"Stop by anytime, I'm always there," my favorite professor told me when I couldn't make it to his regular office hours. So, late that afternoon, after most people had left campus for the day, I found the building and room number he'd typed on the syllabus: Sci170. The door was locked. I checked the number again, saw my professor's name printed on the door and figured he'd probably stepped out for a minute. Renowned professors pee, too, I thought. I sat on the floor in the empty hallway and waited.

That's when I heard hushed voices coming from behind the door across the hall. I couldn't make out entire sentences at first, but then the voices sounded more urgent and the volume rose slightly. I picked up snippets of conversation:

"She started it, I ..."

"It doesn't matter who ..."

"If I'd known you'd react this way, I never would have told ..."

"How do you expect me to ..."

"I just thought, Jim, that you'd understand ..."

"Understand that your student blew you in your office?!"

"Would you keep your voice down?"

"Everyone's gone by now ..."

"Look, I know it's wrong, it'll never happen again ..."

"You have to swear it won't, because if it does ..."

"Can we talk about this later?"

"You mean at night, with your wife in the other room?"

"Don't be cruel, Jim. I have an exam to write ..."

Feeling eerily like Linda Tripp, I decided I didn't want to hear any more and quickly stood up to leave. When I reached the end of the hallway, I peered around the corner and saw my professor walking back into his office. Tiptoeing out of the building, I hoped he'd forgotten about my request to stop by for help.

"Did you get your questions answered?" Dr. S asked when I took my seat in lecture the next morning. I tried to look innocent, like Betty Currie when she said she never saw anything. I guess it didn't work. "Didn't you say yesterday you needed help?" Dr. S repeated. His tone was inscrutable. Was he trying to find out if I'd overheard his conversation? Was he hoping for an office-hour blow job from me, too? Flustered, I replied, "I, um, couldn't make it yesterday, but I'll try to come by today and work on those problems." "Good," he winked on his way to the board, "because the exam's tomorrow." Did that wink mean something?

Watching Dr. S draw molecules on the board was like watching a Charlie Brown character. His lips would move, but all I heard was WAW, WAW, WAW. Distracted, I began scanning the room: Who's the one blowing him? The girl in the crop top with the perky breasts who never takes notes? The chubby Russian girl who sits in the front row and smiles coyly when he glances her way? The girl with the three-inch sandals and the Tommy Girl perfume? I tried to concentrate on the lecture, but every time I looked at Dr. S, he no longer seemed like a respected science professor with distinguished awards. I couldn't help imagining him with his pants unzipped.

The whole thing reminded me of a game I once played with my boyfriend: Tell me your deepest, darkest secret, and I'll tell you mine. This was clearly asking for disaster, but Glamour magazine had assured me it would strengthen our bond. Since it was my idea, I had to go first. I told him about the horribly embarrassing experience of losing my virginity to an older guy at school. I'd lied about my virginal status, unaware that the blood on the sheets, among other things, would betray me. My boyfriend and I lay in bed laughing and then, as he was rubbing my back, I turned and kissed him and said, "OK, honey, you go." I don't know why he chose to reveal this -- maybe because we were already on the virginity theme -- but he told me that when he was 15, he and his friends had lost their virginity to a prostitute, a petite Hispanic teenager who did the four of them in sequence. "We didn't have a lot of cash and it was cheaper than getting four different hookers," he added by way of explanation.

For no good reason, this revelation instantly changed my perception of him, as though he'd been Superman the whole time I'd known him and now I spied him in a telephone booth turning back into Clark Kent. From then on, I'd picture him all sweaty and pimply, in some sleazy upstairs room, prematurely ejaculating on a young Hispanic girl's stomach. Years later, after we broke up, I ran into this boyfriend on the street, and the first thing I remembered wasn't the time he asked me to marry him, but the image of a horny 15-year-old groping a prostitute who'd just done two of his pubescent friends. Sitting in class, it occurred to me how dangerous it is to idealize people -- boyfriends, professors, presidents even -- because one day they'll inevitably disillusion you with their humanity, and you'll never look at them the same way again. That day is always a bummer.

Because of the test the next morning, I decided to stop by Dr. S's office after class. The door was locked again, so I sat down in my spot on the floor. A minute later, I heard a sound, like a chair moving, from inside the office. I stood up and tapped lightly on the door. Silence. I sat back down on the floor and started going through my notes. Then I heard the noise again and wondered if he was in there with one of my classmates, her lipsticked grip on him so forceful that the chair he was sitting on was actually sliding across the room.

Just as I was about to make a run for it, the door opened and Dr. S invited me in. "I thought I heard a knock," he smiled. On his desk were pictures of his wife and kids, and on the walls, framed diplomas and prestigious awards. Piles of arcane-looking textbooks were strewn across the floor. As we went over the problems, I was mesmerized by his tales of enzymes and catalysts and biological buffers gone awry. Concepts that had seemed as confusing as the manual that came with my laptop now made perfect sense. I almost forgot about the conversation I'd overheard. Suddenly it was office hours as usual, and for a few minutes at least, Dr. S became the inspiring teacher I used to know.