“Hey baby, your dorm or mine? Oh, wait, let me see if my roommate is there.” This is how the fiasco of trying to hook-up in a dorm room usually starts.

You need planning, perfect timing, or maybe a little bribery to send your roommate off to Starbucks for an hour or two. Or four.

Then there is the aspect of sneakiness when trying to get your partner in and out of the room without arousing suspicion.

Sometimes the excuse that it’s a project you’re working on, or you need help with a paper, or “I just needed to borrow his Swiffer.”
Oh, I bet you did.

None of these tactics ever work, by the way. I don’t know what English course you’re taking, but no presentation I’ve ever seen requires that kind of noise.
Trying to get it on in a dorm room is almost as bad as telling your hook-up to wait for the futon to unfold or climb the ladder to your loft bed.

Being sexy can get a little difficult when her four inch heels are caught in those little metal rungs or when having to get on your knees has nothing to do with sex and more to do with avoiding hitting your head on the ceiling.
But there is something special about the running start required to make it onto most extra-long (and extra-high) twin beds found in college dorms.

Perhaps it is the exhilaration of hoping to make it over the dangerous metal frame.

Unfortunately, the awkwardness continues after making it onto the bed. What now? Even snuggling is difficult. What is most likely to commence is a long series of attempts to navigate the small mattress: moving to opposite ends when you want to switch things up, saying silent prayers that your mattress pad won’t slip off and send you or your partner’s head into a desk.
Ouch.

“It’s impossible. It just doesn’t happen,” said Cole, a freshman from down the hall.
“Its good birth control, I guess, but it’s never very good on the bed. I normally have to move to the floor.”

So, if you are planning to hook up in your dorm, accept that the experience will be mediocre at best.
At least for a while.

And forget about spending the night.

Unless you’re a contortionist or both of you are the type of people who fall asleep and wake up in the same position, don’t count on being comfortable enough to sleep.
The beds are hard enough to sleep in alone, let alone with another person.

Perhaps it’s the school’s way of subtly discouraging inter-dorm frivolity.
But in spite of the closed, locked, tied-around-the-handle doors, dorms aren’t exactly the first place where residents mind their business.

If the girl in 216B made-out with the guy in 309A, almost everyone will know within a few hours—whether they care to or not.

In other words, your floor is a condensed version of high school.
On crack.

“Don’t do anything you don’t want your whole dorm to know about,” said Jorgia Stone. “Chances are everyone will find out, and they’ll probably hear a twisted version, rather than the truth.”

And don’t forget, if the person you bring home only lives a few doors down, you’ll see them the morning after.

And every morning after that.
Your hook-up could potentially end up being more awkward than trying to bust out your fancy moves on a 39-by-80 inch mattress.

But even with all these restrictions, students find a way to make it happen.
Everyone knows this, of course, because those metal frames aren’t exactly quiet when they start hitting the wall.

Anyway, good luck to all those brave enough to tackle the confines of dorm life.

And, please, try not to get hurt.