A User’s Guide

by BLUEBALLS

April 2009

Why a sex col­umn? By now, the nov­elty of know­ing that Ivy League kids have sex is wear­ing thin. We have “Rum­pus­Rum­pus” for sala­cious sto­ries and the occa­sion­ally nec­es­sary pub­lic sham­ing. And we’re Yalies, right? We got into a uni­ver­sity with an accep­tance rate of under 10%. Surely desire, sex­ual ethics, body image, gen­der rela­tions and plain old inse­cu­rity are eas­ier to fig­ure out than cell bio or Chi­nese poetry. Right?

Right?

Sure doesn’t look that way on a Sat­ur­day night.

Blue­Balls has a few assump­tions about Yalies. That many of us are more com­fort­able in the library Sun­day evening than in bed Sat­ur­day night. That lots of us are per­fec­tion­ists, and that sex isn’t a good place to indulge our neu­roses but we do it any­way. That we fear fail­ure. That we drink to try and hide all that. That a lot of us haven’t really got­ten over high school.

(Blue­Balls would like to insure her­self against a tor­rent of defen­sive emails by point­ing out that she isn’t talk­ing about you. She’s sure you’re a sex­ual dynamo. The kids in the next entry­way, though? Not so much.)

And that’s OK. We’re still young, and just because we started char­i­ties or set records or invented life-saving drugs doesn’t mean that sex and rela­tion­ships will come any eas­ier. Blue­Balls is here to help. Or at least to empathise. Or at least to make you feel that things could be worse.

And for a cam­pus full of smart peo­ple where con­ver­sa­tion about sex fre­quently stops at “She did WHAT?” Blue­Balls thinks that we could – and shall, friends, and shall – do bet­ter. We plan to address some cru­cial ques­tions: does the ‘slut’ exist and how is it iden­ti­fied? Why do girls go to frat par­ties? What is it about cun­nilin­gus? Is ped­a­gogy nec­es­sar­ily erotic? Even with my Cal­cu­lus TA? Why does ‘Just tell him what you want’ remain such fre­quent advice given its clear use­less­ness? If you have answers, ques­tions, illus­tra­tive or amus­ing anec­dotes, send them this way.

And about those anec­dotes. This blog is anony­mous. Or rather, pseu­do­ny­mous. This is mostly because Blue­Balls expects to lean heav­ily on her expe­ri­ence and that of her friends, and is not sure that law schools, invest­ment banks or starv­ing orphans appre­ci­ate know­ing about their admit­tees, asso­ciates or aid work­ers’ orgasms. Or their adven­tures with STD test­ing at DUH, their dis­cov­ery of how to sleep two to a Yale bed or their con­fu­sion about how to be a sane fem­i­nist hav­ing casual sex. Blue­Balls would like to live in a world where this doesn’t mat­ter, but knows that she doesn’t.

Any­way, now that you’ve got your bear­ings, watch this space. Com­ing up, my sex life, your sex life, your friends’ sex lives. Enjoy.

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(For those of you who are curi­ous, Blue­Balls is a vaguely queer female Yale stu­dent in the human­i­ties. She has a long back­ground in sex edu­ca­tion and sex activism, but has always got­ten less sex than she feels she deserves.)

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Blue­Balls would like your ques­tions. Like my heroes, I plan on giv­ing opin­ion­ated, vul­gar, and occa­sion­ally help­ful advice every so often. If you have ques­tions (or anecdotes/opinions/criticisms), send ‘em on over to broadblueballs@gmail.com. All iden­ti­fy­ing every­things will be erased.