Professors Who Lean

“You know you’re sexy.”

I felt my mouth open in surprise, and I looked around the room to see if others had heard this. Surely not. Surely this internationally famous New Testament scholar had not just called me sexy in the middle of class.

I looked at my friend Quest, who was sitting next to the professor. Quest met my eye and said, “I’m listening to this.”

The thing is, I did know.

I first noticed how distracting I could be for professors in law school, though it started before that. I would engage them in conversation, and they would come to, realizing that they had lost track of where we were going. Instead of the hallway outside their office, they would find themselves in the library or walking toward the dining hall.

It was innocent on my part. Ideas turn me on, and these conversations were stimulating for me. I would get excited, my eyes shining, and we would enter into a world of just the two of us in conversation. The topic almost didn’t matter—we would begin with an Iditarod musher we both admired or the horrors of the genocide in Burundi and have a wide-ranging conversation from there.

The moment of coming to could be embarrassing, for both of us. Women usually handled it better. They would smile and step back, gently putting me back on my way. Men were trickier. My earnestness made them uncomfortable. I learned to smooth these moments over, to turn the conversation in a practical direction.

I was less naïve by the time I got to seminary, mostly because I was close to the same age as many of my professors. After I separated myself from the crowd of 20-something would-be pastors, these professors would assess me. I could see it on their faces as they tried to decide where I fit in the hierarchy of theological education. Some flirted with me, others tried to convince me to become one of them—slotting me into the role of potential colleague. I was flattered by both, but mostly I just wanted to continue the conversation.

All of this came to a head during my second year of seminary, the 100th anniversary of the school of theology.

People had been working for months to put together a centennial conference to celebrate, and Marilynne Robinson was invited to speak on one of the panels. I was thrilled. I had read Robinson’s book Housekeeping in college, for a literature class called “Community and Escape.” When her long-awaited second novel Gilead came out, I devoured it and gave a copy to my mom for Christmas. (I don’t know if she read it.)

I got my copies of her books ready and brought them for her to sign. I don’t usually act like a fangirl, but I couldn’t help myself. I told her that I had been reading her books since college and how much they meant to me. She was kind, signing my books and wishing me well. I felt embarrassed and ecstatic to have talked to her at all.

There was a strange energy around the school of theology during this conference. People were giddy and exhausted, trying to keep up with others’ ideas and present their own. When I went to the microphone and asked the professor who called me sexy a question after his talk, he responded, “I never answer questions from a Quaker!” This got a big laugh, and then he proceeded to take my question seriously.

Boundaries blurred during this time. There was a loose sexual energy in the air, like everyone wanted to debate each other or fuck each other, and they couldn’t decide which.

I found myself leaning against the door frame of one of my younger professors one evening while the conference was going. I realized as we were talking just how tired I was, and I mentioned that to him. He smiled and said, “You think you’re the only one?”

Over the course of the conference, as I interacted with people, I could feel myself getting closer to crossing a line. I heard a voice inside of me saying, “Be very careful, Ashley.”

So I made my way home, and the next day I found someone else to take home.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression: I am not in the habit of sleeping with married people or having one-night stands. But that is what happened that weekend.

I was going through a long period of being single and dating people I met through online dating sites. The man I brought home that weekend was one of them, a sweet, polyamorous computer programmer, who had a toddler and was in an open marriage with his wife. I’ll call him Danny (not his real name).

Danny and I started talking on an online dating site, and we immediately fell into fun banter, talking about Gilmore Girls and books we enjoyed. He and his wife had been married for a decade and had only recently opened their marriage.

We met up in a coffee shop, and I could see his hands shaking. He confessed that this was his first date in ten years.

I felt a warm surge of protectiveness for him, and said, “I’ve got this. I go on dates all the time.” After that, the conversation was easy.

When I suggested we go back to my place, he was thrilled. He let me into his car, making sure I was careful about the hole in the floor and the manual lock that only worked from one side.

“You’re really selling this,” I teased.

We watched an episode of a sitcom, snuggling on the couch. When it became clear that neither of us was tracking what was happening on the show, I asked if he wanted to go to the bedroom with me.

He followed me up the stairs to my room, murmuring, “You’re so hot.” He sounded so pleased and grateful.

We delighted each other in bed, and after we were done, I turned to him and said, “My last name is Wilcox.” We both laughed at the absurdity of it, and then talked about getting some Indian takeout.

Just then, Danny’s phone rang. It was his wife, and he took it, wanting to make sure everything was all right with their child.

I could hear him through the door, getting more and more upset. He came back in, still unhappy. “She realized she’s not okay with this. I have to go. I’ll call you.”

And then I was alone in my apartment. I decided it wasn’t worth going out to get takeout on my own, and instead made myself soft scrambled eggs with fresh herbs. I felt satisfied and alone, missing Danny already, but confident I could take care of myself.

He called the next day to let me know that he couldn’t see me anymore. His wife had a strong, negative reaction to him sleeping with someone else, and they had decided to close their marriage. Danny and I wished each other the best, and agreed to check back in after six months.

I felt strangely bereft at losing someone I had known for such a short time. I started taking long walks to think things through, and I dressed like a teenager, in baggy jeans and hoodies. It felt strange to grieve the end of such a brief relationship, but that was clearly what I was doing.

The following Wednesday, I decided to go to a mid-week talk at the seminary on disability theology. I was still feeling low, but it was a topic I wanted to learn more about, and it came with a free lunch.

I was still in my teenager uniform, with my hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. I have always looked young, and although I was 33 at the time, I probably looked like I was about 25.

I was hoping to see my friend Anna there. Disability theology was one of her primary areas of study. But unfortunately she was not feeling well enough to go. I told her that I would report back.

I actually have a detailed record of what happened while I was at the lecture because of the text conversation I had with Anna afterward. Here it is in full, with only minor edits:

Me: So . . . I added another professor to the list today.

Anna: who? what happened?

Me: This guy. *link*

I was sitting next to him during the dean's lecture and the chemistry was off the charts.

Anna: how was the lecture?? i wanted to go so, so badly.

Me: It was phenomenal. I am definitely going to post it when it's available. I was sorry to see that you weren't there, though I think it would have been a lot of review for you.

Anna: please do! i would love to hear it. i still would have loved to have gone anyway.

Me: Yeah. It would be good for your soul, I think. It was good for mine.

Anna: good.

Me: I get pretty excited when we have anything having to do with bodies, and this tied in eschatology.

Anna: sorry, i didn't mean to distract from your story... prof

Me: That's okay!

I don't know that there's much of a story, really. I sat down next to him because I was a little late and it was an open seat in a packed room. I was on the end of the row, and after the lecture started, he asked to trade with me so he could take pictures. He meant to trade temporarily, but we ended up just staying in each other's seats, which meant that we kept having to interact—passing things to each other, etc. And at one point, I was like, "he wants to touch me SO much."

Anna: ah

Me: He was turned around to listen to a question, and I could tell that he was going to touch me when he turned back toward the front.

Anna: did he?

Me: He stayed somewhat turned around and leaned back against me.

Anna: you and profs 😉

Me: Seriously, dude.

I have ways of stopping men from touching me when I'm not into it, but I was into this.

Anna: is he married?

Me: I don't think so.

Anna: i don't think i've seen him before.

Me: I have. He wears a yarmulke and acts like he's too cool for school.

Anna: ha

Me: After the lecture, we were both collecting our things and I asked him if he knew were the lecturer was from. I was super excited about her because her accent is like mine. She says "God" the same way.

He said he thought Toronto.

Anna: nice

Me: And that was it. 🙂

Not something I'm planning on doing anything about, but it was fun.

Anna: i'm glad. 🙂

Me: I wonder how conscious of it he was.

I think I'm hyper-conscious of attraction and chemistry, but it's hard to know how others experience it because I am only in my own body.

Anna: yeah

It’s bittersweet for me to read this exchange now, for a number of reasons. The first is that my friend Anna died a couple years ago. I miss our conversations and how supportive and game she was.

The second reason it is bittersweet is because I can see now how much I was trying to control the narrative of this encounter. I wanted to make myself the subject instead of an object of this professor’s desire. In my telling, I was allowing it to happen. I told Anna that it was hot, and played it off as no big deal.

But it was a big deal.

Afterward, I felt uneasy in the school building, wondering if something like this would happen again. I avoided taking classes from the professor who had leaned on me, and it made me unhappy when I saw professors that I admired thanking him in the acknowledgements sections of their books.

The school of theology felt like a less safe place for me to be, in my body.

I was aware of this on some level. I submitted a proposal to write my masters thesis on women ministers’ bodies, and how they are threatening and threatened. I felt that in my own body, and I craved stories from other women who had had similar experiences. I sublimated all of this sexual energy into my work.

But that didn’t make it all better. I became self-conscious in a way I had not been before, feeling hurt when professors asked me to leave the door open when we met.

My body felt like a problem—a magnet for desire that I had no power to control.

I felt the need to be more careful, less engaged. Just less. As if I could make my body smaller or less of a problem by the way I held it and dressed, by subduing my interactions with professors and colleagues. I was trying to be invisible, while still being physically present in the building. It made me sad.

Two years later, I wrote about my experience with that professor on Twitter. I shared about the two ways I had told the story—as a funny anecdote and as something that really hurt me while I was studying theology.

I tagged the school Twitter account in my thread, and a few days later, someone from the Title IX office reached out to me.

She said she was so sorry to hear about what happened to me while I was at the school, and asked if I wanted to follow up.

I responded:

Dear *****,

Thank you for reaching out and for your kind email.  The professor I described was ***** *****, and the incident happened at the Dean's Lecture on March 25, 2015.  Other than letting you know these specifics, I don't really want to do anything further (I have no interest in filing a formal claim).  I do think it is good for you (and the school) to know that it happened, and to keep an eye out.

Best,

Ashley

By then it was clear to me that this most likely was not an isolated incident. What I had seen as casual interactions—trading seats, touching—were probably a pattern for him, a way to test whether a student would be open to his sexual advances. And the entire thing was suffused with plausible deniability.

Like I said to Anna: It wasn’t much of a story.