Ever fantasized about your teacher as a kid?

I sure as shiz did. I remember Mr. Russell (sounds like a convenient, unimaginative, fantastical construction given my love of Russell Brand, but – yes – he was real). He taught track and my English class and had an ass that belonged in pants far better fitting than the travesty of trousers he actually wore. He was tall and muscular with ken doll features and an equal parts cream and coffee complexion. I was twelve. And I was in love. Along with every other sighing pre-pubescent seventh grader. Now, when I put myself back in the daydreamy mind of being that age, it would’ve been blissful and everything Hollywood romantic to kid-me. Obviously, in reality (and to now me), it’d have looked more like a Lifetime tale you shake your head at but secretly enjoy in all your morbid perverted intrigue that accompanies being a human being living in the society we do.

Something like “Palo Alto Stories”.

And while it IRL happens a lot, apparently, it seems to be happening more lately…

The other way ‘round.


(Just one of many I’ve been informed of lately.)

I remember when Mary Kay LaPedo was the big story. Now, I’m just seeing so many of them that much like the days of my life, one just blends into the other. What’s going on with these 30-something-year-old women chasing kids barely halfway into their teen journey? Are they trying to channel Kidman’s “To Die For”? Is it a power thing? Or is it more of a Jackson-itis (not the one where you change your race using bleach and blame it on a disease, but, like, a femme version of Neverland syndrome)?

Were it some isolated thing, I’d say it were a psychosis bred from either of the former two – fantasizing you’re some cinematic vixen or reenacting something that happened to you early on through innocent victims who probably consent and think it’d be a novelty but (aside from it being illegal and socially frowned upon) don’t realize they’re stamping a sexual experience indelibly onto their early years that might eff ’em up later.

So that leaves me with the last thing: wanting to stay young forever.

Jackson’s attraction to that fantasy was ‘cause he was stuck in a recording studio since he was a wee bit. Never ‘lowed to play = Never land as an adult. For women, though (especially since I’m seeing more and more of these), could there be some mass societal focus motivating it? Could it be because of the perpetual reminder on how we’re meant to stay young forever (impossible) lest we be destined to bedpans and catheters and cobwebs on the visitor door latch? Also, why does that descriptive list sound like a movie Angela Lansbury would star in?

Now would probably be a good time to say this:

I’m not condoning what these women are doing and have done.

And now, I pause. To let you let that…

…sink in.

Again: not condoning.

If you’re sound of mind enough to teach at (much less literate enough to teach English), then you’re capable of comprehending the law and knowing that what you’re doing is wrong. There’s no excuse for our bad behavior. We have to own it. But like I’ve said in my addiction posts before, sometimes there’s a cause worth looking at. On an individual level, we look at it to know how we got here – that we’re not just monsters – but also know we can’t ever change our pasts. On a mass level though, what about when that cause isn’t just in the past? What if it’s still being unleashed on our collective consciousness as a chronic barrage of advertisements and articles on face-lifted celebrities? Why do they get the spotlight for sipping kale on ice? We can all sit around a campfire and say what we want about what really matters in life, but it’s futile advice when the opposition’s both unignorable and shiny and vibrating its way into every fact of my world. Even my personal Facebook feed is officially bordered by Tinseltown drivel to make me feel inadequate. Which are bordered by disgusting stories (like this) to make me feel hopeless about humanity. Yet we fall for it every time, don’t we? What does that make the common denominator of the objects of these stories – the famous and infamous alike? Relevant, mayhaps?

T.V., celebs, and what-bleeds-leads media focus is nada new, though.

Why’s this on the rise just now? Well, look at most of these girls. The heavy makeup. The freshly saloned hair. The excessive selfies. You should recognize this: it’s Lookit-me culture at its finest. Finally, we’re in an age where all the fame-hunger induced by T.V. can finally be satiated via our 15 minutes of online fame. Finally, it’s attainable. Finally… relevance. And it could be yours for the small price of… a youtube video? A fortuitous photo gone viral? Your good name? Your soul? Sacrificed to be part of that second place less admirable headline but a headline nonetheless? Fame or infamy – people aren’t picky. They just want their name in online lights – the real life Roxy Hart shitshow, all smiles, all the way to jail. So, could these facts have been a subconscious inspiration for teachers acting so egregiously? Did they know, deep down, this is where it’d land them – seeing those who’d gone before them attain that coveted rite of relevance passage: their image, online? Deep down, did they notice how fame in any form iconizes you, thereby keeping you conceptually “young” forever (Do you think of young Bundy during the height of his crime career or the one in his jumpsuit about to die)? That web relevance is the new fame? A youthful freeze frame for the aging?

That – relevance – is increasingly being grabbed at like steak strung over a pack of pit bulls.

And lost souls stuck in the circuitry of a child-mind don’t care if that meat’s arsenic glazed or not.

What we’ve gotta ask ourselves is why? And…can we change it?