Just Between Us: I'm Hot for Teacher (And Most Other Authority Figures, Really)

C'mon, gals. I can't be the only one who envied the boys in Varsity Blues when they realized that the exotic dancer at the strip club was in fact their teacher. (And then hated those boys' luck, because there's no way we lady-students are ever going to experience having our professor turn out to be Magic Mike.) 

I don't know when my love for teachers started. Maybe it was ignited by the guy who played the deliciously inscrutable Sky Masterson in the high school production of Guys & Dolls. Or maybe it was the lead singer whose hips moved in directions that mine couldn't unless I've had a bottle of tequila and a muscle relaxer. Or maybe it was my college advisor with the immaculately pressed French blue button downs and the big, pretty brown eyes. Whatever the cause, as the prophet "Diamond" David Lee Roth once said, "I've got it bad, got it bad, got it bad/ I'm hot for teacher."

The latest is a raging crush on my boss, who need only perform the most basic functions of his job for my mind to take off in a Roger Sterling-y direction:

yes, please!

It's tempting to blame my love for authoritative figures on "daddy issues," but my father is a happily married man -- to my mother, thankyouverymuch -- so I've started exploring other causes. At the end of the day, all I can come up with is the much-decried equalization of the sexes. These days, the "blurred lines" Robin Thicke sings about are likely to have less to do with his marriage boundaries (Who cheats on Paula Patton?!) and more to do with our society's courting roles. Women are tough. Men are soft. And I'm all kinds of confused, because as much as I want a guy to defer to me, it would also be really, really nice if he'd just take the damned reins and throw down.

And that search for someone who will exert some testosterone-laced masculine power leads right down the rabbit hole to men I have no business thinking about in the bathtub: authority figures, workplace superiors, and other dudes in my life who are in a position to call the shots. It helps explain why I entertained dudes like my high school boyfriend who insisted that he was into me, because "I needed someone to put me in my place." (Yeah, that's an entirely distinct bag of anti-feminist issues.)

The worst is my own inability to make a move. These are guys who could flunk me, fire me -- or at the very least, render the catchy tunes of my favorite band forever unpalatable -- by rejecting me. So I wait around for them to catch the hint, hopelessly crush-captive and totally powerless. And what's really cause for concern is the thought that maybe that's the feeling I've been after all along.