#38 THE TIME I ACCIDENTALLY SLEPT WITH MY PROFESSOR FRIEND BEFORE HE WAS MY PROFESSOR OR MY FRIEND

Newfound freedom, skinny dipping, parties, conferences, and Long Island Iced Tea

Hi, everyone, I recently got quite a few new subscribers because of my tribute to the great man that is Derek Leyland, whom I’ll miss tremendously.

A few photos of me from those early childhood times...

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I’m writing about my dating history from my first experiences (teens, twenties) up to when I met my current (amazing) Yorkshire husband. Check out my About page. An English-American girl from Oldham to the US to Germany and now to Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Hopefully, it’s a little funny with Bridget Jones meets rural Georgia Sex and the City (except not city: country/small town) vibes.

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By the time I met the rhetoric professor, I’d kissed about twenty-two people (ego boost?) and my confidence had grown a little after the disasters that were high school sweetheart (HSS), the guy who wrote an unfavourable poem about me (DJ), the married professor, and the firefighter neighbour I ghosted (the order in which I slept with my first four people). The rhetoric professor was the fifth person (and also very kindly one of my founding members). I’ll call him Luke. 

I didn’t know Luke was a professor when I met him at a pool party/cookout (barbeque) Darcy invited me to for her friend Liv’s birthday. It was the summer after undergrad before I was in grad school the following Fall.

Darcy’s friend, Liv, was also a professor but I’d seen Liv when she was a grad student in the department. She was gorgeous with fire-red hair and green eyes, a big flirt, and impeccably stylish; men loved her and she was ridiculously clever. She also hated me but that was another matter. Sort of like the Heathers situation – they all hated me but kept inviting me to their parties and I, maybe stupidly, went to them. 

Like Liv, Darcy was also a beauty but not as confident (I wasn’t confident either so we were in our own club). She always reminded me of Rachel Weisz but with short dark hair and piercing blue eyes. She was a wonderful, intelligent, caring friend who was always there for me (often as a shoulder to cry on when the latest dating disaster went wrong) and the best party wing woman there was (even if she was a fan of “Irish goodbyes” in which I’d discover suddenly she had disappeared only to send a “where did you go?” text to receive the reply that she was tucked up in bed).

Liv and Luke were friends and they lived in a house that had been divided into two where Luke lived in the basement apartment and Liv lived in the upper apartment with her male housemate and best friend, who was probably in love with her.

Luke was one of those people of indeterminate age. In fact, I still have no idea how old he is. I knew with his experience (and PhD long ago earned from the University of Louisville, Kentucky in some such subject like English rhetoric on romantic love and its constructs) that he was probably a decade or more older than me but he behaved like a young person: free, wild, uninhibited, funny, charming. He was handsome with a little muscle definition, on the shorter side (maybe an inch or two taller than me), and fully bald – not my usual type – but the way he spoke with such intelligence captivated me, despite his perpetual “Peter Pan” syndrome and the fact he lived like a grad student. 

Darcy, Dr Luke, and I at Halloween 2009 where I was very hung up on ATC. Dr Luke was dressed like Lady Gaga. He and his gf always had the best costumes.

Who am I kidding? All I looked for was someone attractive to me and educated. I had zero hangups about what anyone did as we all lived rather precariously in messy spaces – no Instagram-worthy morning routines during my uni days. I was lucky if I removed my crusted-on mascara the next morning instead of just adding more coats and heading out the door, and especially lucky if I combed my hair, the baseball knot at the base of my neck ever-growing, my head thick with a hangover.

I had a thing about professors and the power they held. The title of “doctor” so and so. Seriously, when I started teaching grad school, we got a lecture about not sleeping with our students. My students were about five years younger than me and since I was teaching undergrads, there were absolutely zero students I wanted to sleep with, not even the hot ones (so yay for some boundaries?). It’s a thing and students try it on, for grades, for prestige, for something. I was such a cliche. 

Elaine (me), Darcy, Dr Luke, Dorian – us lot a year later when I was dating Stella Adler Academy Actor.

It was at a conference with Luke, Darcy, Brittany, and other fellow grad students and some of our professors that I met The Scandinavian Lit Professor (up next) so would I ever learn? (I think maybe yes because I didn’t sleep with more professors after him…but I did date an Auburn Professor once and a couple of actual doctors…as always, more later.)

Anyway, I met Luke at Liv’s pool party and at sundown, we – and a load of other partygoers – were drunk skinny dipping, and I didn’t know he was a professor, or would later by my very own grad school professor. I thought class would be more awkward but it was totally fine. And judging by the oddly professional tone I took when emailing him asking for an extension on one of the papers that was due (after apparently working 11 hours straight on it on a Saturday), I didn’t take advantage of the fact we’d slept together…