Age Gap Relationship With My Professor

I often wonder how I could have gotten bamboozled into sharing my thoughts and body with a man I wasn’t attracted to mentally or physically. He was a skilled and highly practiced predator. His efforts were highly inefficient at first as I only used him as a sounding board through emails for whatever the fuck was stewing in my brain at 3am. He tried to stay positive and uplifting but always kept the responses relatively short, relatively unbiased. Our exchanges were merely a way for me to vent, almost a form of free type therapy. I was making a terrible mistake in the game though; I made the blunder of showing an incredibly lonely and chronically single older man, all of my cards, so foolishly thinking he had no ulterior motives. Or rather, I didn’t bother to think about his motives because I truly felt in my mind, that this man who lived over an hour away was totally insignificant. He was no longer my professor anymore.

I’m trying not to beat myself up over the last year I’ve spent in a haze, putting hundreds of miles on my car to drive to the woods to the dilapidated red hilltop he’d lived in for some thirty odd years. With each trip I made to his home, I’d pop another Xanax, take another swig of vodka mixed with whatever non alcoholic beverage I could haggle from the floor of my car to water it down. I always had this feeling, a complete and utter uneasiness that would sweep over me, the closer I’d get to his home, but something was pushing me to keep driving, not to turn back. It was as if I wasn’t in control. There were many times when I’d even sit at the bottom of his mile long driveway, thinking to myself, “What am I doing? This man is forty years my senior.” But I’d eventually muster up the courage and navigate my poor car up his unkempt drive until I reached the lonely house on the hill.

The second my foot touched the brake, out of the old house would come and equally disheveled old man. And I’d get these awful pangs in the pit of my stomach, knowing it was too late to turn back. He’d hug me and tell me I looked beautiful each and every time and I’d insist that I didn’t. My self esteem was truly rock bottom at this point. I’d just been replaced by my boyfriend of three years by a model/Olympian the night of our break up. I’d shaved my head in the midst of a nervous breakdown and wore wigs to cover up the damage I’d done to myself but the feeling of inadequacy was always there. Even though I had hair again, I knew I was a fraud. And so did professor, but he kept insisting I take the wig off. He was so sweet, so understanding during our first face to face encounters.

When I finally did stop wearing the wig, he insisted the hair style suited me well. He sent me pictures of actresses like Mia Farrow when she was in RoseMary’s Baby, claiming I looked just like her. Oddly enough, last night I watched RoseMary’s Baby and in the scene in which she showcases her new Vidal Sassoon boyish cut to her husband and friends, they tell her how awful it looks. And it did look awful on her, as it did on me. He was a cunning liar, spewing lines at me out of sheer desperation.

The power of suggestion is exactly that; powerful! Mix that with denial and you’ve got the perfect storm for the predator to woo you under his covers. Somehow, I became addicted to the old man, though I had other suitors. He’d make remarks like, “We’re good for each other, you know? And besides, you don’t want to find someone else now anyways. Not with your hair like that.” And I’d think, “Wait, didn’t he just tell me it looked good?” But I was meek and never questioned him.

I never considered us a couple and he caught me off guard when he told me I was his sweetheart without even asking me first. It was about three months after visiting him on a weekly to bi weekly basis that I expressed to him that I wasn’t interested in seeing him anymore. What I wanted was a friend, and he kept trying (and often times successfully) to turn it into more than I had bargained for.

He tried everything on me. When I’d leave his house, sometimes as late as 2am, he’d be hugging me tight and almost as if it were methodical, he’d sigh dramatically. I’d ask him what was wrong. “Oh nothing,” he’d reply, “Just wondering why we aren’t falling hopelessly in love…”

For some reason when he’d utter lines such as this it struck a chord with me. I began to question myself. He wasn’t falling hopelessly in love with me? Why not? He’d told me he was only interested in girls from around age twenty to twenty seven. I was twenty seven. It made me wonder if, I was in fact, too old for his tastes. After making such remarks, my ego began to gnaw at me. So when I did finally break it off with him and he didn’t email me begging for my return and my affections, I was insulted. So I caved and contacted him. I was falling right in to his trap. What he once referred to as a relationship, he now nonchalantly explained to me that he was just letting his loneliness get the best of him when he thought we could be something more.

I began to have a sick twisted fantasy of owning his heart and then stomping on it just because I couldn’t bear the thought of being considered so insignificant as I’d felt at the end of my last relationship. I was determined to make this man remember me. I even fantasized about getting him to fall in love with me and then him living out the remainder of his days, staring at pictures of me, yearning for me to come back to him. The entire thing was sick.

We were two broken egos looking for some sort of redemption in each other and so I went back to him and he allowed me back, naturally. I began seeing him every weekend. We’d go out to lunch or dinner and then we’d routinely watch a film at his house, always of his choosing. His father was an old Hollywood movie star so my opinion was never considered when picking films. That was his thing and I didn’t necessarily mind. I still craved to be schooled by the professor. And eventually, I got to the point where I was so desensitized from the bottles of wine he’d so generously purchase me (even though he was active in AA since the early 1970’s) that I was able to get passed the intense feelings of anxiety just from being at his house. The feelings were still there, of course, but not as intense, as I managed to cope through alcohol. My ego was in full control. My rational mind had no say anymore. When thoughts would sneak in to my mind such as, “Holy fuck, this man is fucking old. This is so weird!” I’d just have him pour me another glass of wine.

He’d light up a joint for us to share. Typically, we’d watch a film in his bed that was covered in white cat hair, and then I’d go on drunken rants about my inferiority complex and my anxieties and how much I despised myself for having to take medication for it. All of the usual topics, he’d so patiently listened to me vent to him for years through email. And one day he finally said, “You know, this is getting really old.” He was getting really fucking old, I thought, but I tried my hardest not to be an ageist, so I kept my thoughts to myself. I was just rather shocked when he said this to me. So he was sick of hearing me talk about my problems? He was supposed to be my mentor. He had told me he was an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy and wanted to help me. Was I that horrible that I could even irritate a lonely old man? I was so afraid he’d leave me that I went on a campaign to better myself. I told him I was quitting drinking and I did for a solid six months or so. Now I have an occasional glass of wine if the anxiety gets too bad but I never had a drink in his presence again. I had to keep it fresh if I was to keep him interested. I transformed myself into a super happy and positive human being. All smoke and mirrors as a way to keep this man intrigued. How could I be so insecure?

He was bald and in denial about it, yet he’d bash others appearances. Like a gossipy gay man he’d say things about his lifelong friends such as, “May has gotten so old. She looks awful. Her nose and ears have gotten huge.” I’d ignore the comment and say, “You know, you should be with May. Someone your own age maybe. You guys would make a great couple. You have a lot in common, growing up in Hollywood and all. You two really understand each other.” “No. Not gonna happen,” he’d reply. “Well why not?” “Because I only like young girls. I’m not attracted to her.” “What do you mean? You can only date girls in their 20’s?” “Yes. I’m attracted to the same girls I was attracted to when I was young.” I didn’t blame the man for finding women in their 20’s attractive, but how could he possibly have a real emotional connection with a girl as young as myself? After he’d made the comment that my problems were getting old, I felt we really didn’t have much else to speak about and I gradually began shutting off my true self whenever I spoke with him. I began feeling like such a child bringing up my trivial 20 something day to day issues when he had a whole life lived.

Every time we were watching a film, he’d rub my thighs. He’d tell me how much he loved how skinny they were. I’d coyly swat him away and tell him I wanted to watch the movie and I didn’t feel like messing around. But he was persistent in his flirtation and with my lack of strong boundaries and my desperate need for attention, I ended up giving in every single time.

And he’d tell me these horribly raunchy stories, j*rking himself off because I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. But I was scared, if I didn’t comply at least a little bit, that he’d leave me. He’d hug me after he was satisfied and say things like, “We really are perfect together. Do you feel loved? Do you feel comfortable?”

I felt totally uncomfortable, “Yes,” I’d mutter.

Now you’re probably asking yourself how and why I even went to this old man’s house in the first place. Why on earth did I put myself in this situation? Of course I had low self esteem, but I never considered him a prospect. Not even in my most horrid nightmares did I imagine this decaying old man touching me in ways in such private ways. Over the years he’d tried many times, unsuccessfully to invite me to see a movie with him. I’d half-heartedly tell him, yes and then I’d stand him up. Every single time. He never got upset about it. He just became more persistent and I still didn’t budge.

In an email one night, I told him about the novel I’d just written and how I wasn’t sure what my next move should be as I was a total rookie in the world of literature.

“Meet me at the mall,” he insisted. “I’ll look it over for you.”

So, reluctantly, I met him for a coffee. He played the role of concerned mentor. He was determined to get my book published, especially after he’d read it. He said it would certainly sell. He fed me fairy tales. He’d say things like, “Are you prepared to go on talk shows and on book tours?” And I was like, “Sure. I can do what it takes, but you’re getting ahead of yourself. It won’t be that popular.”

He insisted it would, painting vivid images of the success he was going help me garner. Before sending it out to his publisher, he insisted, he had to edit it. So I gave him permission to do so. He dragged this out for months and I felt I needed to see him if I wanted my dreams of getting published to materialize. It was at this point that I started to feel I’d be making a huge mistake if I didn’t at least give him a chance to try and help me.

Eventually, he sent the revised copy out to his publisher, a publisher whom I’d researched after the fact and she worked mainly with sports stars and historians. I didn’t see where I fit in to the equation. So of course, my book never got published.

Initially, I felt like a fool for trusting him, but I couldn’t stop going to his house anyways. I kept telling myself, “this is the last time I’m going to see him,” but he’d reel me back in with promises of meeting his celebrity friends. And then I’d tell myself, “Okay, once I meet so and so, then I’ll leave. What’s the harm in that? It’s a cool opportunity.” And after an encounter with some vapid celebrity who was pathologically uninterested in a thing I had to say, he’d promise I could meet another one of his celebrity friends. It was a never ending cycle of promises and things to keep me rooted and mind you, I was at the height of my alcohol addiction in the midst of all of this. I felt so powerless.

And after he’d make his sexual advances and we were laying together naked, him growling and hugging me tight, he’d tell me, “We’re perfect together. So perfect for each other.” He said it every single time, until I finally started to believe it. I finally submitted after some time. He began giving me $50 bills or a small bag of weed on my way out of his home. I felt like a prostitute but I could not stop.

He had me under his spell even though I wasn’t remotely attracted to him or interested in what he had to say and he made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in what I had to say either. He never again brought up my book once he had me coming to his house every single week. He told me to self publish because he had such a difficult time editing it. What a huge favor he did me!

He’d stopped responding to my emails as well, when he used to be on call for them. I used to send him my short stories and poetry, awaiting his feedback and now if I was lucky I’d get a response back saying he’d read what I’d written later and he never did. After him totally disregarding my emails which he’d once religiously responded to, I gave up writing to him in my spare time.

In the midst of my compulsive drinking, I went through his phone when he slipped out of the bedroom to use the restroom and I read texts from a girl whom he’d told me about. She was in her 30’s and they’d lived together for a few years because she needed a place to stay. The texts were about me. He sent her a picture of me when I had long hair and explained to her how I’d gone crazy and cut off my hair a-la Britney Spears.

“Is that your girlfriend?” she asked him.

“No, no, no. Definitely not,” he assured her.

My self esteem took a massive blow because he’d told me I was his girlfriend and had been for a long time. The texts ended with him telling her how much he loved her and her reciprocating to an extent with some “X’s” and “O’s”.

I lost my shit over this and in a fit of drunkenness accused him of being a lying, cheating piece of shit just like his father. “No, I used to be like that, but not anymore.”

“Liar!” I wailed. “I’m so done with you!”

I began to cry and he hugged me and promised me he was doing nothing behind my back. My denial was so powerful.

“You have to stop with this shit about you leaving me! Stop telling me you’re going to leave me! I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

“Okay,” I promised and we made love.

He hugged me close and outlined every inch of my face with his fingers, moving down to my neck and my finally my chest.

“You know,” he said, “I’m even starting to get used to those balloons you have (referring to my breast implants).”

“They aren’t that bad… You really don’t like them?”

“No, no, no. I was saying I do like them now. Though, I wish you’d get them taken out.”

“Do you have 7k to pay to get them removed?”

“Darling, they’re fine. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I hate you.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Can I have one more glass of wine, please?” He went downstairs and poured me another. I was so wasted by the time I had to leave his house I couldn’t find my keys.

“Where the fuck are they?!”

He thought this was hilarious. “I love it when you act stupid.”

His remark caught me off guard, but I kept my cool as I didn’t want to cause any more drama for the night. Eventually I found them and he hugged me tightly on his porch as he whispered to me that I was perfect.

I opened the sunroof and bathed in the glow of the moonlight, letting its iridescence wash away my sins.

And the next week, I was drunk and in bed with him again.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be together.” I told him, sprawled out on his maroon striped comforter, wearing only my socks.

“But we’re perfect. And it’s only temporary. (I was always offended when he always made it a point to tell me things were temporary.) You’ll move on when you’re good and ready and you’ll meet a man who is wonderful for you and you can tell him about us and we’ll all be good friends. I just want to show you what it’s like to experience real love and real intimacy so you never settle for less.”

“And you think this is going to be easy for me? As if I can just shut my feelings off? I don’t want to love you! But I don’t have a choice at this point!”

“Just go with it. We’ll always love each other, but at some point, when the time is right, it will be a different kind of love.”

“I don’t want a different kind of love! You can’t just proclaim someone your temporary girlfriend!”

“I’ll be here as long as my heart stays beating. I’ll always love you, until my dying breath.”

He made something so dramatic sound so utterly simplistic. But eventually I left him for what was probably the third time. He said, “Okay. I told you I wasn’t going to hold you back, but don’t tell me you met some young guy and you think you’re in love.”

The truth was, I had and I told him about my new rocker boyfriend with the gorgeous hair and stunning eyes. “You’ll do what you please,” was all he could say even when I asked if he wanted to meet my new love. And he shut me out, so easily. No more texts. Nothing. He knew I had a hard time dealing with rejection. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just be my friend.

And we didn’t speak for days and I became weak again and contacted him, “I’ve missed you SO much!” he wrote to me. “Please, darling, come and see me.”

And so I did. I made the trek up his heavily wooded driveway and back to the, what at first glance one would think was an abandoned house and he came running out in his underwear, flexing his muscles, proclaiming, “We’re in love!”

He became addicted to me sexually and I became addicted to his attention. I sent him texts non stop throughout the day, documenting every minute detail of my life in long paragraphs and photographs. “Have I mentioned how much I love you?” He started regularly texting me. “No! I don’t believe you’ve told me today!” “Well, my darling, I love you sooo much!” He’d always respond. And then one day, out of left field, the man who was seemingly afraid of commitment, the man who told me over and over again that our relationship was only temporary, the man who had had four failed marriages, texted me this:

“I’m so crazy about you and if the timing were ever right for you, I would indeed ask you to marry me. I’d like you to know that.”

I felt so special, “I’d say yes. ☺” I responded.

He went on, “And I’d like to get you a diamond. We’ll meet with my friend Jennifer in the city and we’ll have her custom make you a diamond studded lip piercing.”

I drove an hour and a half to see him again the next weekend and immediately he told me he wanted me to meet May because she’d be in New York. He was digging his hooks in deeper this time. In my new found sobriety he stopped taking me out to dinner and it was rare that he’d even put on clothes. He was always in his boxers and I’d be so repulsed when he’d unabashedly have his testicles hanging out of the leg of the shorts. It was such a sobering reminder that he was in fact an aloof old man.

On one occasion though, he was wearing black silk pajamas. He presented me with a matching pair and we laid in bed smoking weed in our matching black digs. I laughed about how we looked like we were going to rob a bank and he said he thought it was cute that we looked the same.

Sometimes he’d even play guitar for me and sing Bob Dylan songs and he’d speak about how we were going to fill his fish tank with all of the beautiful colored fish that I wanted. That was the real him which I rarely saw. More often than not he’d name drop his celebrity friends and obsessively speak about his father and his youth with his father. It was extremely rare to leave his house without some sort of sexual advance, despite the fact that he could barely get it up in his old age. After we’d watch a film and then he’d repeat our mantra, “We’re perfect together. We’re so compatible.” He was lying. “Do you feel loved? Do you feel cared for?”

“Yes.” I was lying. And he’d send me on my way.

It’d been months since I’d received a good night text from him. I always looked forward to his texts raving about what an amazing time he’d had with me. As soon as I told him how much I appreciated the texts was when they stopped.

And after a couple more months of our rather routine rendezvous, we headed to the city to meet May. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of hers, but she was an icon and I was very curious to meet her. He forwarded me copies of emails he’d written to May’s assistant telling her he was bringing his sweetheart for her approval and the attached messages of her assistant saying how excited they both were.

“Oh, yeah, I told May you’re a novelist,” This was the first time Professor had brought up anything to do with my writing since he’d first sucked me in.

“Um, okay. Would May really care if she knew what I actually did though?” I questioned.

“No, but let’s just stick with this.”

“Oh, because you’re embarrassed to be with an adult model?” I grilled him.

“No. That isn’t it. But I’ve already told her you were a novelist.”

“Whatever…”

Professor had told me he’d invited a friend as well. Lindsay, the 30 something whom he’d lived with for years, whom he’d claimed he never so much as kissed. The same 30 something he was texting “I love you’s” too. The same Lindsay to whom months earlier he’d steadfastly proclaimed I was not his girlfriend.

This time he did introduce me to Lindsay as his girlfriend when we met her in the city. It was quite early and we still had hours to kill before May would be there and we could go and hang out with her and watch her perform.

I tried to make conversation with Lindsay, but she was more interested in Professor, kissing his forehead, telling him how handsome he was. The whole thing sickened me and I found it quite disrespectful but more than that, I was baffled as to why she was flirting with him.

She didn’t seem to want much to do with me. I thought maybe we could have some girl time without Professor so I asked her to join me in the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet and began rambling about something and didn’t receive a response back, “Lindsay?” Again, no response.

I left my stall and Lindsay wasn’t there anymore. I walked out to the restaurant to find Lindsay and Professor engaged in conversation. I felt it broke girl code when she didn’t wait for me in the bathroom. I felt a bit snubbed, but brushed it off.

“Oh, did I tell you? I have a boyfriend now.” She said intently gazing at Professor.

“Really?” I interrupted. “Do you have pictures? What’s his name?”

She scrolled through her phone to show us some pictures of this ugly rat faced dude. I didn’t want to say he was ugly so I asked how old he was and when she told me I responded with, “Wow, he looks SO young for his age!”

“Yeah! And he’s an artist. He’s so creative. So sweet. We’ve been seeing each other for a little over a month now.”

“A month, huh? Sounds pretty serious…” Professor retorted. He said it in a quite condescending tone that I’d never heard him address Lindsay in before.

And then we all headed to the car to smoke a joint and proceeded to May’s sound check. We passed a restaurant I’d never heard of on the walk there and Lindsay turns to Professor and she’s like “Oh, hey isn’t that where you took me for Valentine’s Day?”

He stuttered, “Um, no. I don’t think so.”

“Yes. We went somewhere for Valentine’s Day. I remember. We were both wearing red!”

“No, it was my birthday…”

He was clearly uncomfortable and I pretended to not be paying attention, but it was becoming more and more obvious to me that there was more to the relationship that he would ever be willing to tell me. As I’d suspected he was experienced with seducing younger women.

We arrived at the gorgeous old opera house and May embraced me, as did her assistant. Professor went on the stage to chat with May for a while. Lindsay and I were alone for a bit when she blurted out, “So, he told me about you a long time ago…”

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“It was when I was living with him. He told me that there was a student in his class who was really into him and he didn’t know what to do about it.”

This really irritated me and instead of just brushing it off, I responded truthfully, “No, Lindsay. Pretty sure it was the other way around…”

“Well, I mean, it’s kind of crazy. The whole situation with him, but if it works for you guys…” she trailed off a bit and I felt ashamed again for being with a man 40 years my senior.

This lead to me completely oversharing and defending our relationship as I felt she was being somewhat condescending. “Yeah! Ahah! One time I sent him a picture of my stomach after I’d eaten too much food. I was so bloated. I told him I was pregnant!”

She looked as if she wouldn’t be able to stomach the food she’d just eaten after I came out with that. I was so awful under pressure.

Thankfully, May began practicing for her set and Professor sat in between Lindsay and I. She grabbed his attention most of the evening, though his hand remained firmly on my skinny thigh. Finally, May took a break from her sound check and we all gathered outside to join the crew on a cigarette break.

I felt like a total outsider. I felt like Lindsay just didn’t want me there. She tried too hard to get May’s attention as if to show Professor she was better than I was. May just smoked her cigarettes, complained of her chronic back pain and told a few jokes. Overall, she seemed rather down to earth.

Then we took our seats again as the opera house began to fill and May began belting out her two hour set of all of her most noteworthy songs. After the show, we went to bid May farewell in her dressing room. She seemed overjoyed to see Professor. She was sitting down, staring in to a vanity mirror, fumbling with her hair. She was looking at us in the reflection.

“Are you sure I did okay?”

“Yes!” We assured her. “You did wonderful!”

“I don’t feel like I did wonderful. What if they all hated me? Do you think everyone hated me tonight?”

She went on and on like this despite us reassuring her. It was such a humbling experience to see that even a high paid star who had been in the business since childhood was still so insecure. I realized I wasn’t alone in my inferiority complex. It was reassuring to me, but also frightening that there was a possibility I’d never outgrow my inhibitions.

Lindsay had a ride with some friends in the city, so Professor hugged me tight as she stood on the sidelines and we all waited for her free taxi service to arrive. When her friends finally pulled up to the curb, she kissed Professor goodbye on the lips and then followed suit, kissing me on the lips, as what I felt like was more of a formality.

Lindsay and I never spoke again after that night. Professor asked me what I thought of her on the ride home from the city and I told him how I thought she was absolutely wonderful. I didn’t want to come off as the slightest bit jealous even though I was seething and even more suspicious now of his motives for inviting her. After meeting Lindsay, it began to dawn on me that it could be Lindsay that he was trying to show off for and make jealous because it was apparently her idea to move out of his home after four years. Or maybe he was trying to make us both jealous. I couldn’t decide and I had to accept the fact that I’d never actually know.

And then my mind navigated back to a car ride some months ago and I remembered him randomly blurting out that he’d never been faithful to a wife, as he’d been married four times.

“Didn’t you feel terrible about cheating?” I asked him. “Don’t you think it’s wrong?”

“No. We both always knew it was already over, anyways.”

He could have just ended it before cheating, I thought.

Professor continued to rave about Lindsay over the next couple of weeks, about how she was so strong and how he was so impressed by her as she’d left an abusive relationship and “no one fucked with her.” I had left an abusive relationship as well, but he’d never told me how strong I was. I wished I didn’t have to feel so needy and so inferior but I just couldn’t help myself. I felt like every comment he made was a means to chip away at my self esteem.

We barely texted each other over the next few months, so I stopped initiating contact with him throughout the day. I’d only respond. He would say good morning and tell me he loved me each night and he’d insist on seeing me each weekend. He’d text to make sure I was coming over to see him, but he didn’t seem concerned about much else. He made it a point to tell me of the long phone conversation he’d had with Lindsay though.

And I lost it. I asked him what the true nature of their past relationship had been and he stuck to his guns, insisting they barely talked. Even though they were constantly corresponding in texts and he was constantly insisting on sending her photographs of us together since we’d met her in the city months earlier. I barely knew the girl existed until we all met up together. Again, I was left feeling baffled and insecure.

And like that, we fell into our old routine again each weekend; a film and some sexual stuff and he’d hug me and say, “A really amazing guy loves you, you know?” I just didn’t believe it, so I’d roll over and bury my head in the pillow. And he’d recite the same line which revealed his raging insecurity, but it was one of his favorite things to say to me. “You know, it’s true. I do love you. Always carry my love with you. Know that an amazing man with a PhD who was also a pilot, an author, body guard to XYZ celebrity, road manager for this famous musician and this famous band loves you very, very much.” How narcissistically sweet, I’d think.

And finally, I left him again, except this time he pleaded with me, “But, we were so happy just a few days ago. We’re so in love. I don’t understand.”

“I just can’t do this anymore,” I was horribly conflicted and didn’t quite know how to express myself.

“As you wish…” he responded, exact verbatim from one of his father’s most famous films.

A few minutes later I received another text, “We really were so happy!”

“This isn’t easy for me!” I told him.

“Goodbye, my love…”

And then it was only a few days until I cracked. “I miss you…” I texted him.

“My love!” He responded immediately. “I miss you terribly!” But I tried my hardest to avoid seeing him as soon as he brought it up. When he sensed that I wasn’t coming to see him he told me that he was so lonely and considering giving in to the advances of this 20 something who went to college in NY and had just broken up with her boyfriend. According to him she’d been trying to “lasso him for a while.” The thought of him moving on so quickly was devastating to me, even though I got the feeling he was just saying this to get me under his spell again.

So I went to see him again. It was an unusually hot evening and we drank cough medicine together and pranced around his endless green property, laughing, and googling things on my smart phone and then he sat on the bench overlooking the half finished basketball court. Instead of sitting next to him, I sat on his lap we smiled and drank more cough medicine.

“Let’s go swimming!” I exclaimed.

“I think the water might be a bit cold, but the neighbors are away!” I got up and skipped to his car. We drove to the neighbor’s gorgeous stone mansion in our underwear. He unlocked the gate and I knelt down and touched the water. It was freezing. So I insisted he let me in their home instead so he could give me a tour. I could only imagine how immaculate the inside was seeing as the outside was so heavily accessorized with purple and pink flowers. It looked like a Shakespearean garden.

The house was more amazing than I could have imagined. “Can we just live here?” I pleaded.

“Come here. Let me show you something.” He made his way up a black spiral staircase in the middle of the home and I scurried behind in my turquoise panties. The winding stairwell lead us to the very top of the mansion. It was a cozy room with a massive window overlooking a hill covered in more beautiful flowers.

“Can I have some more cough medicine?” I pleaded. We both had another swig.

“I wish I had this room. I’d never leave!” I was dizzy with excitement. “I want to paint this view.”

“This is where she comes to write her poetry.”

“It’s so peaceful,” I sat down on the window bench and he sat beside me.

He gazed into my gray eyes, “She always sucked at poetry though.” He smiled and leaned in and kissed me for a good five minutes. Damn, he was old.

But I was hooked again and we continued our rendezvous for months longer. We didn’t text and rarely emailed and we fell back into our routine. Underwear, films and sexual stuff.

He went away to attend a film festival overseas for a good week and a half and I didn’t hear from him much and I didn’t bother to put forth the effort to keep the dialogue opened. I wanted to see how he’d respond.

The little emailing we did while he was overseas turned in to him sending me photographs of himself and me lying and telling him he was handsome. He'd sometimes send me photos of him and his young "protege" as he called her, whom he was helping with her acting career.

When he finally arrived back from the festival he asked if we could speak on the phone, but I avoided his messages for a day. Then he frantically texted me saying he got me a gift while he was away. I didn’t respond as I was feeling depressed and I knew he didn’t want to hear it. I felt burdened to pretend to be happy even when I wasn’t because he’d made it clear my depression and anxiety had gotten old to him some time ago.

“I hope you like Swarovski!” he texted, as if casting his fishing rod.

I didn’t bite. I had grown disinterested as it didn’t take long for reality to set in when he was gone for two weeks at the festival. It was as if my drug was gone and I was able to detox myself which enabled me to clearly evaluate what I’d always considered a quasi-relationship.

We exchanged incredibly sparse and meaningless text messages over the next couple of weeks while I managed to dodge his invites to hop back in to our old routine. I knew if I were to see the old man again, I’d be under the spell and I knew it could lead us nowhere. How long were we going to play this game of cat and mouse? He’d been trying to bed me since I first walked in to his classroom when I was 19 years old. He’d kept in contact through email over all those years and I could sense him losing interest as he’d gotten what he wanted. His conquest was through. He was just holding on simply because I was. And I was just holding on because he was. I was never interested in him romantically, though there were times I did try. I didn’t realize it until I’d finally cut him off for good that he’d actually planted the seed many years ago when I’d first met him. I went through a terrible tragedy mid semester and stopped going to his class and it was after that he started emailing me, even giving me his personal phone number, letting me know that he would always be there for me if I needed him.

The last day we spoke. These were our texts:

Him: “Good morning!”

Him: “Hello?”

Him: “You here?”

Him: “Won’t you even say hello to me? What’s happened? Why are you being hurtful? I don’t deserve it, you know. Last I heard, you’re my sweetheart.”

Me: “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be hurtful. The truth is I feel it’s difficult to speak with you unless I’m happy all the time. People don’t like people like me so I distance myself until I can feel okay enough to act how I’m expected.”

Him: “But you’re forgetting how and who I am. You’ve poured your heart out to me at terrible times, for years – as you can and should! I really hope to see you tomorrow or Sunday. If you want I’ll take you out in -------, or meet me in -------. I postponed watching the DVD of “----------“ to watch it with you, but in ------ they really need to hear from me by Monday.”

Me: “I understand that it gets old, naturally. I don’t want to burden you with me. I’m an awful cynic and it’s highly unlikely that will ever change. It’s extremely rare that anyone can handle me in my true form unless they’re just the same as me but it takes an incredibly self aware person to admit they’re as terrible as me. I’m not sure what you want from me. You liked the illusion of me the first time you saw me walk into your classroom but you never actually liked me. Smoke and mirrors, Professor.”

Him: “Oh darling, you know better. You’re forgetting the many ways I’ve shown you my devotion. When you remember how real and lasting my care and love for you really are, please get in touch. Goodbye for now.”

No drama. Nothing. Seven years of regular correspondence ended like that. We were doomed from the start and we both knew it. In fact, we wouldn’t have had it any other way. Our union failing was a self-fulfilling prophecy for both of us. He was a man whose ego wouldn’t let him face his own mortality and I was a young woman whose ego desperately needed inflating. I gravely needed to feel beautiful, by anyone who was willing to make me feel that way. It was never about love. We were two scared, empty human beings using each other under the guise of love. A man who had lived with countless women and been married to four, clearly didn’t know much about unconditional love. As the reality was, he was a man with a chronic illness, nearing the end of his life, and I made him feel young and desirable. He made me feel special and listened to for years. But in the end, his sexual appetite became too much for me to handle when I was sober and my emotional outbursts were too much for him to deal with.

“Oh my love my darling 
I've hungered for your touch 
A long lonely time 
And time goes by so slowly 
And time can do so much 
Are you still mine? 
I need your love 
I need your love 
God speed your love to me”

This was the last song he sent to me. And it does make me sad when I listen to it. Lifetimes apart, we had one key factor in common. One thing held us together for as long as we did last. I can see now he was right when he’d always say that we were so perfect for each other. We both so desperately craved intimacy but at the same time we were both so terrified of it.

I'm so grateful that I never again have to sit outside of his ramshackle house, drunk in the pitch black, crickets screaming, after a night of guarded intimacy, hating myself, knowing I'd go back and do it all again the next weekend.