Wendy C. Ortiz’s EXCAVATION: A Schoolgirl-Teacher Sexual Affair Memoir

Wendy C. Ortiz’s Excavation, a student-teacher sexual affair memoir, is an anomaly in that in the previous age-gap memoirs we’ve recapped, the memoirists shared that they had to be convinced that they had been groomed and victimized. However, Wendy doesn’t purport to being groomed or victimized by her teacher. 

And Paul Lisicky blurbed: “It’s rare to meet a memoirist who can write about the darkest things without judgment and emotional simplification.” And Cari Luna blurbed: “Ortiz is a fearless and generous storyteller, peeling back the layers of memory [i.e., “handwritten, detailed journals”] [...] never slipping into the easy traps of sentimentality or self pity.”

The affair began in September of 1986 in Wendy’s advanced 8th grade English class. Wendy described Mr. Ivers, her English teacher, as well-dressed, an easy talker but with a booming voice and with a “thick hand”. Attracted and finding herself on the edge of her seat, Wendy decided to “display a disinterest”; however, she let her “[...] knees splay out just enough to suggest a hint of the “unladylike” [...]”

Later Wendy shared: “Looking at Mr. Ivers, I felt a tickle in my groin. I bit my lip [...]”

Days after the first day of school and after Wendy informed Mr. Ivers that she was writing a novel: “[...] where people are, you know, making out, doing more than that, you know”, he asked for a copy of the novel and had her call him at home to talk about the book.

Of their first conversation, Wendy wrote that her English teacher revealed that he had a “huge crush” on her and that he wondered what it would be like “[...] to have his face between [...]” her legs!

My teacher was revealing to me, admitting to me, that he had a huge crush on me.

He said he wondered what it would be like to have his face between my legs, and I crossed my legs hard [...] I found myself enjoying the way he growled these desires in my ear. 

[Note: Unsurprising to us, 28-year-old Mr. Ivers wasn’t 13-year-old Wendy’s first age-gap affair. She had “weekend romps” with a tall and cute 20-year-old in his El Camino and behind a L.A. mall.]

Interestingly, and like a confession straight out of My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies, Wendy confessed that at 13-years-old, behind her: 

“[...] closed bedroom door, [she] pressed against the yellow carpeted floor, panting and writhing [...] humping the carpet with nude women etched in my mind’s eye [...] a deep intake of breath to withhold the revelatory sigh so it did not travel [...]” 

In addition, she masturbated to images of men. And images of men and women having: “[...] some adolescent, groping version of sex [...]” 

16-Year-old Wendy C. Ortiz (1989) |
Souce: @WendyCOrtiz/Twitter

And in another confession straight out of My Secret Garden, Wendy confessed that, before she turned 13, her hobby was “making out with girls” - in her bedroom closet. 

Futhermore, before Wendy even met Mr. Ivers, she said that on her first day at Oakcrest Junior High, her first “intrigue” was “male teachers”. Her second intrigue? The 9th grade nymphets who looked like seniors with: “[...] haughty expressions on heavily lipsticked and rouged faces.”

Consequently, during class, among other “fantasies”, Wendy had a “secret impulse” to remove Mr. Ivers’ tie. Wendy’s impulses continued after school where she let her: “[...] eyes glance over the front of his sweats, wondering about the state of his penis, trying to imagine exactly what it looked like [...]” 

And Wendy desired to stand close enough to her teacher: “[...] close enough to hook up with the energy flow, the unspoken promise of sex [...]”, which they had for about six years that was peppered with Wendy face down on her carpet rubbing herself to a “[...] soaring, bitter climax.” 

Like a report straight out of a Daily Mail piece, while Wendy’s mother was working, Mr. Ivers would come to Wendy's place in North Hollywood. On “most Saturdays”, Wendy would take the bus to her teacher’s place in Pasadena. And sometimes Mr. Ivers would pick up Wendy, clad in her Catholic schoolgirl uniform, for a rendezvous in his green Porsche where she eventually had her first non-autoerotic orgasm. [Note: They stopped using condoms after Wendy turned 16.]

16-Year-old Wendy C. Ortiz (1989) | 
Souce: @WendyCOrtiz/Twitter

Mr. Ivers even had girlfriends during the affair: “His girlfriend, me, him: a sick triangle that she wasn’t completely aware of.” The “completely” is in reference to the fact that Wendy often met Mr. Ivers’ girlfriends. And 14-year-old Wendy had a boyfriend too - 17-year-old Nicholas. They had teen sex “often without condoms” and often outdoors (e.g., “[...] late night trysts in public parks, or cars [....] anywhere my clothes might find a temporary place to land [...]”)

Like with every age-gap memoir we’ve recapped, Excavation has only one, but consequential, (seeming) contradiction. After writing, in terms of student-teacher affairs, that she “[...] gets it. Like viscerally” and after she re-confessed her own student-teacher fantasies that were “fueled” by her teacher, of whom she wrote: “[...] the hold, the power I have over this person [...]”,  Wendy went on to puzzlingly imply that she would not have had a six-year affair with her teacher if it weren’t for the “tragic power dynamic”. But in the chapter “WHY I DIDN’T TELL”, she listed “I wanted power” among the reasons for not exposing her affair with her teacher. 

I didn’t want to be average.

I didn’t want it to end.

I wanted sex. 

I wanted to be the focal point of someone’s world.

I wanted power.

I wanted love. 

In the end, the student-teacher affair ended amiably.

“I love you.” [Mr. Ivers said.]

“I love you,” I [Wendy] repeated back.