• i'm luna!! i'm a cis girl (she/her), queer, and a college student.
• my first tc was n. he was my high school science teacher and i was so unbelievably down bad it's humiliating. i no longer have feelings for him and we've lost contact.
• i am currently embarrassingly head over heels for my professor. i don't have a nickname for him but i've known him for about a year and a half now, we have a 31 year age gap, and he's one of the sweetest men to walk the earth. we're very close and he possibly might feel the same way but neither of us would cross that line until i graduate.
• last year, i also had a small crush on another prof (he didn't have a nickname either) so some posts might seem contradictory when i'm not actually talking about the same man. the posts about him should hopefully be specified in the tags as "tc 2"
• just because i'm interested in these men does not mean i'm interested in all older men. leave me alone.
oh my god i never told you guys about valentine's day
i try to do something gimmicky each year for v-day, so this year i wore his favorite dress of mine (red with ruffles), angel wings, full makeup and lipstick stains all over my face and neck (super hard to do on your own btw). i made cupcakes with little frosting hearts on them, bought flowers, and handmade a tiny card that had a very stupid pickup line in it. once i knew he was in his office, i arrived with everything in a little wicker basket. i knocked, he took one look at me, started blushing and said "this is adorable." i handed him the cupcake and card, which he took without complaint, but as soon as i went to hand him the flowers (not a full bouquet, just 5 iirc), he got super shy and tried to refuse them like "no, these aren't for me..." he had told me his favorite flowers, which were blue and not in season at the time, so i said, "i didn't know what to get you since you don't like blue, so you're getting every other color." i wish i had recorded the smile on his face during all of this. he didn't take the flowers home, but he dried them and kept them in his office for the rest of the semester. i also learned later on that i'm the only woman to have ever bought him flowers.
we both normally spend our afternoons in a workspace kinda by his office. i was there, still dressed up, giving more cupcakes and flowers to people. i called him mon cœur ("my heart"), paid for an acapella group to serenade him and for anonymous card delivery. he was a blushing mess by the end of it. we ended up sitting and chatting and i said, "i turned down a date for this" and he suddenly got super serious like, "you didn't. you shouldn't have!" i told him that he was more important to me than some dumb boy, and he turned bright pink and stumbled over his words like, "well, what if you look back and feel like you wasted your time?" and i cut him off with, "no, absolutely not. don't think that. don't think that i would ever think that." we eventually went back to talking about normal, academic stuff, and then the workspace closed so we did the slow goodbye of still talking and inching our way out. he thanked me again for the flowers and i said, "you deserve flowers on valentine's day, whether they're from me or not." he responded by saying that he wished he could've gotten me flowers, but it would've looked bad given the professional context. we left the room together, i took the elevator, and as i stood waiting for it, i said, "happy valentine's day, honey. take care," and he replied, "happy valentine's day. have a good weekend!" at some point, i dropped an "i love you" and he responded "you too" which doesn't work super well in english but i think is normal in french?
we did get into a small argument later that night because he was still feeling bad that i skipped out on a date to be with him, and though he didn't mean it that way, he phrased it as if he thought i didn't have options or other people to spend time with, and i admittedly got pretty defensive. but all-in-all, i think we both had a very lovely and chaotic valentine's day.
so about a month ago, we were talking about the local museum and i mentioned how i'd never been to it. he was all, "you need to go! you love art!" and i, totally jokingly, asked, "so when are you taking me?" he earnestly replied, "after finals, maybe? depending on when you leave?"
after finals, i bought our tickets (he did not like me paying for him), and the day that worked best was the day before i left campus. i got to the museum, he was a bit late due to insane traffic and other chaos that morning, and he bought me lunch (i did not like him paying for me). we sat and chatted as we ate and it was very, very lovely. at one point, the red sharpie on my cup rubbed off on my nose, and he said, "you have a little something on your nose. you look really cute, but i thought i'd let you know."
after lunch, we walked around one of the floors (the museum is massive), and just joked amongst ourselves while looking at gorgeous masterpieces. we would tease each other (looking at a statue of jesus being mocked and joking "is that the face you made when you were stuck in traffic this morning?"), i would get excited by all the morbid paintings that put him off, and we'd both be pleasantly surprised when we'd see a piece of art that was from his home region in france. i snuck photos of him the entire time (there's one that i absolutely adore but he hates because he thinks he looks old), and at times i would grab onto his arm. he'd translate the latin engravings, tell me a word's etymology from memory, or explain some moment in european history i'd never heard about.
we left when the museum closed, and he snapped a couple touristy photos of me in front of the building (he later said that he was so happy he captured my "beautiful smile"). i asked him if i could buy him dinner, he wasn't that hungry, so we ended up getting drinks at a local cafe. he was hesitant to let me pay until i grabbed his hands, called him by his full name and said, "will you do me the honor of letting me pay for you?"
after we sat and chatted with our drinks for another hour, he walked me to my bus stop, but the bus was delayed by quite a lot, so we opted to walk to the next closest one to kill time, but the bus ended up passing us as we were walking. we were both headed the same way downtown, so we walked together, and he'd explain how some of the architecture made him feel at home. he walked me to my subway station since it was on his way, and he accompanied me all the way to the turnstiles, even though he didn't have to. as we stood there, i said, "today was really nice. thank you for letting me drag you out of the house." he smiled and began wishing me a good summer, and that's when i started crying. i reached out and he immediately pulled me into a hug, and i told him, "it's so fucked up that you're my hardest goodbye." he started telling me all the things that i have to look forward to this summer and all i did was look at him through the tears and say, "but you won't be there." something in his expression softened, but he didn't say anything. we said goodbye after that.
we've talked a little bit after that, but it's not the same as getting to spend the day with him.
near the end of february, i had an anxiety-driven breakdown. uncontrollable crying and panicking to the point where i couldn't function. that led to me being put on antidepressants, which have definitely helped, but couldn't beat the crippling sophomore slump that got worse as the semester grew on. fatigue, lack of motivation, the whole deal. match that with a heavy workload and trying to have a semblance of a social life, i put tumblr on the back burner. the semester is over, i survived, all is well.
that said, i know you guys want tc updates:
he carved out specific hours each week for me to go to his office just to chat (3-ish hours per week).
i started walking him to his train stop nearly every day when he was going home.
we just generally got a lot closer. he began opening up a lot more about his childhood trauma, his family situation, past relationships, his identity within the queer community (it's complicated), medical problems, etc.
we are now formally involved in an internship preparation program together, which means over the summer, we'll be figuring out ways to get me an internship in (ideally) his hometown.
i asked him to dinner on my birthday, he said yes, refused to let me pay for any part of dinner, and also bought me gifts and a card.
he gave me his phone number and personal email, which we now semi-regularly use.
we got dinner together at the end of the semester with some of my peers and we had to discuss the method of payment beforehand so "mom and dad wouldn't fight at the table again."
we went on a technically-not-a-date but it was very date-coded (will post about this because so much happened).
tl;dr: i'm alive, my tc is fine, and we are definitely in a situationship because a real relationship would be unethical and wrong and scary
publicly embarrassing myself so you guys get a laugh but he recited poetry to me from memory and i was so painfully turned on that i literally said "i should go" and left a flustered mess
to answer some asks i've been getting, yes he did tell me he's not fully straight, no, he did not say he's 100% gay.
his wording was really vague and ambiguous (he never would have came out to me but the way the conversation went, he felt like he had to hint at things. he was clearly incredibly uncomfortable so i didn't press). i have been turning it in my mind a lot and also talking with both straight and queer friends like "what the fuck does this mean" and the general consensus is that he's somewhere in the in-between (bi/pan/queer/something that isn't 100% gay or straight). it's still very dubious because he really did not give much but that's where i'm at right now.
guys, i went to his office hours to chat like always but left early because one of his actual students needed help with something, and he sent me an email saying that he's scheduling about an hour of time for us to talk "without interruption" each week 🥺
so one thing about him that i clocked almost immediately is that he's insecure, almost cripplingly so. at first, i found it kind of endearing, especially because he is so much older and so anxious/nervous all the time. as i got to know him better, i've sort of made it my personal mission to "fix" him and build his confidence, not because he's some sort of project, but because it genuinely upsets me that a man as amazing as him doesn't see his own self-worth. so i've been regularly and frequently buying him gifts, baking for him, providing so many words of affirmation. part of that is just born from how much i love him, but part of it is a conscious effort to show him that he is deserving of kindness and affection without strings attached.
that said, it feels like i keep giving and giving, and he just takes, and he doesn't give much in return. everything he's done for me i'm super grateful for, but it just sucks that the reciprocity is so unequal. maybe this will change now that i'm no longer his student and we can be on more equal footing socially, and i never do anything for him expecting anything in return, but shit, it's so exhausting.
i feel bad because he told me that i am helping his confidence, and i am over-the-moon about that, but he said that he doesn't acknowledge my efforts like i do his, that i'm better at being supportive than him, and my knee-jerk reaction was to reassure him and say, "that's not true, we just show it in different ways!" after thinking on it a lot, he's right. and that's not necessarily any fault of his--he's never been like this with a student before, and especially given that he's a man and i'm a young woman, he's probably being extra careful to toe the line so that what he says doesn't get misconstrued. he's also not used to the level of kindness i show him, period. he's admitted that, which makes me sad, but fuck, dude. i just wish he would do something nice for me unprompted, something on a similar level of what i do for him. just once.
so one thing about him that i clocked almost immediately is that he's insecure, almost cripplingly so. at first, i found it kind of endearing, especially because he is so much older and so anxious/nervous all the time. as i got to know him better, i've sort of made it my personal mission to "fix" him and build his confidence, not because he's some sort of project, but because it genuinely upsets me that a man as amazing as him doesn't see his own self-worth. so i've been regularly and frequently buying him gifts, baking for him, providing so many words of affirmation. part of that is just born from how much i love him, but part of it is a conscious effort to show him that he is deserving of kindness and affection without strings attached.
that said, it feels like i keep giving and giving, and he just takes, and he doesn't give much in return. everything he's done for me i'm super grateful for, but it just sucks that the reciprocity is so unequal. maybe this will change now that i'm no longer his student and we can be on more equal footing socially, and i never do anything for him expecting anything in return, but shit, it's so exhausting.
i feel bad because he told me that i am helping his confidence, and i am over-the-moon about that, but he said that he doesn't acknowledge my efforts like i do his, that i'm better at being supportive than him, and my knee-jerk reaction was to reassure him and say, "that's not true, we just show it in different ways!" after thinking on it a lot, he's right. and that's not necessarily any fault of his--he's never been like this with a student before, and especially given that he's a man and i'm a young woman, he's probably being extra careful to toe the line so that what he says doesn't get misconstrued. he's also not used to the level of kindness i show him, period. he's admitted that, which makes me sad, but fuck, dude. i just wish he would do something nice for me unprompted, something on a similar level of what i do for him. just once.
