2

Perhaps because I felt so American and my Mom didn't, it made it easier for me to get close to my Dad. It also didn't hurt that my Dad had the status of a local celebrity in our university town. As a little girl, I used to love walking through campus with him, watching the way people reacted to us. Faculty and staff greeted us warmly, but it was nothing compared to the worship he received from his adoring, mostly female students.

"Hiiii, Professor Andrews," they would squeal as we walked by. "Oh my god, is that Lola?"

"So cute with those blue eyes! Just like yours, Professor."

"Lola, you're getting so big! Are you going to be a freshman here in the fall?"

Imagine being a 7-year-old girl and having college girls fawn all over you. Do you have any idea what that feels like? I loved the attention. Unfortunately, so did my father.

I know it isn't healthy, but when I look back on what happened, I still feel pangs of guilt. I said before that my father never tried to fuck me, but that doesn't mean he didn't use me for sex.

Every Sunday, when other dads were watching football, we would go on daddy-daughter dates. I looked forward to these all week. The park, the museum, the movies, the zoo, we went all over. And then, as our last stop before coming home for dinner, we would stop by the diner near campus for ice cream sundaes.

"Life needs variety, Lola," he would say with a smile as we settled into our favorite booth, "And that's why, on Sundays, dessert comes before dinner."

Because the diner was near campus, most of the wait staff and customers were students, and so each week we received a hero's welcome. I must've eaten a thousand free sundaes there over the years, though I'm quite certain my Dad paid for all them and then some in the tips he gave. Of course, as we found out years later, he wasn't just paying for ice cream.

Before the scandal broke, it started as a rumor. A student had told the Dean of Student Affairs that her roommate was having sex with a professor. She and her roommate were both in the professor's class, and the girl who reported it was apparently worried that-of all things-her roommate was trading sex for good grades. When pressure from the campus newspaper forced the university to begin a formal investigation, that's when the phone calls started.

By this time, I was hardly a little girl anymore. It was the summer before my senior year of high school and I had just turned 18. Still, I was naive and innocent, and my Dad shielded me from it as long as he could. He kept my attention focused on the upcoming tennis season-my prep school had a top flight team, and as captain, I was gunning for a D1 scholarship. As a summer job, I was coaching a clinic for elementary school girls on the university campus. That's where I was heard the news.

I'll never forget that moment, standing on the baseline on a beautiful day in my tennis whites, when my friend Allie sprinted up the chain-link fence that surrounded the court. Her face was red and I could see she was crying.

"Lo! Lola, come quick," she sobbed. "It's your Dad!"

I dropped my racquet and ran up the fence. By the time I reached the fence, there were already tears in my eyes, though I wasn't sure what they were for. Car accident? Heart attack?

"Wh-what happened-to my Dad?!"

Allie took two deep, gasping breaths, wiping tears and sweat from her eyes.

"It's your Dad. Some-some girl...," her voice dropped to a whisper. "A sophomore told the university paper she had sex with your Dad!"

The sophomore's name was Kelsea, and as it turned out, she was far from the only one. After she went public, seven other girls came forward, each one alleging that she had engaged in a sexual relationship with my Dad while studying at the university. The earliest relationships had started about a decade earlier, shortly after my little brother was born and around the same time that I was going on daddy-daughter dates. All of the girls were over 18 at the time the alleged relationships began, though some only just barely. None accused my father of sexual assault, though the ones that came forward said they did so because they felt that, to quote an article in the school newspaper, "Professor Andrews acted unethically by leveraging his popularity and status to exploit the power imbalance of the teacher-student relationship for his own sexual gratification."

Worse than the fact of my father's repeated infidelities were the sordid details that trickled out: sex during office hours, on school-sanctioned trips, and boldest of all, in a freshman dorm room. Though less salacious, the most damaging to me was learning that he had used the diner near campus as a pick-up spot to cruise for pretty young things. He had been planting the seeds of his seductions during our sacred time together.

It wasn't until much later that I recognized my father's actions in the way that dominant men approach me, but now I cannot help but see the role I played in his conquests. He used me deftly to lure these girls in and disarm them. How could the charming and devoted father of such a happy and well-adjusted daughter be anything but harmless? And if, perhaps, his fingers strayed from his daughter's shoulder and landed on the small of your back, well, surely that was a fatherly touch and nothing more. And even if he flirted a bit too much for a man his age, he is quite good-looking, so wouldn't it be a cheap thrill to flirt back just a little bit...

I know this line of thinking and I know where it lead these young girls. Should I feel ashamed of the role I played as an unwitting accomplice in my father's conquests? No, I shouldn't, and yet I do. Even then, I was drunk on the attention, greedily basking in the praise and admiration of these college girls even as my father seduced them. Today, the only thing that has changed is that I now crave the attention of older men, and the one being seduced is me.