A terrible and recent experience I've had with first dates lately has been with a foreign professor. Now, let's just be clear upfront that this man was not my professor, because that's just...skanky. But either way, this story proves that the tales of The Horny Professor are true and not just urban legend.

At a conference, I struck up a friendship with a foreign professor whom I believed to be about 30. He wasn't attractive at all, but he was smart, funny, and knowledgable. He also spoke French. I was hooked. In between conference meetings, we toured the city together, site-seeing and talking deeply about religion, life, family, history, education, love, relationships, sex, politics, and a host of other topics. Despite his appearance, I was incredibly attracted by his intelligent conversation and depth of knowledge.

Needless to say, I was a little shocked when he told me his age. Turns out he was nearing 50---- the age of my father, and exactly double  my age. I couldn't believe it. Normally I won't date that much older, but since we'd already struck up a friendship and the courting process was done, I decided to run with it anyway. The conference was only for one week, after all. Then he would go back to Canada and I would return to Springfield. What could go wrong?

Well, the first thing that went wrong was he turned out to be quite confident about his sexual prowress. To be honest, I wasn't impressed with his kissing---slobbery and overly confident, it was more an open-mouth exchange of saliva than a kiss. His lips barely moved; he just hovered around my lips with his mouth open. Pretty gross, but I was trying to be polite, so I didn't say anything. However, he seemed quite proud of his sexual achievements. One night stands, cheating, you name it----he was proud of it. He seemed to think himself some sort of divine bearer of female orgasms.  Having only kissed him, I was intrigued and slightly skeptical. For a short, overweight, unattrative, balding, middle-aged bachelor, I thought he must be pretty dang good to bed so many women.

Turns out I was wrong. For our first official date, he took me out to dinner. This actually turned out to be a really gross whiskey and too-spicy, stale bar snack mix. I dutifully sipped my drink and ate the snack mix. When we left, he bought me a sandwich. We ate it as we headed back to the hotel. Since I had a roommate, I suggested we go to his hotel room. "But," I cautioned clearly, "no sex."

"No sex?" he said in his thick French accent. "But it takes two to have sex." Just mentioning the word made his chest puff up with pride as he no doubt recalled all his past achievements. I was getting more curious by the minute.
 

"And no groping," I clarified. I was going to this stranger's hotel room because 1. I wanted to be kissed and 2. I had a roommate, not because I wanted him to think he was getting a freebie. I hoped by clearly articulating my boundaries, he would not operate under the hotel-room-equals-sex assumption.

I was wrong. For our first date I got a gross drink, some salted nuts, and manhandling followed by guilt trip.

In the room, he commenced with pressing his open mouth to mine and slobbering into it. Yum. Pushing him gently away, I gently inquired, "Is this kissing good to you?"

"Fine," he replied, puzzled. Oooooookay.

I went back to "kissing" him, inwardly sighing at this waste of time when I could be in my hotel room watching bad tv.  And this professor then proceeded to push me down on the bed and try to stick his hand down my pants. The harder I tried to remove it, the harder he pushed against me. When I stopped him and said no, he didn't reply, but waited about 2.5 seconds before repeating the same manouever again. And again. And again.

He then undressed down to his whitie-tighties---ugh! Old man!!!----and proceeded to try again. Yuck! This was the aforementioned sexual prowress? How any female had made love to him, much less achieved orgasm with this disgusting groping, was beyond me.

Frightened and offended, I finally sat up and said I needed to leave. He sighed. He seemed completely unremorseful and I finally remarked, "You don't even seem sorry." He replied said, "Are you sorry?" as though it were my fault. When I managed to get past my shock to ask what he meant, he replied, "I'm just not used to women resisting so much! You all won't admit when you like something."

So there it was, ladies and gentlemen, the crux of the matter: I was a woman, and therefore lowly, inferior. I could not be trusted to know what I wanted and how I wanted it, but was expected to bow to his expert male understanding of the female body and be used as the physical plaything I was. How silly of me to expect respect, understanding, and passion.  Clearly when I said, "No," I meant to say, "Try harder." Too bad a college education and adult responsibilities had not prepared me to decide when and where I wanted my body used. Good thing I had him there to see me through it.

I escaped down the hall to my own hotel room, bolted the door, and thanked God for the end of the worst first date ever.