The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Adina Siperman

Image by: Mackenzie Brough

I don’t know what a girl who has sex with her professor looks like. But while I was completing my Master’s degree, my boyfriend thought I had the look. After a couple of beers he would say, “Come on, Baby. I won’t be mad. Just tell me. You did something, right?” When I showed him my A paper, he’d say, “This is grad school. They don’t give A’s. You got it from something else, right?” Depending on my deadlines and stress level, my reactions to his persistent nagging ranged from laughing it off to slamming the door.

Around the same time, my mother began dating a string of professors. In her stories, my mom disclosed that indeed the male professor-female grad student tryst ran rampant across university campuses. Many of her suitors had confessed to dipping their un-manicured fingers in the pot of wide-eyed, awe-filled students.

Once I heard this, my vague amusement changed to pure, uncensored jealousy. Here I was staying up late, hunched over boring journals in dimly lit stacks trying to excel while the chick sitting next to me in Literary Expressions class was fucking up the bell curve. I realized that I was going about grad school the wrong way, so I decided to use all of my “resources”, but in the classiest of slutty ways.

For my Greek art class, I decided to be more provocative with my next paper topic. Instead of choosing to discuss the various paint pigments across the Mediterranean, I opted to research the significance of phallic images in Bacchanal scenes. It was the first time in my academic career that I used vocabulary like “sexually penetrating” and “long, erect penis.” I was uncertain as to my 65-year-old professor’s reaction to my sex-forward paper. But, it came back marked with an A+ and the words “tantalizing topic” scribbled across the front.

With that positive re-enforcement, I began to tailor all my topics around the subject of sex. A few weeks later in my Rhetoric and Persuasions class, I had to give a speech in front of my class. Others were planning to discuss chiasmus, soliloquies and uses of metaphor in Elizabethan poetry. But I stood before my class and middle-aged male professor and pontificated on the virtues found in the works of the Marquis de Sade. I alluded to lesbianism, blowjobs and anal sex. Before I even sat down in my seat, my flushed professor held up a sheet with “A+” scratched across it.

It continued like that the rest of the year. I entitled papers “Between the Covers: Undressing the Novel” and “Mighty Aphrodite: Nymph Straddling the Sea” and I was continually met with stellar marks. My provocative insinuations were successful, but my female ego was a tad bruised when none of my male professors hit on me.

Our final assignment before our thesis-filled summer was a presentation of one of our papers at a conference. There was going to be a reception at the university and then a vodka bolstered celebration at a nearby jazz club. Because the director of the program, the dean of the faculty and my straight-laced female professors would be attending the conference, I played it safe and presented a paper from early in my academic year, void of any sexual innuendos or scandalous topics.  It went well. There were no gasps, or peals of laughter, as I had grown accustomed to over the course of the year. Satisfied, I went back to take my seat amongst my peers. To my horror, I looked down at my crisp white shirt and realized that a button was missing. Throughout my presentation, I had stood before the director, the dean and all my professors with my black bra liberally exposed.

That night at the reception and jazz club, I was besieged by male professors, wondering about my thesis advisor, my graduation plans, and if I needed letters of reference. I was handed drink and drink, until I found myself hunched over a grimy toilet in the club bathroom. I still don’t know what a girl who has sex with her professors looks like, but she doesn’t look anything like me.

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