by Sarah Nicole

Is there a wetter co-ed dream than the illicit teacher-student liaison? Who hasn’t spent at least one lecture hour fantasizing about getting private oral instruction from her dreamy night class instructor? It’s delicious, in part, because it seems totally unattainable. Not so. You’re young, you’re hot, you want it? You’ve got it.

And so, because it’s Monday and we’re back to school with new clothes and classes, here’s the 101 on sleeping with your prof.

..Well, maybe not professor. That’s a bit of a reach, even for the overachievers among us. Thing is, by the time a guy gets a PhD and tenure, he’s got his life more or less made—a life that probably includes a partner. Since this column isn’t intended to facilitate adultery (that’s next week), I’m going to advise against auditioning for the supporting role in an aging academic’s midlife crisis. And if Dr. ______ is over forty, straight and ring-less, my guess is he’s either a) single and bitter or b) divorced and bitter.

If you’re serious about pursuing extracurricular activities this semester, I suggest aiming a little lower (and younger) on the collegiate ladder. That is, as long as you don’t step all the way down to the humble teaching assistant. He should be close enough to being a professor that you can reasonably call him one, if only for the locker talk. “Isn’t that the one who’s sleeping with her prof?” sounds ohsomuch yummier in a gossip girl’s sugar-coated whisper than “oh, isn’t she banging that TA?”

Once you’ve settled on the object of your naughty-schoolgirl crush, resist the temptation to write notes “from a secret admirer” and slip them under his door during office hours. You’re post-secondary now, remember, so (wo)man up and walk in. Believe me, he’ll welcome any interruption from marking first-year papers. Ask him to clarify a point he made in last week’s lecture, and he’ll happily tell you everything he learned in grad school. (That said, do the sisterhood a favour and don’t play dumb. Pretending you don’t know the difference between hegemony and homogeneity isn’t cute or endearing. It’s embarrassing.)

If he keeps your one-on-one conversations strictly academic, despite all your eye-batting attempts to engage him on the subject of after-class drinks, you might have to drop the course. If, however, he starts being all, “so what are you doing this weekend, anything fun?” you’re halfway to one day answering, “you”.

Still, don’t plan on getting anywhere without making the first move. And the second. And the thousandth. When it comes down to it, you have nothing to lose, except perhaps a little pride; he has a career. He’s not going to read between the lines of your essay on the significance of blowjobs in Lolita and draw his own (potentially job-jeopardizing) conclusions. You will have to spell it out. In four-letter words. In writing.

(Oh, and whatever you do, don’t do it until the end of the semester. Or did you think you were going to do this for the marks? Shit, girl, if you care that much about your grades, earn them. Alternately, try a life.)

If you play by the Rules of Attraction and your proposition pays off, well done. You’ve got yourself a porn-fantasy affair to remember.

Just remember this, too: fantasies aren’t meant to last. An off-limits spring fling is exactly as sexy as it sounds, and thus highly recommended. Summerlovin’ is all kinds of hot, and you’re handling it. But the fall? Ouch. No. You cannot fall for the one guy who won’t fall for you in return, the one you can’t ever really be with.

Which is exactly why you will.

So, a few words to the unwise. A little advanced theory, if you will.

First of all, under-the-covers relationships are not for the faint of ego. At first, sure, you kind of like being his dirty secret. But when he avoids introducing you to his friends, can’t spend two minutes in a coffee shop with you without glancing nervously out the window, and forces you to attend plus-one parties minus one ’cause shit, he’d love to, but he always just happens to have something else booked, so sorry… you will inevitably start to make panicked phone calls to your friends at all hours of the night, demanding to know what’s wrong with you. Common sense says, um, hi? What’s wrong with you is, you used to be his student. But if you listened to common sense, you wouldn’t be reading this, so… never mind. Just trust when I say that no matter how hot he thinks you are in private, his cool distance in public will slowly, surely crush anything but a cast-iron self-esteem.

Secondly, unless your heart’s made of similar mettle, you will eventually slip into something like love. Worse, you will stay there. All by yourself. You can yell, slam, leave in tears, leave drunk-and-disorderly voicemails, break down and “break up” again and again until you’re heartsick and tired, too tired to do anything but fall back into bed. And he’s older, better at not caring and doubtless even more tired. Too tired for your feelings, really, in the end.

This is what you wanted. This is what you’ve got.

And this is how, one morning, a month or six in, you will find yourself in a clean one-bedroom, surrounded by the meticulously edited details of his life—collected records, empty bottles in the recycling, a neat stack of New York Times magazines—and realize you’re the only thing out of place. It’s all a dream again, and if I were you, I’d wake up. Snap out of the sex haze. Get your shit together. Find yourself a nice boy your own age.

But I’m me. So I sleep in.