Nearing the commencement of her fourth year in college, Eve has learned quite a few things about sex. Eve, The Hatchet’s anonymous sex columnist, will share her observations and (sometimes dirty) thoughts about sex at GW with the population that fuels her fire.
Editor’s note: names have been changed to protect the naughty.
A friend of mine asked me a question last week so important that I felt it was my moral and sexual duty to answer it publicly. It was a frigid night. We were walking home together from a meeting. Our breath steamed and blended in the frozen air. He told a bad joke. I laughed anyway. My fingers felt like icicles in my mittens. All I wanted to do was go home.
And then, when we got to my building, he stopped me from going inside. He looked at me with big, deep, serious eyes. His nose twitched a little bit. He asked me to wait. He told me he had something important to ask. Something only I would know the answer to.
“What could be so important,” I asked him, “that you could possibly ask me to stand in this cold for another moment?”
He shrugged, looking down at his feet. I worried that he needed to ask me about my parents’ divorce because his were getting one, or that he wanted me to help him kill someone. This friend and I are not all that close, though we enjoy each other, and were growing ever closer . until he finally asked me his critical question:
“Um, like, I guess,” he stammered. “I was just wondering, like.”
I did not realize that I was holding my breath, as much from the cold as anticipation. Here it comes, I thought. He wants me to steal a car and give him money to run away to Mexico because he murdered his roommate. He wants to know how I feel about buzz topics like abortion, gay rights and capital punishment. He wants .
“You know, if you wanted to have sex with me tonight.”
. to have sex??? Say WHAT?
There are approximately 22,000 reasons why this question was absolutely ridiculous, not the least of which being that this “friend” of mine knows my boyfriend Pink quite well. He and I have never been romantic before, he’s short, sometimes he has food in his teeth, oh and did I mention that he knows Pink? Pink, whose red-hot libido comes second only to his curse-and-hit-walls temper?
I sort of gaped at my friend (who, as you can see, does not merit a pseudonym). My tongue was probably wagging out of my mouth from shock, though it might have looked like lust because he smirked and started to lean into me.
“What are you DOING?” I yelped like someone had just goosed me. Which is sort of what this guy was doing – emotionally gripping my ass with his home-wrecker hands.
He jumped back, eyes wide, the hint of an erection under his khakis. I began to rant at him, screaming about fidelity and brotherhood and how unromantic his proposal was anyway and that now we couldn’t be friends anymore unless we talked this out and why in the hell would he just ask me to have sex with him? I wouldn’t leave Pink, and if I would, there would need to be some candles involved. And bubble bath and maybe diamonds. But asking me on a Thursday night before Grey’s Anatomy when it’s sub-zero outside does not exactly fill my loins with lust.
I must have gone on for a while, because when I stopped I was out of breath and a little warmer. He looked bored.
“Jeez, Eve,” he said finally. “I was just joking.” Then he walked away, hands in his pockets, head hanging down. I felt like a third grader. I wanted to scream “no take-backs” at him, but didn’t have any scream left in me.
And the truth is – how am I ever supposed to know what he really wanted? How am I now supposed to react to his questions and comments with the notion that he might always, ultimately, be joking? Surely, mine is a bland example, but I feel it is vital that we must say what we mean, especially in matters of the heart. It is one thing to be coy and mysterious at the onset of a relationship. It is entirely another to claim jest when you are ashamed of your request.
If you want to try something kinky in bed, just ask. Your partner will either say yes or no, simple as that. And if s/he thinks you’re a freak, well then you shouldn’t be sleeping together anyway. Our deepest desires are as much who we are as our visible qualities. And if you want to be together, just say it! Do not put up mopey away messages or poke him/her on Facebook or text only when you’re drunk. Just say, hey, this could work.
If the object of your affection doesn’t feel the same, don’t respond that you were kidding. Because then, somewhere down the road, when the feelings are reciprocated, your lost lover will remember that you were only joking when you said you wanted to be together.
