The Fake's Progress

Sebastian Conyers emerged from the womb at a time when sex did not exist in Ireland. At age twenty-one he thought that a clitoris was a flower. When he eventually broke his duck, it was with the panache of an inebriated sumo wrestler. Women took an interest in the young professor as he cruised the conference circuit. If pressed, he would have described himself as an accidental philanderer. Others would have been less charitable: an inveterate womanizer, a priapic narcissist. His career took him to the Grubb Business School, where many a feather would be ruffled. Sebastian was cavalier, sardonic and libidinous. His new colleagues were of a different kidney: politically correct, sanctimonious and litigious. The scuzzy semen trail that had begun in Ireland would end in Iowa amid potentially ruinous accusations of sexual harassment, racial insensitivity and misogyny. Would Sebastian's luck hold, or had he finally flown too close to the sun?