Foreword

Think back to news stories you’ve seen in the past, concerning teachers having inappropriate relationships with students. How many names can you remember? Perhaps Mary Kay Letourneau comes to mind, or maybe Debra Lafave. But what about the others? What about the (at least) other forty-eight cases that hit the news in the last twenty years? And those were only cases where the teacher was female. Some were lurid tales of women with what appeared to be a sex addiction. But in many of them, once the sensationalism was stripped away, what surfaced seemed to have roots in honest attraction and feelings between the teacher and her ‘victim.’ Mary Kay Letourneau got out of prison and married her underage lover. She bore him two children while she was being punished for falling in love with a thirteen-year-old.

It isn’t the purpose of this story to defend such behavior. It’s unlikely that many thirteen-year-olds know enough about life - or themselves - to be able to make honest, informed decisions about complex interpersonal relationships. But is it possible? that an older woman and her student could genuinely be in love? Of course it is. That’s why lawyers love to ask that question in court. Anything is possible. And what if the ‘victim’ is sixteen or seventeen? Historically, men of that age were allowed and even encouraged to seek a bride and become contributors to society. Millions of such young men did just that, and helped build America. Cultural issues aside, why would the passage of a hundred years make a young man below the age of eighteen incapable of being truly in love with a woman, and she in love with him? Cultural issues aside, why should it matter that the couple be roughly the same age? Women outlive men routinely. In one sense, it makes perfect sense for a man to marry a woman ten years older than he is. She’ll be at her sexual peak at the same time he is. She has enough life experience to be both mentor and partner to him. She’s already learned some things the hard way, and might be able to help him avoid some pitfalls in life. They’ll fly the bonds of earth at roughly the same time. What’s the big deal?

Many of what, in the past, society called “inappropriate and illegal relationships” between people, teachers included, could have been perfectly normal, had they been allowed to be in love. But society, by its nature, restricts freedom, and the denser the society, the more strictures are placed on self determination, until no discretion is left to the individual. It’s off the subject, but one example is that some people can’t even choose what color to paint their house. Neighborhood covenants and pressure from those who cherish their property values more than they value other people’s liberty demand that the house be the “right” color.

All those issues aside, though, what passes through most people’s minds when they hear about a teacher who fell in love with a student is: “How could this have happened?”

Well, that’s what this story is about. It’s over the top. I admit that. It’s surreal. I get that. But if you strip away the “sensationalism” of the magical device, what I hope you see is something that happens all the time. We call it chemistry.

You can’t choose who you fall in love with. It just happens.

I must warn that there is some violence and humiliation in the very beginning, during an almost rape scene, but that is only to establish some critical plot elements. After that, there is no further unpleasantry of that kind.

Chapter 1 »