Hot for teacher (from Charlotte's diary)

I was one of the last letter-writers. I wrote letters that were adored, then letters that were never responded to, then letters that were never read, then letters that were returned unopened. And that meant only something of the worst: my letter-reader no longer loved me, or was dead.

It began as a schoolgirl crush. I was the schoolgirl studying or my doctorate and struggling to understand the changes in my body at the same time. I could comprehend microbial cellular structure, replicate a human genome, name every bone in the human body by its Latin name. But getting my period confused the hell out of me, and my for a while my hormones seemed to be turning my world upside down.

Professor Colin Hardt, M.D., P.h. D, 27 years old and therefore over twice my age, had gone from a teacher who stimulated my mind to a fantasy that stimulated my suddenly awakened desires, seemingly overnight. I couldn’t help dreaming about him, much as I tried. I woke up some mornings in a sweat, the rouge-tainted images of us entwined in passionate embraces fresh in my mind. In my dreams, I carefully slipped off his thin black tie, unbuttoned the crisp white shirt he wore to class, admired his sleek, muscular chest. In class the next day, I refused to speak, terrified that I would accidentally blurt out some juicy detail from my fantasy the night before.