It has ever been thus; I don’t know why. I never even entertained the notion of dating anyone younger than me until a certain Frog walked into my life last year. If girls are supposed to be more mature than guys, by that logic even a guy my own age should be too immature for me (This has proved the case on a number of occasions). But heck, for that matter I’ve dated guys ten years older than me who were too immature, so who’s to say someone younger couldn’t be especially mature?

All of this is but a mere preamble to a confession that I am loathe to make because of all the taboos associated with it: there are some really cute boys at the university where I teach.

I’m not trying to date them, mind you. But after my last class of the day ended yesterday, one particularly charming blond came into the room and asked if he could sit in on the class he had just missed. He was tall, wearing a navy blue peacoat with a soft orange scarf jauntily knotted around his neck. He grinned at me, revealing a slight gap between his front teeth that made him look like Dennis the Menace all grown up and driving the girls crazy in a whole new way. I wanted to tell him no, you’re too cute, you can’t be my student, that puts me in a problematic position. But I told him yes because I had room in the course, and because it’s hard to tell any student, even a cute one, that they can’t take your class.

He wrote his name and email address on my notebook so I could contact him if there were any problems with his registration. I just googled him and found out he is (or was) a Scout. A Boy Scout! No no no no no, I smiled, glad to have found another deterrent to lusting after him (besides the fact that he’s my student and younger than me). I could never sleep with a Scoot.

well, I finally handed in my mémoire. Finally. I have to defend it on Monday, and then I can put that stressful chapter of my life to bed in order to start the next stressful chapter:

Taking an intensive cours de prépa, studying for the agreg, and teaching a heavy courseload at the Université de Paris X-Nanterre.

It’s actually Nanterre that I want to muse over right now.

The teaching job basically fell into my lap.  I didn’t apply for it.  It’s ridiculously well-paid, compared to what I’ve made teaching in the past, which means I’ll actually have some money left after I’ve paid rent and my bills for the month. So even though I already have a pretty full schedule, I couldn’t say no to it… besides which, the whole point of doing the agregation is so that one day I can be a professor of english literature here in france. So it woudl probably be a good idea to a. keep teaching and b. get to know people in as many different english departments in paris as possible.

The thing about Nanterre is, it’s where my ex-boyfriend went to school. He grew up in Nanterre, and did his DEUG-Licence-Maitrise there (before callously sallying off to Aix). He took me by the campus with him once, and I was shocked, as I always am, at how very ugly the public university campuses are in Paris. Jussieu, Censier-Daubenton, Nanterre… all the late twentieth century faculties are a total mess (and I’ve had the honor of teaching in several of them). I remember seeing Nanterre and feeling so badly that I  did my undergraduate degree at Columbia, where the campus is nothing if not gorgeous and imposing.

So the first thing that feels weird to be is that I’ll be teaching at his school. the next thing is that in addition to teaching in the english department, I’ll be teaching in the law department. In other words, in the exact building he took classes in, teaching the exact classes he had to take as an undergrad. I don’t know what to make of this, but it feels really weird. I have to keep remniding myself that I didn’t apply for this, otherwise it would feel decidedly stalker-esque, as if I couldn’t bear not being with him so I need to go hang out in his ‘hood. But I swear to you, that is not the case. If I had been hired somewhere like Paris III or Paris XI I’d be there instead. But I was hired at Paris X.

But hands down, the worst part of this is that I can’t tell him. I can’t call him or email him and have a laugh about it with him. I just have to drag my ass out there for 8:30 am every Friday and try not to think of him when I’m walking into the law buildling, try not to imagine a 19 year old version of him sitting through english classes there, try not to remember all the stories he told me about his time in school there.

But now he’s at a really great law school in the south of France, where I imagine the campus to look something like the University of Miami. So why am I at Nanterre? Is there some kind of cosmic containment plan behind all of this, making sure there’s no way I can avoid thinking about him over the next seven months?

Or is this just another one of those stupid, meaningless coincidences designed to make us think there’s meaning behind what is actually just a collection of random occurrences.