One time during my sophomore year, as I was sitting in the Hop with my friends, an older guy in my fraternity came up and congratulated me for hooking up with a girl the night before. I felt my stomach clench as chuckles went around the table, and I don't think it was just my hangover or the undercooked Billy Bob on my plate. I pushed out a smirk and kept eating.
Though I never would have admitted it, I felt horrible about the night before. The jarring, sudden overexposure of the encounter had left me feeling empty and shallow. It made me realize that sex, which is supposed to be an amazing, energetic experience, had become incredibly stressful and consistently left me feeling detached from myself and others. Yet here I was at the breakfast table, laughing it off with a group of friends.
I don't think this is unusual for guys. We're raised amid bizarre contradictions about male sexuality, and the easiest way to deal with it all is by turning it into a big joke. For young men, having sex is considered a great accomplishment, but we're also told that our sexual impulse is inherently dangerous and out of control. It has to be managed, repressed and contained, as if it's some beast that could attack at any moment.
After two years at Dartmouth I found myself locked in a cycle of hooking up, feeling bad, deciding not to do it again for a long time and then eventually relenting. You can only deny your urges for so long, I figured. Plus, I was young, and it seemed to me that casual sex is just part of being a normal young person.
My roommate at the time was still with his high school girlfriend. He was the one person with whom I spoke honestly about my dissatisfaction. I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but I never considered that maybe it was this normative lifestyle I'd adopted that was making me so unhappy. When he asked me why I kept doing this to myself, I had no response.
Looking back, it seems pretty obvious to me what I should have done. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But I can't say I'm all that surprised about it, because I think my failure to recognize what was going on is part of a larger blind spot we have at Dartmouth and in our society in general.
I thought my sexuality as a man was uncomplicated and self-evident. It seemed so simple, and my physical pleasure so straightforward, so I couldn't imagine that there were larger forces at play. Whether or not we admit it, sexuality is deeply interwoven with our experiences and emotions. In other words, it's beyond our rational control.
At Dartmouth, we drink a lot. We hook up with random people. We work hard and play hard. For a while, thinking like this made me feel strong. Which, looking back, is kind of sad I was denying the complexity that makes me a human being, that makes me a man, just so I wouldn't have to deal with uncertainty.
Apparently the hook-up scene works for a lot of people. As for myself, I'm happy I got out. I don't think we can really come to a conclusion about whether the hook-up scene is right or wrong. But if we hope to find lasting relationships in the future, if we hope to have families, that might take some more thoughtful consideration about sex than going from one partner to the next just to quell the fire in our loins for the timebeing. We all especially we men need to take a step back and acknowledge that this can't be reduced to a round of good jokes. There's a lot more at stake than we're willing to admit.
