Church, early on Thanksgiving morning. I close my eyes to pray but the picture that flashes before my eyes is Him on top of me, kissing me. I’m not talking about Jesus, of course, and it’s not my imagination. “If love is a sin, I’m a sinner,” I comfort myself (with the lines of a song I had never heard) proudly as I whisper, “Amen.” I am thankful to remember last night precisely: our voices, the silence, the tension between our bodies, reading a book in bed together. No hangover, no doubt that it happened, no regret whatso- ever.
Hooking up is so big in college that peo- ple have come so far as to call it a “culture.” Students are so busy, stressed and dedicated to succeed in the real world that hook-ups come in handy, within the strict time-frame of Saturday nights and with the helpful as- sistance of lots and lots of alcohol. Yet, what does it do for us? What are the needs we try to satisfy as we dress up, go partying, get drunk and take someone to bed? Is it about inti- macy, or being with someone, or even simply receiving pleasure? And do we ever get what we want?
“Waking up on a Sunday morning is heavy-duty,” my friend tells me as we sit to have brunch together later that day. Coming to terms with last night’s outcomes must be, indeed, hard to swallow — no matter how nu- anced our degree of mastery. With the ecstasy of being young, drunk and alive after yet an- other week of Middlebury academics comes the natural need to perform in yet another discipline — sex. Yet, how do we prove we are the high-achievers we know ourselves to be?
We drink. We drink to relax ourselves, to be excited and to be excused. Drunkenness is the socially accepted apology for the lack of erection, for the abandonment of restrictions and the temporary display of amnesia when you meet your late-night companion in the dining hall the following morning. Drinking is the confidence booster we need to silence our fear that we aren’t good enough, or in- teresting enough, or sexy enough, so that we go on stealing sex from each other uninter- rupted by reality. We steal what we can steal, afraid we won’t be given anything otherwise. And it’s all good until you realize you can do better than that.
But the sober seduction is the ultimate one. There is power in vulnerability and beauty in the creation of proximity, be it even for a night. The more present I am, the more aroused. Only presence in the given moment provides passion with existence, because it exists solely here and now, and only then forever. Reduced to its mechanics, sex offers no pleasure. Eroticism is conceived by the consent and fullest participation of everyone involved in the sexual act. In the exchange of value we call “sex,” why do we rob each other of any meaning?
As I looked at the glowing stars stuck on the ceiling of my college dorm, lying sleepless in his arms, I asked myself why the need to forget. “Life is short” — everyone claims as a justification of everything we do in attempt to bring ourselves what we want, which most often results in the exact opposite of it. Yet if life is short, why not live it to remember it? Should the affairs we remember be only the academic ones? Do we have anything to feel good about once we put our clothes back on?
We all know that sex is no more a mere instrument to reproduction. But while we are among the luckiest people ever lived on the Earth to be able to create togetherness through sex without too much fear of un- wanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases (if we are smart about it, of course!), we run away from truly being with each other if we are afraid of its implications. As we con- front our guilty consciousness after another naughty Saturday has passed, we have to ac- cept that the most obvious consequences of our wasted hook-ups are the missed oppor- tunities. If not for “true love,” then at least for human connection and warmth. And as we dare to open up and be with each other un- masked, naked and sober, we might find that someone would want to stay around not only for the night, but even after.
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