honest:

Oh dear, isn't it enough

That you can see right through me,

Or do you want to strip me down

To barren trees?

As with most of the stuff I wrote before 1984, the "you" here is nobody specific. I struggled worrying that the collective "you" of the world would strip away my foliage to reveal the bare facts that I had nothing of value.

Yes, imposter syndrome hovers around me, even in my teens. Perhaps I make excuses, but with two incredibly accomplished parents, I wouldn't have been the first child in such a situation to question if he or she measured up. Hell, I feel that now as I review papers for this blog, taking breaks from sorting through their papers as requested by someone at West Virginia University. Talk about getting a feeling for "which one of these things is not like the other?" 

Thus, one could argue that I have embraced my imposter syndrome my entire life by covering my barren tree through the years with various protective devices. In 1983, I declare that

I've been known to wear many masks,

Depending on who you are and what you ask.

It's easier than showing my feelings. (“Masks”)

Behind my mask, I rise to the challenge that people might want to get to know me, almost to the point of taunting them,

Don't try and unmask me.

Don't bother to ask me.

Some things will be best left uncovered.

There's so much you won't discover.

As if I am not confusing enough, I did share "Masks" publicly -- via office walls in Morgantown, Bloomington, and Dearborn. For the first time, I issued a sincere, public statement people could ignore as they wish. The mask served me well for a decade, although a period of inactivity related to writing provided even better cover. In 1994, when I decided to start writing creatively again (finishing a dissertation might have sapped a lot of energy before then), I adopted figurative clown make up over the mask. 

“Disregard almost everything that I’ve said so far,” I exclaim in the opening line to “Clown Face. “Don’t put much stock into the trite things I’ve said.” Talk about an unreliable narrator. What can we put stock into? Certainly not into this sideshow:

There are certain obligations and responsibilities

That seem like too big a deal,

But I recognize them, poke at them

And wonder about how I should feel.

The poem juxtaposes these doubts about my creative output with a series of figures mocking me and judging me. However, I cast them aside because "they're not speaking to me (I don't believe)/but to a man with a painted face and a big old nose." I was staring at a mirror but denying the clown I saw.

The good thing is that, especially with the publication of my satiric novel in 2010, I realized that having my alter ego be a clown actually provided room to grow. It wasn't long before I realized that harboring a court jester inside a chief academic role served as a good outlet for the idiocy surrounding me in higher education. And trust me, the court jester role as one moves closer to the throne of kings in academia is necessary. Everyone else in that court are too busy admiring the new clothes. I ultimately celebrated my jester role in 2020's "Coxcomb, Codpiece: The Full Monty," where I admit

So, here I am, in suit and tie,

Looking like what I despise.

But you can't accuse me

Of not juggling or flipping:

These tricks are my sleight of hand.

So, you ask, why am I confessing to all of this now? What’s the point? 

Virginia Woolf observed in her 1928 book Orlando that "every secret of a writer's soul . . . is written large in his words." I have come to accept that this series, written despite my acceptance of so much unread, is my need to acknowledge my vulnerabilities, bare my secrets, and leave something beyond my worn-out carcass one day.

I doubt many people understand how vulnerable I made myself when I published It’s All Academic. I was threatened by a lawsuit, which did cause me a substantial loss of money, but the book and this website were kept intact. As I implied in one of the previous installments of this series, my desire to promote this satirical novel had to be muted so that I could secure another position and bring regular earnings back to my family (our son was eleven at the time). Clearly this wasn't a time to show potential future employers that I embraced being the court jester. I regret none of this and learned that being vulnerable is not the end of the world; however, I wasn’t stupid. In late 2010, I discovered the brilliant online satirical magazine The Cronk of Higher Education. Within weeks of that discovery, I had adopted my first new identity since Shawn Botskin and submitted more than a dozen satirical stories (a few co-written with friends and even the editor) as Monty Tufnel.

It felt great to openly scorn college presidents, faculty, administrators, even the occasional student. From the January 2011 “Search Firm Hired To Find Search Firm” through that month’s “President Renowned as Change Agent Changes Agents” to June 2013’s “Months Later Furor Finally Explodes Over ‘Urban Ludditte’ Tweet,” I got my chance to skewer the parts of academia that demand scrutiny. Sadly, The Cronk is no more, and the website no longer exists.* My favorite submission, one in which the editor added a couple of good lines, can still be found online at the Adjunct Nation website:

https://www.adjunctnation.com/2012/12/10/cronknews-satire-controversial-move-ensures-adjuncts-comply-with-obamacare-regs/

I really was empathetic to my adjuncts' plight. If I had more power with my HR department (I know, talk about a foolish notion) or my business office, we would have had more adjunct-friendly solutions to the ACA issue. “Just hire more adjuncts, “every Provost was told, regardless of local challenges with adjunct pools. Instead, all I could do was satirize, especially the harebrained idea that some institutions thought cutting back adjunct hours was good for all:

“I put in over 50 hours on campus last week but really only worked about 23, according to my anklet,” said one instructor. “I’ve eliminated class discussions and I don’t call on students with raised hands anymore. The Provost says that I’m a model instructor and may even recommend me for another course next semester. If I keep this up, I might earn enough to cover gas money for my commute.”

So, I must finish by coming back to Virginia Woolf. This secret is out, writ large. Maybe I couldn’t change the system (if I had been offered a retirement party that would have been my sign-off statement), but I sure have had fun ridiculing it, mask, make-up, codpiece and all.

* After posting this, a good friend with incredible patience found many of The Cronk articles via The Wayback Machine. I followed up and found all but one, all of which are linked at the specific Tufnel archives: The Monty Tufnel Legacy.

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If interested, fuller readings of the sources mentioned here are linked below (with poems available at the ever-expanding "The Blog Under The Bed").

Alexie, Sherman. You Don't Have To Say You Love Me: A Memoir.  New York: Little Brown, 2017.

Eliot, T.S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. www.poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved April 10, 2026.

Barren Trees

Masks

Clown Face

Coxcomb, Codpiece: The Full Monty

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 1928.

CronkNews Satire: Controversial Move Ensures Adjuncts Comply With Obamacare Regs  www.adjunctnation.com. Retrieved April 11, 2026.

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A Life In Words Mostly Unread Series Home Page (with all 3 installments as of 4/14/2026)