I Dated My Professor

I ran the mile-and-half to his house most nights, the air growing warmer as we slipped closer to summer, my feet crushing fallen cherry blossoms on the quiet dark road. I’d arrive at his door panting a little. He would already be there waiting, playfully scolding me for running alone at night, telling me I should let him come pick me up from campus, leading me inside to show me the candles he’d lit all around for a midnight picnic on the floor. He would kiss me deeply, always slow and delicious enough to make me even more breathless. He’d pull me down next to him and hand me a glass of wine, ask me if it was good. I never had any idea if it was good or not, so I’d put on a silly French accent and wiggle my eyebrows and say things like “old cream, owl feathers, rainbow essence on the nose” and he would burst into laughter and I would kiss him again, harder and inexpertly, and he’d smile and call me beautiful Joanna, and tangle his hands in my hair.

I was sleeping with my professor almost every night and then seeing him in class the next day. We were careful not to be seen together now. The surreal quality of the whole affair struck me as both hysterically absurd and devastatingly romantic. He would find a way to quote something that I’d said the night before, naked in his bed rambling about the Bechdel test or whatever, in a lecture as I took notes in the second row and tried not to laugh. We had sex on his desk (as it turned out, a particular fantasy of his) after lunch and greeted each other somberly as Dr. Alessi and Ms. Byrne twenty minutes later in the classroom. On the rare occasion that we accidentally ran into each other on campus, he’d grin and wink at me fast enough to miss it, and I’d spend the next hour hyperventilating over whether or not anyone around us had seen.

My roommates demanded to know what was going on. They’d seen my dark circles and euphoric behavior. I made up a story about having met a graduate student at the nearby Institute whose workload kept him tied up the entire day and every weekend. They remained vaguely suspicious- why couldn’t they meet him? why didn’t I have any pictures?- but accepted this explanation, for the time being, as to why I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed. I bemoaned my lies to Stefano, who waved away my guilt. Remember, he admonished me, not everyone would understand.

“Why don’t we go away together?” he asked one night, stroking up and down the length of my spine methodically. “We’ll find a good resort or something, a few hours away. We can pretend to be just a normal couple for the weekend. What do you say?”

I rolled over in bed and looked at him incredulously. “A resort? Stefano, I have no money.”

He chuckled. “Obviously, I do have money.”

“I don’t know if I’m ok with that.”

“Come on, sweetheart. Let me take you away. It’ll be such a good distraction. We can relax. Aren’t you excited to hold my hand in public?” he teased, nibbling on my ear.

“That does sound lovely. But seriously, I-”

“Jo, please. Not one more word about money. You’re busy with your studies, and I have it to spend. Just say yes.”

He booked us a beautiful little B&B on the water the next weekend. We swam, hiked, ate at vineyard restaurants, and had outrageous amounts of sex in front of the room’s ornate fireplace. He repeated this performance during that summer, flying in from his family home in the south of Italy to whisk me away to a beach resort for a few days while my parents were out of town. I had turned twenty and was struggling with my PTSD at home, and those days with Stefano on the beach were dazzling against the backdrop of my daily depression and frequent night terrors. With Stefano, I felt safe, special, cared for, heard- as I always had. He gave me an opal ring for my birthday and joked that the next ring he gave me would be far more meaningful.

I was noticing, though, that he was becoming more and more suspicious of my movements. We’d been spending so much time together that it was strange for us to be apart for so long that summer. We had our first ever fight when I went to a bonfire with my old high school friends and didn’t answer a “good night” text for a couple hours. When he found out that my high school boyfriend had been in attendance, he didn’t speak to me for days. I was angry at first, which dissolved quickly into me begging him for forgiveness until he relented and took my call.

“Baby, you can’t do that to me. My mind just goes absolutely wild and I think the worst.”

“I’m sorry, really. I just don’t want to be in one of those relationships where there’s no trust and too much control. Not that I’m saying you’re like that! Of course not, you’re wonderful, and I should have thought about your feelings. I really just left my phone in my bag and I was catching up with my friends from Drama Club and-”

“I know what you said happened, Joanna. I’m telling you that I don’t like it. I think we need to acknowledge here that I’ve been doing relationships for longer than you have and it’s possible that I can teach you something about communication and respect for your partner. I don’t want to control you, of course not! And please don’t diminish this to that, it’s insulting to us both.”

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but my unease mounted after that. He was just so good at explaining away my discomfort. Something in me- almost the same deep flowering thing that had turned toward him that spring in his office- paused and examined him closely. He was a hall of mirrors, always able to read me and present me with the exact thing that would disarm me just when I thought I was onto something. After that first fight, he told me about the woman he’d asked to marry him more than a decade ago, who’d slept with his best friend and broken his heart. He talked about his lonely childhood, his conservative parents, the first girl he fell in love with, the son of a diplomat whom he befriended as a young man who committed suicide. He cried in front of me, openly, and every feeling of suspicion I’d had would evaporate the moment I held him. How could I think that this man, who was being so vulnerable and honest with me, who trusted me implicitly, would ever want to cause me harm? Stupid Joanna, I chided myself, you’re having these issues about men because of what happened before but you know they’re not all like that, and you’ll never be happy if you can’t learn how to open up and love freely. Stefano is the smartest, sweetest, best man- no, the best person- you’ll probably ever meet. Stop being so paranoid and weird and just relax.

We both returned to campus for the beginning of fall term. I was so happy to see him again, to be able to resume my late night runs to his house. I felt like I was leaving all the stress of school and friends and mental health behind me as I loped down the familiar dark road, headphones in, concentrating on my breathing. Being swallowed up by Stefano and his house, being fed cheese and wine and sex, being fully in the feeling that he and I were secure in a universe of our own making- the feeling that no one else could ever touch or understand us- was a heavy quilt of pleasure and secrecy that made the rest of the world fall entirely away.

Still, the part of me from the summer that had begun to question Stefano’s behavior kept its ears pricked slightly. He would become oddly agitated when I’d come later than usual to the house, pressing me to tell him where I had been. A couple times I’d walk back from the bathroom and see him thumbing through my phone; he’d tell me that I’d gotten a text and apologize. Always with the memory of our fight over the bonfire in my mind, and fearing that I was being callous and insensitive to his needs, I would hurry to reassure him that it was completely fine- I had nothing to hide, after all. But there was something about these interactions that lingered on into the next day, when I was struggling to stay awake in my classes. Something about his face.

It was at the end of that fall that he suggested going away again, this time to the city. I agreed immediately. I was drifting further and further away from my friends, whose obvious worry over me just caused me irritation. I badly wanted to confide in my roommates about Stefano. The fact that I couldn’t made me veer into avoidance of them. I packed haphazardly, left a note, and escaped with the professor in his little sports car on a chilly and bright Friday afternoon.

We arrived in the city after dark, having taken our time with lunch and leisurely speeds, listening to the mix CD I’d made for the trip. He’d gotten us a palatial room at a designer hotel in the middle of downtown. I felt mildly grubby in my scuffed Converse sneakers waiting in the lobby as he checked us in, and for the first time, I wondered what other people saw when they looked at us. I watched him talking easily to the front desk, laughing delightedly when he discovered that the clerk spoke French and switching to his Italian-accented French to practice. I smiled and shook my head when the clerk turned politely to me to ask a question that my school French was not up to. Stefano chuckled and kissed me, and I saw the clerk’s face smooth out to conceal something. I reddened and busied myself with gathering our things til we got into the elevator.

“Hey, do you think anybody thinks that we’re like, father and daughter or anything?”

Stefano looked at me in surprise. “Why would anybody think that?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Um, because I’m my age and you’re your age.”

“Joanna, my love. That’s a little rude.” He laughed and tugged my ponytail. “I’d like to think I’m still pretty sexy, despite my aching old bones.” He made a face at me and I laughed too, despite myself.

“You know how sexy you are. I just thought about it because we’re not usually in public together and I guess I’m just nervous? I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Baby, we don’t care what other people think, remember?” He took my hand and kissed it. “We’re just two people in love in the city and we don’t need to worry about anything else, all weekend. Ok?”

We made love for hours that night, in the king-sized bed; ordered room service just before the kitchen closed. He ran us a bath. We soaked at opposite ends of the opulent marble tub that overlooked the city lights from the fourteenth floor, drinking merlot. I watched his handsome face, head leaned back against the tub, eyes closed in pleasure, and thought, not for the first time, that I was probably dreaming. This was all too perfect to be real. The small voice in my head shrilled that it wasn’t real, and that I needed to wake up immediately. He opened his eyes and smiled at me, and I fell back into the warmth of it, and the voice vanished.

The next day, he wanted to go shopping and then to dinner at a fashionable bistro he’d heard about. By the third store, I was ready to die of discomfort. He was spending an absurd amount of money on us both. I was carrying easily hundreds of dollars of new clothes and jewelry in boutique bags and he showed no signs of stopping. He laughed when I brought it up.

“All this stuff is beautiful and you’re being incredibly generous but I can’t help but feel a little… Um…” I cast about desperately for words that weren’t gold digger or Pretty Woman.

“Sweetheart, you’re being such a worrywart this trip. Can you please relax? It’s nothing. And we’ve still got to get you something to wear to dinner tonight.”

Several hours later, I was fidgeting a little, feeling the unfamiliar heat of expensive pinot noir flush in my face. He smiled at me from across the table, where he was looking perfect, Italian, and completely in his element, and reached over to take my hand.

“You look gorgeous, principessa,” he told me, running his eyes over the long straightened hair, the intricate gold-and-diamond earrings, the little black dress, the stiletto pumps that put me about two inches taller than him- all money spent that day. I’d never felt more like a little girl playing dress up in my life. I was wordlessly embarrassed, and furious with myself for feeling embarrassed. What was wrong with me? Why was I being so dramatic? Why couldn’t I just relax and enjoy this beautiful restaurant with my lover? I thought of the Stefano and Joanna who fell in love talking about philosophy, and wished more than anything that we were back in the corner office at school, making each other laugh, before I’d ever felt confused about him.

I was quiet on the ride home, and when I got back to my dorm I slept for thirteen hours, completely missing my Monday classes. I woke in the late afternoon to my roommate Ivy perched at the end of my bed with a cup of coffee, watching me sleep. I sat up and opened my mouth to speak, but to my horror, I burst into tears instead. She scooted close to wrap her arms around me and stroked my hair, humming comfortingly against my head.

“You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, babe. I just want you to be ok. You wanna make Ramen and watch a movie?”

I nodded against her shoulder, hopelessly grateful. She changed out of her workout clothes while I checked my phone. Eleven texts, four phone calls, and three voicemails from Stefano. I tossed it back onto my bed and followed Ivy out to the kitchen.

A while into the movie, our roommate Zach came in, frowning a little.

“Guys, did you see Dr. Alessi out there? He’s like, just standing outside.”

My heart stopped. I got up and followed Zach to the front window. And there he was, out on our sidewalk, backlit in the dusk by the yellow sodium safety light: Stefano, hands shoved in his pockets, looking directly into my eyes with an expression of anger and hurt that knocked the wind out of me.

Click here for part III