I immediately sympathized with the parents of heterosexual women at Dartmouth when I read, "It's not often that students attempt to cover model penises with condoms while wearing drunk-simulation goggles," in The Dartmouth ("Center for Women hosts Sex Festival," Feb. 13). Your little princess is all grown up, and she may have become a promiscuous drunk. But don't worry, she'll be able to wield a condom skillfully now: "Look Pa, no hands!"
I stood in a room of fetal red ambience, my ears teeming with the lewd titterings of peers and the crinkles of condom wrappers, as I held in my increasingly sweaty palm a mechanical rotating penis of excessive and hilarious girth.
While I listened to the benefits of "The Dolphin" (clitoral stimulation has trumped Flipper's mammalian legacy), the absurdity of the situation really hit me. Collis Common Ground, recently a venue for a Homecoming reception held by College President James Wright and his wife, was now the home to Sex Fest. I assumed, however, that widespread distribution of prostate stimulators was not a presidential initiative.
Sure, students should feel comfortable with their sexuality, but how far should it go? I felt increasingly less evolved and increasingly more Caligulan as I walked past the several booths: Was I simply a perverse being, bent on the fulfillment of my Freudian fantasies? Did my fondness for the chocolate Vulva Pops betray my intellectual pursuits as a cover for my phallicist agenda?
I decided that it did not. After some more perusing, I also decided that perhaps a little self-discovery was all right. And no, I don't mean in the physical sense.
It's quite an interesting proposition, that everyone has some sexual drive, whether it be for a four-cylinder import or a V12 Ford with a hemi roaring underneath the hood. And it's even more interesting to try to reconcile that when talking to someone you know, or watching a professor give a lecture.
To think "if he could, he'd probably be screwing someone on the table instead of talking to me about particle physics" is a novel and often disturbing thought process. I think a secondary goal of Sex Fest, other than simple education, was to declare human sexuality as a public good.
While it may have been surreal to see peers who had earlier that day been discussing Nietzsche now sword fighting with penis sleeves and dildos, I think it made me feel that my own sexuality was not overzealous or feeble. When we get down to the basics of societal living, we'll always need sex, food and water. And while food and water are shamelessly consumed, there seems to be a public guilt for something that's necessary and feels good. Perhaps we should look at sex like a steak. Sometimes a good one is hard to find, it's expensive, and some people like it raw, which can give you diseases.
If we refine our geographical maps, we'll notice that the deprived Third-World citizens of the sexual world seem to participate in a lot of role playing games and Nintendo 64 -- lots and lots of Nintendo.
In the article, Xenia Markowitt, the director of the Center for Women and Gender Studies, said, "We couldn't believe that Dartmouth students are so smart but know so little about sex." I'm not really surprised. Nerd reproduction must be performed through binary fission or budding, because I've never heard of one getting laid. Clearly our intelligent campus is under-sexed, or maybe that's just the freshman boy in me talking. An idea ... maybe we should all be a little more sex-friendly. No, I'm not trying to get into your pants. But it would be fulfilling a social need, wouldn't it? Don't you want people to think you're sociable? In honor of Sex Fest and my aforementioned food analogy, have your sex, Dartmouth, and eat it too.
