The Nostalgia Shall Be Visited Upon The Freshmen

by Blue­Balls

Octo­ber 2009

Around this time of year, Blue­Balls gets a lit­tle nos­tal­gic. And nos­tal­gia, as always, shall be vis­ited upon the fresh­men. Most rela­tion­ship advice to frosh takes the form of know­ing grins about long-distance high school rela­tion­ships. (The litany: a mid-October drunken Yale fum­ble, a tear­ful recrim­i­na­tion over Thanks­giv­ing break, accom­pa­nied by break-up and make-up sex, fol­lowed by the inevitable hurt­ful breakup over Christ­mas. Don’t worry, kids, your rela­tion­ship will be different.)

Blue­Balls’ thoughts, though, are not with those 2013 kids who have promised to call their girl­friends every night, but with their oppo­sites. The ones who never had a lover in high school because they were too geeky, too queer, had too con­ser­v­a­tive a fam­ily or were sim­ply work­ing too bloody hard. Or the ones who dated, but never found some­one who was as smart, as ambi­tious, as funny or as expe­ri­enced as they would like. The ones, in short, who hope that Yale will solve all their roman­tic problems.

Many of these will be hop­ing that soon after ori­en­ta­tion their eyes will lock across a desk in Ster­ling Memo­r­ial with some sweet young thing in argyle – or their hips will lock at Toad’s with an older, expe­ri­enced, mostly-naked temp­ta­tion – and that from there the rela­tion­ship will be solid, the sex will be won­der­ful, and the pil­low talk will be eru­dite. This is a bit like the myth­i­cal kid down the hall who has always wanted to be a pedi­a­tri­cian in Eritrea, and so takes Chem and Bio and Ara­bic and Ital­ian and Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics and Health Pol­icy and grad­u­ates straight into med school and a ful­fill­ing career with Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. But for most peo­ple, Yale isn’t like that.

Instead, it’s a bit more like tak­ing, lov­ing, and becom­ing dis­il­lu­sioned with Directed Stud­ies, turn­ing sopho­more year to Physics, real­iz­ing that you never could stand equa­tions, then tak­ing up medieval French poetry and real­iz­ing that you’re not very good at it but love it enough to give up your dreams of Phi Beta Kappa. When explain­ing your Yale career to grad school, you’ll tell a story of a com­mit­ted human­ist with diverse inter­ests who was care­ful to ground her main inter­est in a broader knowl­edge of the West­ern Canon. But while you’re in what feels like a mess, fig­ur­ing out what you like and what you’re good at and what’s worth your time and what isn’t, you’ll feel like you have no idea what you’re doing. Wel­come to sex and rela­tion­ships at Yale.

At least in the aca­d­e­mic realm, most Yalies believe that their willpower and their brains will let them accom­plish what they want, if they can fig­ure out what that is. Admis­sion to Yale, how­ever, requires no high score in empa­thy or sex­ual abil­ity; besides, sex and rela­tion­ships require that risky, unpre­dictable ele­ment of other people.

But Blue­Balls, from behind a haze of smoke and cyn­i­cism and regret, advises you young ‘uns to have fun. Embrace the fact that you will make mis­takes and get hurt and look back on your con­duct and not recog­nise your­self: drink too much before that first date because it is not only your first din­ner with that new guy but also your First Date Ever, dress up in some­thing stu­pid for Fresh­man Screw, do some­thing that would shock your friends from school and cause your mother to faint. Just carry con­doms, take advan­tage of Yale’s free, con­fi­den­tial STI test­ing, and be ready to hold your friends when they get their hearts bro­ken. And those of you in high-school rela­tion­ships, bear this all in mind: you’ll need it after Christmas.

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Blue­Balls would like your ques­tions. Like her heroes, she plans 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.