It’s practically champagne

I went to my history professor’s office hours yesterday after class. He holds his Thursday office hours in the pub on campus, but I knew this (loss of faculties around faculty, never good) would not be an issue for me since I so recently vowed to only drink champagne and the pub is a beer joint.

However, he turned out to be the kind of drinker who does not want to drink alone. More importantly, he is the kind of drinker who wants to buy for the people he drinks with. Free beer, I thought. It’s practically champagne. He headed to the bar to fill my order and I nervously asked the other student sitting with us, “Won’t he get fired for this?” I imagined a department head, short and bald like George Jetson’s boss, snorting up to the table at full steam, eyeing my miniskirt sideways, catching sight of the professor clutching a pint for me and 32oz for himself, and exploding in a rage bomb all over my backpack. But apparently he only gets fired if I press sexual harassment charges, and why would I complain about my new supply of free beer? Unless my new beer supply flashes me or something.

So we drank some more (pint for me, 32oz for him). Shoes, ships, sealing wax. The other student left. The professor bought another round (pint for me, 32oz for him). Cabbages and kings. Perhaps this happens all the time, this drinking and becoming fairly drunk with professors, and no one ever told me? Or perhaps you are thinking, “This sounds startlingly inappropriate.” I, too, was thinking that; I mean, at first. Later on, my brain turned to a warm golden syrup and mostly I was thinking, “Mm. Beer.”

Generally when a story begins with a student in a miniskirt and a professor buying her beer, it ends predictably, but in this case (after I managed to stay drunk in the pub while the rest of my 7:00-10:00 class was discussing Keats), we just drank a lot of water (pint for me, 32oz for him) and I decorously, slightly sloshing, drove him home.

Today I feel pretty good, except for the nausea and headache and nagging feeling that I have not behaved quite as one ought to behave with one’s professor. It’s clear to me that our relationship has progressed to a new friendshippy level, and to symbolize this I’ve begun addressing him by his first name. I snuck it in a few times last night but I’m not sure he was noticing much of anything at that point, so the first real test will come in class on Tuesday when I say, “Well, [insert first name here], when you were piss-drunk on Thursday you were saying that…” etc. I anticipate that this inappropriate familiarity, coming on the heels of my ridiculously short skirt and inability to hold my alcohol, will only add to his already immense respect for me.