We want to see a porno. I know you have them somewhere, buried underneath half-dry towels, discarded flannel boxers, and unread sociology packets. Tapes with blonde women with plastic breasts and stairmaster thighs on their covers. All we wanted was to borrow about five.
The idea was to write a column that would make my editors turn blue... err... umm...was to do a psychological experiment. We wanted (there are 12 of us) to borrow five tapes and watch the "best" scenes. A dozen women. Locked into the Calhoun TV room late at night; no one wanted to skip rehearsal or section just to see balding men screw. One tape recorder. It would have been Beavis and Butthead meet Susan Faludi.
But none of you would admit to owning the tapes. We asked every guy we knew, from the proverbial choir boys to the Spizzwinks(?). No one would lend us a tape. We had one-we needed more. Savage Nights from Film Fest wouldn't cut it. We wanted to know what the fuss was about. We wanted IT. The real thing. XXX porn, not Emmanuelle II in Davies Auditorium, with a bunch of frosh whose heavy breathing would keep us from laughing.
We did get offers. Offers to be the one "token" male in the group. "Please, I'll be quiet, I swear, you won't even notice me." One even offered to pay for this privilege-what sort of fantasy had we stumbled upon? Latest tally: one tape, eight token men.
I know you have these tapes. Freshman year I was hustled out of a common room with a blush. Sophomore year a prospective boyfriend called me back, "Sorry I cut you off, I didn't want to say so, but we were watching a porn." Okay, I was offered a second tape on the grounds that over spring break, I repeat the acts depicted with its owner. All in all, I didn't think a 700-word column was worth having sex with a blond.
If asked, no one at Yale ever has sex: "No, really, we don't," we swear. (For statistical purposes, members of Sigma Nu and the varsity swim team have been omitted).
I simply know this isn't true. For one thing, an ex-roommate of a friend of mine used to make noises like the Wild Eep off of a Mac. (You didn't want to know that, did you? Well neither did I.) For another, someone takes hundreds of condoms from my door. Non-oxynol-9 tastes too horrific for them to be blown up as balloons.
Hypocrites.
You are masturbating. You are making love. At the very least you wish you were doing these things.
Yale celebrates freedom of sexuality at BGLAD/Co-op dances, yet we do not allow ourselves to exercise this freedom. A friend of mine isn't embarassed to admit she had sex on the Pierson pool table. But people see her as shocking and titillating for admitting her "vice" (and how many other people's fantasy?), not simply as open and self-aware.
I walk the stacks in Sterling with caution because I know that someone's stealing all the sex books off the shelves, and I don't want to stumble upon the culprit, especially if the culprit's using the books. Imagine how much less spooky the stacks would be if people simply checked these books out-no Lurch-like heavy breathing echoing down the moldy, dark aisles.
Admit your perversities. Stop acting so shocked when the girl next door hangs her Victoria's Secret purple lace thong teddy on a drying rack. Do you honestly think those satin ropes are for tying back dorm-issue curtains? Admit you read http://www.playboy.com. There is no way that all those pairs of handcuffs were only bought and used for Halloween costumes. Is Patrick Stephenson really the only one who's dressed in drag? Buy your own Astroglide-bursar billable at DUH-and stop stealing mine.
Yale is not your mother, the Dean really doesn't care what you do, just as long as you don't do it in the showers of Vanderbilt. You will never be comfortable with your sexuality until you admit that you have a libido and that sex is like chocolate-something much better when savored than snuck on the side.
So loosen up people; this is not Sweet Valley High. And lend me and my girlfriends Debbie Does Dallas, Linda Licks Lisa, and Bob Boinks Bill. We need something to do instead of our senior essays.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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