Ah, college life.
For most students pursuing higher education, college is their first experience living with a peer on a regular basis. It can be exciting and often times yields life-long friendships. It can also be terrifying and leave you scarred for life. No matter the situation, you’re sharing a room at the most experimental and life-altering time of your young lives. That means you’re going to have to deal with each other everyday while you both go through the bests and worsts of adjusting to college life. But more importantly, living together in college means that you’ll have to interact with each others’ sexual bests and worsts as well because sex requires a bed (usually) and a private space (usually), a college dorm room being the perfect locale. If only these walls could talk, am I right?
Dealing with your own sexual practices, prerogatives, and standards, especially through the changes of college life, is hard enough. But also having to live in the midst of the sexual habits of a whole other person can push you over the edge. What if you’re a virgin and your roommate has made her way through the entire male population of your freshman dorm before classes start? Talk about having an “O-week.” What if you have a boyfriend and your roommate is morally opposed to him staying over? What if you are both nymphomaniacs and cannot agree on a sexiling schedule? Every roommate knows to dread the sudden appearance of a “good friend” of the opposite sex hanging around the room more than usual. Every roommate can smell the pheromones wafting from the late night are you in the room? text. Every roommate should run and hide if strange animal noises can be heard upon reaching their front door. Welcome home girls and boys. You are sexiled. And it sucks.
Unlike our periods, which automatically sync when we co-habit with another woman, sexual preferences and morals aren’t as technologically advanced or precise. Everyone is at their own personal levels of sexual experience when they enter college and go through a number of changes throughout the next four years. What will remain the same are the horror stories, the embarrassment, and the lessons learned from having a sex life while also having a roommate. Three’s company, sometimes four, maybe five if you’re adventurous, can definitely impact the college experience for the better and the worse. So here are a few tips on how to deal.
For the sexilers:
Way to go. I’m proud of you. If you’re sexiling on a regular basis, even better. There is something SO FREAKING HOT about the build up that is required to sexile. There’s the adrenaline rush you get from texting your roommate to ask for the room, anxiety until she luckily responds yes or is obliged to scram, agonizing excitement as you lock the door behind your partner’s arrival. Then you both strip off your clothes, eagerly hop into the sack and pray that no one hears the bed continuously thumping against the wall for 20 minutes. (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re making the sexiling worth your roommate’s precious time). Amazing. Sexile away…in moderation. Make sure that if you’re so popular you’re sexiling your roommate more than once a week that you get her a gift, a peace offering. Take her out to dinner because I’m sure after having to sleep outside or in Perkins for a couple nights a week, one good meal that isn’t The Loop will help her regroup. Splice the time you spend at your dorm room with the time you spend at your partner’s; that way you purposefully and strategically annoy only one person at only certain times. This will give each respective roommate a chance to relax every once in a while. She’ll thank you for being generous. Explore other areas of campus. Have sex in the gardens or in the stacks. And if you have to do it, if you just have to, you horndog you, then at least buy enough breakfast to feed your sleep deprived, suicidal roommate as well. She’ll appreciate it. And once she’s fed and off to the library to do the work she didn’t finish because she was too exhausted from listening to your sex sounds all day and night, you can play sexy time with the leftovers. Yum syrup. And if your roommate decides that things aren’t working out and one night kicks both you and your sorry naked play toy out of the room in an unfounded rage or decides that you really can never be friends again just tell yourself that she’s just jealous. And don’t worry about finding clothes, obviously enough people have seen you naked to be used to it.
To the sexiled:
I’m sorry you don’t have anyone to touch you inappropriately and distract you from your studies. I’m sorry that you are going to lose your roommate’s friendship and attention. Man up. Get some earplugs if they’re loud. Find a friend that will let you crash in their room sometimes. And please, on those nights when it’s the three of you in the same room and the lights are out, don’t let it go so far that after you yell at them for smashing while you’re in the room, you have to also admit awkwardly that you have been listening to them smashing for the past 20 minutes without complaint. Awkward. (Again, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are doing real serious work and not wasting your PRECIOUS TIME).
On the bright side, you’ll probably get pity gifts and you’ll have something to hold over your roommate’s head forever. Girls love that. You’ll also be in the position of power. You can forget to answer the courtesy pre-sexile text and leave your roommate and her lover in agonizing #sexualfrustration and confusion. You can even just outright say no. Girls love that too. If you have to listen to them from the other room, from outside the door, or from anywhere in the building if they’re rowdy, get rowdy yourself and encourage them with a loud and proud “GET SOME!” Feel free to mock them. It will pull them out of their sexual trance and make them feel as uncomfortable as you. Even better, when they leave together it’ll be like you have a single all to yourself. Watching your roommate get all this swag will encourage you to go get some swag of your own. At Duke we’re competitive, and as women we are competitive so it only makes sense that being sexiled would drive us to sexile in return. Maybe your roommate is sincerely just trying to catalyze your sex life…or she just really likes hers, but focus on the former!
Whether you’re sexiled or sexiling, sex-deprived or celibate, hopping on the disco stick whenever you can or waiting for someone special, interacting with different takes on sexual experience is a part of college life. It can be eye opening, in good and bad ways. Be open-minded and considerate but don’t stop having sex. These walls will always want your stories.
Photo Source: http://blog.lp33.tv/kikers-cuts/underground/music-is-good-if-you-happen-to-be-sexiled