This could have been Wife

Did you see in the news today, where a 41-year old man teaching in a high school in Modesto, California, recently left his family to move in with an 18-year old former student? On top of all that, the girl's mother is trying to galvanize opinion in the community (and activity down at the police department) to have him drawn and quartered. It seems to be quite a drama, and you can read about it here. Also, the happy couple gave an interview to ABC News which is excerpted here:




This could have been Wife with Girlfriend 1.

• Girlfriend 1 had been Wife's student when Wife was teaching high school.



• They became close during the year -- close enough that (as we later learned) Girlfriend 1 had been writing erotic fantasies about Wife in her journal. But they never actually fucked until after Girlfriend 1 was eighteen and had graduated.



• Girlfriend 1 wanted Wife to leave me and run away with her -- not only was she totally in love with Wife at the time, but she thought there would be something daring and heroic in Wife's flouting suburban conventionality to run away from her boring old husband with another woman.



• Her mother wanted to roast Wife on a spit; but she was poor and an immigrant and didn't trust the system enough to try to use it the way Mrs. Powers is doing. That may be the only thing that saved Wife from arrest or jail time, because honestly Girlfriend 1 was too besotted with love and lust to be very discreet.



• D strongly disapproved of the romance between Wife and Girlfriend 1. She said she had no problem with lesbianism for Girlfriend 1, nor with bisexuality for Wife. Way back when this was happening she was a little uneasy about Wife's chronic infidelities, but Wife always told her that she had worked it all out with me, so D shrugged her shoulders and let it go. But the power differential between a teacher and a student ... that bothered her intensely. Plus she has told me she regarded the relationship as inherently abusive ... that Wife was gratifying her own desires with no thought for how it would affect Girlfriend 1.

For whatever it is worth, Girlfriend 1 stopped communicating with Wife many years ago. I have to wonder if that will happen in this case too.

Anyway, it could have been Wife but it wasn't. Life continued on way more prosaically than that. Still, I couldn't help thinking about the similarities as I read the article. I wish I had something profound or insightful to say about it.