He was never my boyfriend. For decades, I’ve clung to that technicality.
As a young teen, I fell hard for one of my dad’s students. Unfortunately, his students were guys who were much older than I was…until they weren’t. The moment I went from plucky kid sister to potential love interest was different for everyone on campus. When I was thirteen, it was clear I was off limits; by the time I was sixteen, I saw myself as a real contender. While most of the students still kept their distance, the hottest guy I had ever met was not one of them.
Of course, the 1990s were a different time, which is not to say a romantic relationship between a teen and a man seven years her senior was ever okay, but it was normalized. I blame Dirty Dancing, Mermaids, and a whole host of other media I consumed that romanticized the idea that girls could be with men, that sneaking around was hot, and being desired by an older man made a girl cool. And I blame a particular brand of Gen X feminism—something that on the whole positively impacted my life—for pushing the narrative that as long as the woman (or girl, in my case) had agency, nothing was off the table.
And I was definitely the pursuer.
As a junior in high school, I used the White Pages to find the number of the hottest guy I had ever met, stretched the telephone cord into my closet, and dialed.
“Hi, it’s Neil’s daughter,” I said when he picked up.
“Hi,” he said. “What’s up? How are you?”
I was so shocked I could barely carry on a conversation, but I did. We did. I started shutting myself in my tiny closet a few times a week. My green and white polyester school uniforms hung over my head and muffled my voice enough so no one in the house could overhear me—I hoped.
Within a few weeks, our interactions moved beyond the phone. My fancy private school had a two-week spring break back then, so families could go skiing in Vail or to the Caribbean. My family could not. On the first day of my spring break, I convinced my mom to drop me off at a library near the hottest guy ever’s apartment before she went to work. She assumed I would spend the whole day at the library working on my American History paper. But I never said I wouldn’t leave the building. It was yet another technicality I could hang my hat on.
Around lunch time, I called him from the pay phone by the elevators.
“Ugh, I can’t believe my mom left me here all day,” I fake complained into the phone.
“Do you want to come by?” he asked. “I was just going to make lunch.”
This became a regular occurrence. He was a college student with very little disposable income, so we never went out. At least that’s how we justified all the time I spent at his apartment making simple lunches and talking about how my father had made both our lives difficult in different ways. I felt so grown up, eating lunch with this man and writing school papers at his kitchen table. I romanticized his garret apartment and my place in it.
We went on like this for months. We never made concrete plans—I just came by when I had a day off school and was bored at the library. But then I got my driver’s license, and things changed dramatically. The first night I was allowed to take my mom’s car out, I drove to his place. I only ever wanted to be at his place.
This was before cell phones and tracking apps, so when I was with him, almost nobody knew where I was. On his dingy couches, everything about my regular life, my real life, evaporated. We existed in a vacuum that didn’t have mean girls, immature boys my age, college applications, or my parents’ financial troubles. He didn’t judge me the way the rich girls at my private school did, and he understood the pressure my father put on me in a way my friends couldn’t.
That’s what I got out of it. I’m not sure what he got out of it. I actively worked not to care, to just be grateful to be in the presence of the hottest guy ever.
As an adult, whenever I tell people about him, they assume he was in it for the sex. But we never had sex, ever. We spent more than six years in each other’s lives. While our interactions weren’t always completely chaste, we never moved much past what you could see in PG movies of that time.
I did spend nights at his place, a lot of them. His various apartments and houses provided a place to hide from whatever drama was plaguing my real life and eventually they became somewhere to transition from being away at college to coming back home. At my parents’ house, I still had a curfew, even after I turned 21. But at his place, I could come and go as I pleased. I would tell my parents I was coming home from college on a Sunday but actually arrive in town on a Friday. I would spend the weekend at his place, and if neither of us were seeing someone else, I’d sleep pressed up against him in his bed. If either of us were in a relationship, I’d sleep on the couch.
As I got older, we could, in theory, be seen in public together, but I knew it was still a risk. My father had never liked him, and my father could be scary.
When I graduated from college and moved to New York City, we had to accept whatever we had—what would now be called a situationship, what was then called “friends with (a few) benefits”—was over. At least that’s what I thought.
On the phone one night, from the gorgeous, sun-filled one-bedroom I was subletting on the Upper West Side, I complained to him about how expensive everything was in New York. I was trying to downplay how happy I was.
“If it’s so expensive,” he said, “why don’t you just move home?”
“Home?” I asked. “Like, to my parents’?”
“Well,” he said casually, “I have an extra room.”
I was stunned into silence. Was he asking me to move in with him? As a housemate? As something more? I loved my life in New York City so much I almost felt guilty, but I had pursued something more with him for so many years and this seemed like my first and last chance to make it real.
Finally, I said, “In this scenario, am I going to tell my dad I’m moving in with you, or are you?”
Neither of us were up to that task, so we dropped it. Six months later, I met my husband. A few months after that the hottest guy ever met his wife. I went to their wedding, and then we slowly lost touch. This secret life I’d led for years lived in the rearview mirror of my life—until my daughter started driving.
For years, anytime Nora and I were on the winding country roads that surround the small city we live in, she would say, “I can’t wait to drive these roads by myself, with the windows down, playing my music!” When she turned sixteen, she passed the test on her first try.
Nora is petite, like I was at her age, only more so. Her father works at a college, just like mine did. And while my daughter, at sixteen, still looks like a child to me, my husband’s students do not. When I see my daughter and my husband’s students in the same place, the stark difference between them floors me. If any of his students showed too much interest in my daughter, I would immediately see the problem, and so would Nora.
She has always been much more aware of predatory behavior and appropriate boundaries than I was. When she was a freshman, she spoke with disgust about any upperclassman who expressed interest in a girl in her grade. I was so proud of her, but she didn’t learn that from me. Maybe this was #MeToo feminism at its finest.
Because she’s so sensible and grounded, I wasn’t prepared to feel unmoored when Nora took my car out for the first time. But the visual of that small sixteen-year-old in the driver’s seat of my SUV incensed me on behalf of my sixteen-year-old self. What had the hottest guy I had ever met been thinking? What had I?
Each time Nora takes my car out now, I’m reminded of the places I went when no one knew where I was going, and how insecure I was under all my bluster. I had clung to the technicality that he wasn’t my boyfriend and had dismissed concerned friends as jealous or prudish. I couldn’t see then what my situation looked like from the outside.
Watching my sixteen-year-old daughter navigate her teen years with age-appropriate love interests, healthy boundaries, and a frank and honest relationship with her parents (as well as tracking software on her phone), I’ve come to understand what I missed while I was sixteen and sneaking around and pretending to be a grown-up. Nora doesn’t carry the weight of hoping she doesn’t get caught in a lie. She’s learning how to navigate firsts with other people who are navigating them, too.
My daughter is so unapologetically herself—like an Alanis Morisette song—goofy and wise, young and mature.
These days, I’m looking at a lot of pictures of myself in high school. As I stare into my own eyes, I search for a sign that I was as okay as I thought I was. Some days I see it; some days I see the hint of doubt that must have always been there.
I now know my teenage self was doing the best she could in a world that sent her a lot of mixed messages. I’m grateful she emerged, mostly unscathed, to raise a daughter who inspires her.
Jamie Beth Cohen is the author of two novels, WASTED PRETTY and LIMINAL SUMMER, and her first memoir, DEAD DAD SEASON, will be published by Kent State University Press in 2028. Her words have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, HuffPost, and several other outlets. www.JamieBethCohen.com
We (Genx) certainly grew up with different rules and expectations - thanks for sharing 🙏🏽
The normalization of the inappropriate makes me frustrated and sad. Once years ago I had my family (husband and two sons) watch Sixteen Candles with me, a favorite of mine when I saw it as a 16 year old in theaters. I couldn't believe what I was watching: normalization, nay, glamorization, of rape culture. I just couldn't see it at 16. Thank goodness for whatever cultural forces have made your daughter righteously aware.