Sex and the Street: An Introduction

Who am I? I’m just an ordinary girl with an extraordinary preoccupation with sex. I’m not Sexpert, and I’m no Carrie Bradshaw – or even a Lena Chen. I’m a Princeton student who loves talking about sex. I’m notorious amongst my friends for “always bringing up tits,” and I’m the girl who “always has her mind in the gutter.” I’m a straight girl who thinks it’s fun to kiss another girl every once in a while. I masturbate (in fact, I have two vibrators, and hopefully a new one soon), and I’ve even been known to watch a porno or two. I’m not ashamed of my sexuality, and I display it whenever possible: through my clothes, my words, my movement. I’m not a slut. In fact, I’m not even single. I don’t know everything about sex, though I’d love to say I did. I’m not a nymphomaniac, despite evidence to the contrary. I’m a Prude Gone Wild.

I wanted to write this blog because I feel that sex is an important part of our lives. Whether you’re having sex, hoping for sex, or even trying not to have sex, it’s something we all think about, and yet many of us feel terribly uncomfortable discussing sex and sexual politics in any real, honest way. If there’s anything a person should be comfortable with, it’s talking about sex and sexuality, because it’s so fundamental to social life, especially in college. Americans are so uptight when it comes to sex, and yet we have the highest rate of unwanted teen pregnancy in the developed world. Clearly something is not working. It’s time to stop focusing on how to stop people from having sex and start facing reality: sex happens. It happens in relationships, out of relationships, in triangles, in squares…everywhere. As a young woman (or really, young person), I find it so hard to find any non-clichéd and realistic information about sex and relationships as they actually occur. This blog is my attempt to fill that void on campus.

That being said, it seems only logical to start from the beginning….

I love premarital sex. It sounds so naughty with that extra “premarital” in there, doesn’t it? Sex is not something that you just DO and it’s amazing. I remember, if only vaguely, losing my virginity sophomore year. Well, I could actually tell you the exact date and time (September 30^th, 3:05 pm), as my ex Adam* vowed to keep this information fresh in his mind at all times, even once writing it on the outside of a Valentine’s Day gift as wrapping paper decoration. I expected it to hurt, and it did. I didn’t expect to be so sad afterward. It wasn’t because I had been expecting to enjoy it, or because it hurt, or even that I’d done it with the wrong person. I was sad because a large portion of my life previously had been defined by my virginity. I used my virginity as a way to assure people that I wasn’t a slut. I used it as a moral stepping stone over whoever I was talking to. “Oh, you’re a virgin too? Well, I’ve never hooked up with a guy I’d just met out at the Street.” I, like the rest of society, placed this magical value on virginity, of being unpenetrated, of being unsullied. I rolled away from Adam and remained silent. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I don’t know….” I replied.

I’d spent so much time being a virgin, so much time talking about sex incessantly and claiming to be so sexually open and yet, still maintaining some higher, holier-than-thou sense of purity that really only functioned to attract men more. I felt as if my title, my social status, one of the key lenses through which I saw myself had been taken away from me in a matter of minutes, and there was no going back. I could no longer say, “yes, but, I’ve never had sex” again, and for some reason that bothered me. Sound like a depressing account of a girl who’s had sex too soon? Absolutely not. Any change that occurs in life, good or bad, can send you into a tailspin. Questions of identity are bound to arise, and that’s hard to deal with, if even for a moment. I did lose something that afternoon, but it’s not something I want back. For so long, I thought that sex, or rather, not having sex was so important, and coming out on the other side, I realized, it wasn’t nearly as dear to me as I once believed. I made the mistake of defining myself as A Virgin instead of just adding it to the list of the many temporary parts of my identity.

Feeding into society’s hypocritical hype about casual sex and meaningful sex, the emotional damage it can do and the pleasure it can bring, I expected WAY too much from the experience. My thought afterward was, “That’s it? This is what people have been agonizing over and arguing about for centuries?” I could only imagine my disappointment on my honeymoon night, dressed in Victoria’s Secret’s brightest and whitest, full of rehearsed clichés (“I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long…”), so excited to “give myself” to my new husband, only to find out that he’s awful in bed, and it’s not the magical union I was told it would be. Of course I want the sex on my wedding night to be special. I’ve been told that it should be for all my life. I also want it to be good, and let’s be honest, first time sex is often uncomfortable at best. You wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it, and cars rarely make it through a decade, why the hell wouldn’t you test-fuck your possible life partner?

It should be clear by now that I think of this blog as a way to (hopefully) serve the open-minded and curious (regardless of personal experiece) of Princeton, and of course in ways, battle with those who spread the lie that by choosing to do what I want with my body, I am immoral, disrespecting myself, disrespecting my future husband, or ruining my ability to truly love someone. In (brief) response, I have this to say:

Sex won’t make someone love you or not love you. Not having sex won’t make your relationship truer or longer lasting. Not having sex won’t equalize the feelings a couple has for each other. A couple’s connection, chemistry, and common interests will. I do think that sex is special, and I don’t have it with any and every guy I’m attracted to. Every man is different, every connection is different, sex and sexual acts are new and different with every partner. I don’t feel as if I’m spoiling my future husband’s special physical connection to me by having sex now, because I know that with him, it’ll be unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I’ll know this because I’ll have slept with him beforehand.

*Name has been changed