Would You Like This Man to Be Teaching Your Kids?

    Duh, yeah!!!!  

    Last week, a story surfaced from the bowels of the always surging and billious American media machine: that at Public School 99, in Kew Gardens, a very respectable area of Queens, borough of New York City, a full time occupational therapist, Julian Fantechi was moonlighting as a Playgirl centerfold model.

    The media moguls and bloodsuckers soon zoomed in: Would you want this naked hunk to be teaching your kid? (With, of course, pics of said hunk, barechested but not bare-bottomed, showing in heart-stopping realism that he was . . . Jesus, the real thing. You know, like pure hunkeroonie—GORGEOUS!)

    "I can have this career, and I can also have a heart and work with children," Julian protested to the Daily News, arbiter of all things good & sacred in th' Big Apple.

    Though the nude modeling curled eyebrows and wetted appetites, prompting a probe by city investigators, handsome Fantechi's moonlighting doesn't violate school policies, officials admitted. A state-licensed occupational therapist with a master's degree from New York University, 5-foot-10, 37-year-old Fantechi began working with special-needs students in city schools about six years ago, and outside the classroom, continued modeling, working for Saks Fifth Avenue and appearing in Men's Health magazine and other legit publications.

    This fall, he also had a small part in the ABC sitcom "Ugly Betty," providing some eye candy in the form of a hot UPS delivery guy. (We should all have something this hot delivered, don't cha think?)

   Approached to appear in Playgirl, Fantechi contacted his union representative to make sure he wasn't violating any city rules. He was given the go-ahead as long as he didn't publicly disclose that he worked as a city educator. He described his August centerfold and four earlier appearances in Playgirl as "artistic and tasteful." He felt confident his underage students would not have access to the material, since you must be 18 to be able to buy the publication.

    "It's totally separate," he said of his teaching job. "I haven't done anything that I'm ashamed of."

    But, this being the age of constant snoops who need a reason to get their twats into a knot, a complaint about Julian's delicious images was made to special school investigator Richard Condon's office in November and was forwarded to the city Office of Special Investigations, officials said.

    In mid-January, investigators found that Fantechi's modeling broke no rules and posed no danger to kids, schools spokeswoman Dina Paul Parks affirmed.

    Still, some parents said they felt uneasy about a school staffer posing in the buff.

    "We don't like that. That's definitely not good. Absolutely not," said Mohammad Alam, 41, who has daughters in third and fifth grade, and who would feel much better about clothed teachers advising his girls on the best way to get to hell.

    Aureia Lamberty, 65, said she planned to talk about the matter with her granddaughter, who attends the school.

    "I think it's not good for the children," she said.

    But Fantechi said he wants to reassure parents that he would "never, ever do anything to jeopardize a child" and that he is devoted to helping special-needs students, and many more liberal-minded (and realistic) parents have said that what he does on his own time is his—and at least he's not touching kids in a way that a lot of clothed adults have been caught doing lately.

    "I'd want them to know that just because I was a Playgirl centerfold has nothing to do with my capabilities as a physical therapist," Julian said.

    O.K. So, go ahead. Drool.


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    Another view of Julian—for more from Playgirl, click here.