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DiscussDear Cornell University: I am having more sex than you. People, I have had so much sex this week that I’m fairly certain some sort of anatomical disaster is about to occur; maybe a vaginal prolapse, a desensitized clitoris or, conceivably, death. I’m walking all bow-legged, every muscle in my body is sore and I think my uterus almost fell out while I was walking on Ho Plaza ten minutes ago. But it didn’t — so I had more sex just now. Yeah, I have been banging so many dudes lately that it took me two days to write those first four sentences . . . because I had to stop 27 times to have sex.
Yeah, so, about that: I have not had sex in a month. It’s really not very funny; I contracted a debilitating, painful Sexually Transmitted Infection recently and have had no choice but to remain abstinent.
The affliction that ails me is not The Croc. I am not suffering at the oozing, burning hand of the Herp, nor am I password-protecting my vagina because of the distant phonetic cousin of the loose poo, Gonorrhea. No, my darlings: the STI that has benched me for an entire menstrual cycle has been . . . infatuation. As it turns out, the OLCH (Open Legs Closed Heart) method of sluttin’ has finally caught up with me: I had sex with a dude and got attached. It’s a slippery slope after forehead kisses and, somehow, my vagina wrote a check my cold, slutty heart couldn’t cash.
I closed up shop for a while to allow my affections to extract themselves from my erogenous zones and return to my eyes and ears, where they can be appropriately coaxed out by intelligent conversation and killer good looks. While it’s true that sitting on a whole bunch of penises is a lot more fun than sitting on your ass and obsessing over one, even the undercover Pollyanna who is badass (read: naïve) enough to believe emotion is entirely, consistently avoidable has the foresight and aptitude to understand the golden rule of handling heartache: sleeping around with the objective of using other dudes’ baby gravy as a topical ointment to numb your pain is, well, destructive. You have to sideline your pink parts for a while to get your head right.
Truthfully, I don’t know how I ended up in this situation. My intentions were pure and I’d never thought of anything beyond banging this dude — and the next thing I knew, my last romance disaster had suddenly been relegated to the status of an insignificant cocktail party story in the face of this one.
So, what the hell happened? Let us consult the print fortress of national sexual progress, the cutting-edge publication that gleefully announced the grand entrance of “Va-Jay-Jay” into the American cultural lexicon this October, the Grey Lady herself. Yes, folks. The New York Times.
In case you missed it, The New York Times Magazine ran an illuminating little gem of a piece this Sunday called “Students of Virginity.” The story discussed the trend of abstinence clubs at elite colleges, and one of the lovely women featured prominently throughout the article might be able to shed some light on my predicament.
See, this sort of postcoital emotional clingyness has never troubled Janie Fredell, co-president of the Harvard abstinence club True Love Revolution. She has never had sex because she knows about something magical that I’d never been taught in my Hotelie classes: oxytocin. Here’s what the article said:
“[Janie] began talking about oxytocin, the hormone released at birth, in breast-feeding and also during sex. True Love Revolution gives it the utmost significance, claiming on its Web site that the hormone’s ‘powerful bonding’ effect can be ‘a cause of joy and marital harmony’ but that outside of marriage it can create ‘serious problems.’ Released arbitrarily, it can blur ‘the distinction between infatuation and lasting love,’ the Web site cautions, making rational mating decisions difficult. Fredell said oxytocin could also bond people who didn’t necessarily want to be bound, and ‘you can bond yourself to the wrong guy in the wrong situation.’”
Well, shit: I should have stayed a virgin because, in the case of guy number 20-something, oxytocin sent me down the express track to Infatuation Station.
Magic aside, ever notice how attitudes toward sex are amplified tenfold in the media when students at elite colleges hold those attitudes? Ivy sex columnists are portrayed as Sluts X-TREME (or “whore whore sluts,” as the NYT article kindly notes) worthy of coverage in Newsweek, and those Ivy Leaguers who have pledged to keep their V-Card intact are SuperMegaVirgins spotlighted in The Times. I suppose in the eyes of the media, sluts at state schools are just your generic, garden variety promiscuous chicks, and any public college’s virgins are, you know, religious or something. Bo-ring.
Reporters seem to really dig the brand-name sluts; the Intellectual Girls Gone Wild; the kind of sexpots that read Alice Munro and write blogs. Those sluts get book deals. But the boring old show-your-tits-on-Spring-Break sluts are just emblematic of the wild, dangerous college party scene and their 15 minutes of media coverage was apparently exhausted three years ago.
Memo to older folks who write about college sex: sluts are sluts; some of us just had high SAT scores and rather unfortunate resumes laden with marching band leadership roles and academic decathlons. The Ivy League sluts have nothing to say that the Spring Break sluts haven’t already said. I promise.
Speaking of Ivy League sluts, the NYT reporter also went ahead and wrote about my Harvard girl Lena Chen (author of the fabulous SexAndTheIvy.com and, full disclosure, a close friend of mine), depicting her quite masterfully as “Ms. Fredell’s” nutty nympho adversary, a miniskirted emblem of the other extreme. Lena, a brilliant, bubbly, take-no-shit chick with a taste for Amaretto and older men, appeared in the article to represent “our” side.
Excuse me, hold up: when did it become “us” against “them?” The virgins versus the non-virgins?
Look, people. There is no choice more personal than that of what you put into your own body, whether you’re making a decision concerning food or faith or phallus. Your sexual habits represent a lifestyle choice — a preference that affects nobody but you and, if applicable, your romantic partner.
So I’ll bat for Team Slut here and try to find some common ground: the way I feel about people who commit to virginity is similar to how I feel about triathletes. I would never, ever choose to wake up balls-early in the mornings to train, severely restrict my diet and hand over my booze card — and, frankly, I cannot understand why in the hell anyone would ever put themselves through something like that. But does that mean I don’t recognize and appreciate the willpower and commitment behind all that crap? Of course not. While I fully expect triathletes to wholeheartedly disapprove of my beer-bonging, sleeping-til-nine (okay, sometimes noon) ways, those sweaty, spandexed bodies aren’t dragging me into their miserable world with them, are they? And just like the triathletes who leave my sleepy boozed ass alone, the virgins aren’t holding the sluts down and strapping a chastity belt on them and the sluts aren’t doing anything to make any virgin question his or her commitment to abstinence.
Abstinence, like Jonny O’s and the Chapter House, is simply not my scene: I’m a Rulloff’s, Pixel and penis kind of girl. After experiencing a month of celibacy, I would say with some certainty that I would rather train for a triathlon than do without the peen for the rest of my life. Not for me, end of story — no need to hate on the virgins.
I don’t care what you decide to stuff in your body because that sort of personal choice has nothing to do with me; thus, if my personal choices do not please you, I’ll remind you that you were free to turn the page five minutes ago. Plus, virgin or not, I’m especially unconcerned with what you choose because, well, I’m having way more sex than you anyway.
Jenna B. is a senior. She can be contacted at opinion@cornellsun.com [3]. Bedroom Eyes appears alternate Thursdays.