THE QUESTION
I am female, 31, and have the biggest crush on a man I work with, who is 20. Another complication besides the age gap is the fact that two years ago I was his teaching assistant when he was in his senior year of high school. I do have that "hot teacher" rep, I believe, in appearance though not in action. I have been working alongside this guy for six months and have behaved perfectly. But I feel like someone who has taken a vow of hunger and had to work alongside a spectacularly delicious, aromatic roast turkey and not touch or nibble. He is leaving the job this week, and I'm hungry! I feel it will be a huge loss to me if nothing happens. Should I do something? Or just let it go?
THE ANSWER
Mmmm ... hot teacher ... roast turkey ... I'm feeling a little woozy. A little light-headed ...
Where was I? Oh, yeah: Before I carve into the meat of my advice, and serve it hot and steamy with some lumpy gravy and cranberry sauce on the side, I would like to speculate on something about which, realistically, there's no way I can have any knowledge.
So please take the following advice-petizer with a grain of salt.
My guess is he's into you too.
What makes me think that? Well, first of all - and I mean this with no disrespect or disloyalty to my wife, Pam, she knows how I feel - you sound kind of hot.
I mean, in your letter you boast about how well you've "behaved" over the past six months. And in my experience, people who boast about how well they've been behaving over a certain period of time tend to be quite naughty, deep down.
And naughtiness, if I may presume to speak for the heterosexual component of my gender, is an extremely attractive quality in a woman.
We love it. Naughty nurse. Naughty librarian. Or (my personal favourite) naughty prison warden (and I've been a very, very bad prisoner). Works for any profession, really: naughty editor, naughty bus driver, naughty marine biologist. Stick the word "naughty" in front of it and watch men's eyes light up.
So, you've got naughtiness going for you. Which is good.
But also, you know, people talk about one-sided crushes and unrequited love. In fact, it's been my observation over the years that true attraction is rarely one-sided.
True sexual attraction, if I may be permitted to use an ultra-nerdy simile, is like an electric circuit between two nodes: Both nodes have to be on for it to flow. Everything else is just static. And it's easy to tell static from genuine current. Static's frazzled and weak: no amperage. And it flies off in all directions.
But if you're feeling a genuine electrical current flowing through you, my guess is he does, too. And if that's true, it's unlikely at age 20 that he's practising self-control. He's probably just shy.
At 20, when I emerged dazed and parched from the white-hot desert (dotted with cactuses and bleached skulls) of sexual inactivity that was my teenage years, I was still terrified of hitting on women. And it certainly would never have occurred to me to hit on a 31-year-old, no matter how attracted I was.
So yes, I would say, drop down on him like darkness on an innocent peasant village, like a famished puma on a lost, poncho-wearing man riding a burro through an arid canyon, pebbles skittering along the rocks as you pounce. Tear him to shreds and gobble him up, if you like, or sheath your claws and just play with him a bit, batting him around with your paws. It's up to you.
