Last month, my friend gave me a mix CD for my birthday titled “Release Your Sexual Energy.” It turned out to be a collection of Playboy-style pictures of my friends’ bodies spelling out the letters in my name.
Just kidding. But this uniquely-named CD did shock me in a different way. It made me realize that about a year ago, when I was having daily panic attacks about leaving the safety of my home to go to college, I never would have believed that I would be this comfortable or happy with the people that I would meet here.
As I finish up my freshman year, it’s only natural to reflect back on the events that defined this momentous year. A few nights ago, two of my friends and I tried to identify “the best days of this year” – Big Game Day, Homecoming Weekend and some late-night hangouts were among the winners. And while the aforementioned do capture some lovely memories, it’s not fair to attribute everything that made this year great to a select few Saturdays.
Instead, I have come to the rather ordinary conclusion that this year was made special by the connections I established in the past 10 months. I have also come to the not-so-ordinary conclusion that I made all of these connections through sex.
Don’t get too excited – I’m not referring to “buddies” I made through a series of one-night stands or drunken hookups. So now you’re probably wondering, what does sex have to do with creating lasting platonic relationships? A lot actually.
In high school, friend-making usually went something like this: you meet someone, become friends and eventually your conversations become more intimate. In college, it’s backwards: you’ll hear people going at it in the communal showers, awkwardly tease them and only then become friends, thereby changing friendship dynamics completely.
As horny college students, it’s not news to us that sex is a common topic. And even though I’m just a freshman, don’t pretend you don’t remember your days in the dorms, when the Crossroads menu determined your mood and the thought of a threesome still made you blush. It’s through my experiences this year and some intensive research (daydreaming at my desk, obsessively reading AnonCon), that I realized that it’s through these conversations that people bond.
For example, a few of my floormates and I hosted a floor dinner during dead week of last semester. Sounds innocent enough, right? Wrong. Its title, which is inappropriate for this publication, sounded like the name of a giant orgy … and it was themed “Hobo-Erotica.” It involved my floormates dressing in plaid shirts, acting slutty and cooking – then devouring – delicious food. The windows of our lounge even steamed up since there were so many (half-naked) bodies and so much warm food – and raw sexual energy, of course.
This event, which marked the end of our first semester together as freshmen, probably wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable if it wasn’t sex-themed – we probably would have taken cutesy pictures and eaten in silence. Instead we screamed and giggled for hours, making it one of the greatest nights of freshman year.
By getting those people who would normally say, “Oh my god, this is so awkward” (me) to join in on the fun, we crossed the large dividing line between acquaintances and real friends. And to top it off, a sexually themed game of Bananagrams ensued after. (Who knew that “wetdream” used up so many tiles?)
It was this night that, by embracing sex, we embraced how comfortable we are with each other.
Overall, sex-related occurrences – sharing unusual experiences, trying to identify who has been spending the night next door, analyzing suspicious sounds emitted from the room down the hall – brought my friends and me closer together, helping us evolve from just roommates, floormates and classmates into friends.
Living in such close proximity makes us privy to things we would rather not know but also forces us to become comfortable with talking about sex, and maybe more importantly, being mocked about it.
Anyhow, I could probably go on forever about how this has shaped my successful freshman experience. But basically what I’m saying is that if I had to come up with some high-falutin’ thesis to support all the evidence from freshman year, show authorial intent and connect to a broader meaning, I would choose sex. It’s exactly like a thesis for one of my English classes … except this isn’t bullshit.
So in simpler terms, I owe it all to you, sex.