Volume 30 - Issue 4 by The New Journal at Yale

TheNewJournal J>uBUSKEil

Dan Murphy EDITOR-IN-CKIEP

Gabriel Snydn MANAGING EDITORS

Akc Hanky Bemis, !Vtvita Mariwa/Ja BusiNESS MANAGER

justin Sac/a PRoDucnoN MANAGER Lain~ Rut/row PKOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Asa Piyalur

AssOCIATE PuBUSHER

Cathmm 0/mtkr

REsEARCH. DIRECTORS

VantJSaAgard-]onts,

Dori~ &ufitks

CIRCULATION AND SUBSCRJP110N MANAGER DaphnaR~n CoNTRIBUTING EDITOR DanaG~ar

Suff Loren Brody • Jess Cham~gn~· • Jo Coakley J:uon D'Cruz • Jesse Dillon• • Jay Oi~it Michael G~rber • Sar• Hark.1vy • Dan K~llum Monia Kim • Eli Kintisch • Julia Lee • Navin Manglani Yuki Noguch; • David Slifka • G~n~i~e Taft Lee Wang" • Jessica Winter" • Andrew Youn

"tlrcuJ ruuffFtbnury/6, 1998

Mnrlbm uJ O.TtNWJ Emily B.zdoo • Consan« Oemmt • Peter B. Coopu Tom G~ • Brooks Kdley • Halbry Margoli• Henry Schwab • Elizabedl S~ • Frc.d Strcbeigh Thoaw Smmg

Advum Blow • Jay Carney • R;chard Conniff Ruth Conniff • Ellsba Cooper • Lauren Rabin St~ Weisman • Qanj~l Y~n Rj~rd

Fnmt/s • Anson M. Beard. Jr • BWrc Bennett Edward B. Bennett, Jr. • EdwardS Bennett Ill Paul S. 8enom • Gc:rald Bruck • 8arbon Burrdl Jay Carney • Joob Gvin • Jonathan M. Oark Corutat~« Clemen • Ellsba Coopu • Peter B. Coopu Andy Coutt • Jerry and RK Coun • Meoi Oeniton Mrs. Howard Fox • Dmd Freeman • Gcolfrey Fried Sherwin Goldman • David Gr«nber& St~en Hdlman • Brooks Kelley • Rogtr ~rwood Andrew J. Kuzneslci, Jr. • t..n.U E. Lduman • Jam Lowe E. Nobles Lowe • Hank Maauback • Manha E. Neil Pectr Neill • Scan O'Britn • Jul"' Pcttrs Lewis and Joan Platt • Josh Plaut • Julia Preston Lauren Rabin • Fairfu C. Randal • Rollin R;ggs Marl< R;ndla • Nicholas X. Rnopoulos • S=n ROhrer Arl«n and Arthur Sagtr • Dick and Ocbba< X.,. Richard Sbidds • W. fum_P.tOn Sides • lasa Si'-man Elizabeth and W'tlli.am ~ • Thomu Snoog Elizabeth Tar< • Ala and B<ay Tordlo Allen and Sarah Wanldl Danid Ycrgin and A.np St<nt Yapn Sc~ Ballou

THE NEw JouRNAL

, J!___ TheN·. e,~VV~ j[~u_rna__l_vo-LUME-30

FEBRUARYN-UMB-ER 13, 1998 4___,;,...

F E A T U R E S- - - -- - - - : - - - - --

7 IO

A Brief History of Sex at Yale · From chaperones andprommades to co-education and safe sex workshops, a tkcak-by-tkcade look back. BY jESS CHAMPAGNE

and D AVID

SLIFKA

The Numbers on the Naughty and the Nice We passed out questionnaires polling the sexual habits of Yale students and the numbers are in. BY }ESSE D ILLON AND ERIKA F RICKE

p. 7

When Safe Isn' t Safe Enough The morning after pill is there when contraception foils, but loneliness and depression take over. BY U INIE R UTKOW

Digital Liaisons In cybersex, the lure oflogging on to get offproves dubious. BY }ESSICA WINTER

p. 12

Sex and the Asian American Male Living with stereotypes ofAsian men, Yale students fight to create their own form ofmachismo. BY SAMITA SINHA

Photo Essay BY MA.LERIE MARDER

HIV in the Ivies? A search for HIV at Yale reveals that the reality ofthe disease on campus has yet to folly hit home. BY Eu I<INTISCH

An Intimate Question of Faith When religion and hormones conflict, making the right choice isn't as easy as it seems. BY CATHERINE OLENDER

p. 18

p. 34

Bookish Days, Boogie Nights

He Said, She Said: Conversations Among Friends

Spend an evening at a New Haven strip club, but ®n 't expect to be more than just a face in the crowd. BY ALEc HANLEY BEMIS

The candid dialogues which go on when the opposite sex isn't around. BY I<AVITA MARlwALLA AND AsA P IYAKA

T A N D A R D S _____________________ 4

From Our Persp ective

5 6

Points of D eparture About This Issue

Between the Vines: 0 , What a Tangled Web ... BY DAN KELLUM.

T he C ritical Angle: Nerve Magazine BY GABRIEL SNYDER.

Endno te: The Write Stuff BY ]ASON D 'CRUZ.

THE NEW jOURNAL is published fiv< times during the ocadtmic yeor by The New joumalot Yole, Inc., P.O. Box HJ1 Yol< Sation, New Hoven, CT o6510. Office oddress: 151 Park Street. Phone: (10J1 4J1·19S7· All cont<ncs copyright 1998 by The New journol or Yal<, Inc. All Righcs Reserved. Reproduction <irbtr in whole or in pon without wrinen permission of the pubUJh<r and ediror in cbief is prohibited. While <his mag:az.ine is published by Yole Collcg• srudents, Yol• Universil}' is not resporuible for ics conttnts. Ten <housond copies of acb issue are distribured free to members of th< Yol• and New Haven community. Subscriptions are ovoibble to <hoso ourside the ora. Rues: On• yar, SJ8. Two yeors, SJO. THE NEW jOURNAL is printed by Turley Publications, Polmer, MA; bookkeeping and biUing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Hoven. TH£ NEW jOURNAL encouroges l<tters ro rbe ediror and commenl'S on Yole ond New Hov<n issues. Write to Editoriols, HJ1 Yole Sation, New Hov<n, CT o6510. All lenen for pubUcarion musr include oddress and signorure. We reserve the righr to edit allleners for pubUcotion.

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What's in a Name?

The Daily was right, then, to make many of the details public. It's curious, though, that On November 20, 1997 a female Yale stuthe paper chose to exclude the names of the dent filed a police report alleging that two accused in their initial story. No matter how Yale juniors had sexually assaulted her. The unintentionally, the Daily gives the impresmatter remained private until two weeks ago, sion that they suspect the woman's police when the Yak Daily News ran a story head- " statement is a lie. If this were the case, the edilined "Two Yale Juniors Investigated for Sexutors should never have run the story. al Assault." The Daily included many of the On the other hand, one can conclude that the Daily was assuming the worst of its readdetails alleged in the police report. But, despite the fact that the accused students, ers. The Daily's choice reflects their percepwere identified in the police report, the Daily tion that the presumption of innocence does chose not to include their names. not apply at Yale. Who can say that wouldn't be pointed at as they Sex crimes are, by their attempt to walk to class? Once nature, private. And, unfortheir names become public, tunately, sex crimes also mak~ for great news copy. . there would be no ~es When faced with the choice that the allegations. ~o.Uld not affect the way a TA between running the third installment of an eight-part series might grade work or the on the development of the Broadway a professor might write a recommendation. But, if the way strip and the report of a sexual Daily wanted to run this story at all,-this assault case, it's easy to understand a tormented Daily News editor's decision. But was a chance they had to take. Reporting all the allegations in the victim's statement, since newspapers are in the business of reporting facts not rumors, that decision, we hope, except the names, insults the reasoning abiliincluded a basic journalistic judgment ca1l on ties of all the Dailjs readers by suggesting that we cannot tell the difference between allegawhether the source-the police statement of tions and convictions. the alleged victim-was credible or not. No matter what the conclusion on that It also reeks of the worst kind of old-boy collegiality. The unspoken unity of Yale stucount, the Dailjs decision to report on the dents can have positive effects. To a large alleged sexual assault transformed one extent, Yale students look out for each other, woman's personal narrative into a public matboth before and after graduation. When Yale ter. Rumors of an assault had been percolating students work together they can accomplish through the campus hearsay networks for the wonderful things. But this camaraderie can last two months, but the particulars of the case, as they were reported in the Daily, are also be a destructive force when the urge to protect one's own means that important infornow debated and discussed more widely mation gets concealed. If the Daily editors throughout the Yale community, a communitruly believed that there's a good chance a ty that includes both the victim and the two crime occurred (whether or not the statement alleged assailants. There is good reason for gives all the facts), why protect the alleged concern. In the co-educational context of Yale, few crimes could be more serious. The attackers from the burden of public scrutiny? At this point all these questions are acadunisex settings at Yale, from our co-ed bathemic. Now that the names have become rooms to our seminars, are all predicated on public (thanks to the "Rumors" section of the idea that men and women do not have to Rumpus) the responsibility for presuming fear one another. By violating that trust, an innocence has been passed to the entire comincident of sexual assault threatens the intermunity. Are we better than who the Daily action of ideas and individuals that is the News thinks we are? -The Editors foundation ofYale.

THE

NEW jOURNAL

Talking Dirty "Hook up"-it's a phrase tossed about all the time at Yale, in the <lining hall, during a Sunday night recap of the weekend's escapades, or as a juicy bit of gossip between roommates. Like many people, I rarely heard the term before coming to Yale. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, the expression for any measure of sexual contact was "to go with," as in "Sam and Sue are going with each other upstairs." Yet, after two years at Yale; the noun and verb "hook up" and all its grammatical vanauons have firmly entrenched themselves in my vocabulary. Where <lid this ubiquitous term originate, and what precisely does it mean? A search for "hook up" on the Internet proved fruitless, leading only to sites such as "Hook up Fishing Gear" and the bizarresoun<ling, but apparently unrelated "Hookit's World of Sex." I scanned Sterling's copious ' collection of slang dictionaries and found no definition for "hook up" approximating the usage we here at Yale are so familiar with. One 1993 dictionary of English idioms defined "to hook up" as "to attach something, to install something electrical or mechanical" while another 1995 volume explained that it means "to travel together." The most telling definition I encountered, however, was in the 1997 edition of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. In Australia, "to hook" means "to pick up a romantic partner." The dictionary traced the term back to 19th century Britain, where it meant "to obtain a potential marital partner," and cited the following line from a 1994 episode of a popular Australian television series: "When you hooked Darcy last night, did you sleep with her?" "When I was in junior high," laughs Ryan, an Arizona resident, "any two kids who did anything remotely physical were automatically deemed to be 'going out.'" Midwesterners Anita and Santosh and Southerners Dan and Lanna also used phrases and euphemisms sueh as "make out" or "get together" during their high school days. In a more graphic vein, Ben from Long Beach, California, recalled "get your fuck on" as the term of choice in his

FEBRUARY IJ,

1998

high school. I found exceptions to this general rule, especially among students hailing from nearby geographical areas-Karen from local Branford, Connecticut, and New Yorkers Dan and Eugene were all well-acquainted with the saying before coming to Yale. So what exactly does a "hook up" entail? James, from Virginia says, "''ve been using the phrase since I carne here, and I still don't fully understand what it means. I think the ambiguity of the phrase is why it's so useful." As a way of describing, without getting uncomfortably specific, non-platonic encounters of questionable significance, "hook up" is quite the versatile term. -josephine Coakley

Debunking the Stork My parents never told me about the birds and the bees. Maybe they were too shy, too inhibited, or simply too embarrassed, but for whatever reason, I never got the heart-to-heart about the facts oflife. Instead, when I was 16, after I had already gone through two sex-ed classes, after years and years of hearing wordof-mouth sworn truths about sex, and after four years of religiously reading n1, Seventeen, and Cosmo, my mom opened the corner of her mouth and asked, "Do you know how babies are born?" Not sure ifl should laugh or play innocent, I sat trying to retain my composure and finally answered, as quickly as I could, "Yes, don't worry about it." Others told me about books mysteriously appearing in their rooms, tooth-fairy style, followed by the "come talk to us with any questions" line from their parents. Always having been curious how authors could write about sex for children when most parenrs have so much difficulty even introducing the word into their kids' vocabulary, I went to scope out New Haven's offerings of kiddie sex lit. My favorite find was the bestselling Wher( Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle and illusm..ted by Arthur Robins. With helpful pneumonics such as "vagina (it rhymes with Carolina)" and "penis... (like peanuts without the 't')" peppered

throughout, Where [)id I Come From? seems an obvious classic. Tactfully tackling the difficult topic of sexual intercourse, Mayle proves to be a master of euphemism and circumlocution to make potentially racy terminology suitable for young children. Likening the primal thrusts of sex to "wriggling," the (hopefully) pleasurable friction caused by this wriggling to "tickling" and "itching," and the final throes of ecstasy to "a really big sneeze," Mayle succeeds in describing sex in an accessible and comprehensible way for kids. On the flipside, It's Perfectly Norma4 by Robie H. Harris, goes into specific detail about everything a young child might want to know about sex, and then som5!, all with a liberal, progressive spin. Starting with a thorough discussion ofsex as gender, sex as attraction and desire, and sex as intercourse, this book includes a chapter on heterosexuality and homosexuality early on. Drawings of a bemused boy and a sweet-faced girl explicitly masturbating (separately) accompany the chapter "Perfectly Normal: Masturbation." Some parents may find that their views don't agree with Harris's and some parents may find the book too advanced and detailed for the purpose of telling a child the simple facts oflife. Afrer seeing what sex lit for kids has to offer, I realize that not even a book simplifies the task of debunking the stork myth. Sex, a simple biological act of nature that everybody does, remains highly politicized- less an event than an issue that demands parents arm their children with what they consider the proper ammunition. It seems to me that the birds and the bees, who just do it, have it much easier. -Erica u~

Is a Sex Issue Necessary? "There is an erroneous impression current nowadays that sex is everything.... Sex is by no means everything. It varies, as a matter of fact, from only as high as 78 percent of everything to as low as 3.10 percent. The norm, in a sane, healthy person, should be between 18 and 24 percent." James Thurber and E.B. White

Is Sex Necessary? (1929) We at The New journal are convinced of our own sanity and health. In this issue of TN], however, sex is everything. This is our annual special issue, our chance to examine one subject from many different angles, and what subject could be more deserving of 100 percent of our attention than sex? Sex is wrapped up, literally and figuratively, with issues of our personal identity: race, age, religion, gender, education, and economics. The relevan~ of sex extends across these boundaries. Thurber and White chose their subject 70 years ago because they saw a change in the way society dealt with sex. We chose ours because we saw something timeless in sex. Sex and identity exist together in an odd symbiotic relationship. Sex defines who we are, and who we are defines our notions of sex. In choosing to write about sex we kne~ that we'd be running a gauntlet that many have failed. In essence sex is a private act, so there's something unnatural about any attempt to write about it publicly. Sex writing is notoriously bad (see p. 46) and we wanted to avoid the tendency among writers to get further and further away from the intimacy of sex as they get further and further into writing. Thurber and White confronted this same problem. They discussed the pitfalls that many aspiring sex writeryall into. "We saw, chiefly, that these writers expended their entire emotional energy in their

writin~d never had time for anything else .... They clearly hadn't been out much. They had been home writing; and meanwhile what was sex doing? Not standing still you better believe." Faced with the challenge, then, of seeking out sex in all its forms and metaforms, we adopted the ani tude of Thurber and White. "Our procedure would be to approach sex bravely, and frequently. 'Approach the subject in a lively spirit,' we told ourselves, 'and the writing will take care of itselÂŁ' (It is only fair to say that the writing didn't take care of itself; the writing was a lot of work and gave us the usual pain in the neck while we were doing it.)" We know the pain in the neck that Thurber and White were talking about, but luckily we had the help of the following people in putting this issue together: Annie Barrett, Andrew Cohen,' Erika Fricke, Shmully Hecht, Mihira Jayasekera, Katie Lee, Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, John Schochet, and Nick Yorgakaros. 6

THE NEw JouRNAL

A Brief History of Sex at Yale Jess Champagne and David Slifka

0 TOUR GUIDE HAS EVER IMPRESSED US WITH TALES OF

Old Yale's sexiness. Tradition and heritage are far more genteel candidates. But Yale has been populated by students of a similar age group almost since its founding; and as we are well aware, we're not currently in our quietest days. It takes little time to realize that college without silliness, fun, and the opposite sex has never really existed.

pre-1900

secret societies. A big night out meant going to see vaudeville dancers and later debating the relative merits of the women's physical traits. Stover explored other options, like the luncheons periodically held for Yale students by a friend's family. For Stover, this was the opportunity to court his friend's sister, but the relationship remained chaste. The organized social life of the period was similarly virginal, featuring the junior and senior "promenades" for which a list of the attendants and of the chaperones was printed in the Yak Daily News. The only hints of intimate male-female interactions are in the Yale Literary Magazine, in which Yale men sentimentally described women they loved, lusted after, or imagined.

The phrase "Yale class of 1859" evokes images of elite young men smoking cigars in a musty room. What does not occur to most are the raucous "jubilees" held during this period to celebrate the completion of biennial exams. The tests covered all topics from Latin to geometry to European history. After they were finished, stu1920s dents were ready for some fun, and they more than rose to the chalThe students exhibited some desire to explore the opposite sex, lenge of creating some. but tradition was still staunchly in place and tended to cool matters significantly. Chaperones were The jubilees were loud and joyous celebrations common, both at school dances and on student which involved food, humorous stage acts and tours, such as ones offered to Europe complete singing. At times, the atmosphere could be such with "adequate chaperonage experienced in hanthat it was necessary to prohibi~ students from swinging on the chandeliers. The plays often had dling students." Advertisements in the Yale Daily News exhortcertain sexual and vulgar elements {o them, which ed Yale men to "Say it with flowers" and pay close grew until 1865 when the production was called attention to their dress, lest they be one of the an "indecent farce" by faculty, and the use of "lamentable few" who arrive at the white-tie prom female characters (played by men however) was in a mere tux, much to their "social dismay." More promptly banned in later jubilee shows. Ever casual mingling with the opposite sex would likely resourceful, the students responded the following ~eqUP111S t~ ule&Silft' or take place on the European tour as well, with an year by dressing the "women" in a sort of Turkish your cÂˇco.pany nl its entire ship deck (of the several decks set aside for garb that conveyed the meaning just as well. Per~.\DE t}Os<JERT students) reserved for women's rooms. haps realizing the futility of their position, the fac~aryJ ~ 13(6. Yalies of this decade certainly felt that women ulty soon reversed the ban. Among the celebratory ~,~r-had a defined sphere--one that was outside the songs at the jubilee, we find the song "Say Sisters, classroom. A Yale Daily News editorial rails against Will You Meet Us?" which concludes: Wives of great men all remind us, co-education, predicting "rebellion at an invasion" We must take some lovely "quail,n by women, in part because the "difficulties of concentration, already And departing, leave behind us great, would be dangerously accentuated" by a female presence. Boys to send ro Yale. "Jupiter spare us from co-education," prays the editorial, "and keep the undergraduate schools homosexual."

1900-1920 "No fooling around with women. That'll queer you absolutely," an upperclassman advised Dink Stover, hero of Owen Johnson's Stover at Yale. Having a sexual relationship with a woman doomed the early 20th-century Yale man to banishment from the prestigious

1930s The decade saw a phasing out of the stern and staid customs of yesteryear. Tastes and attitudes began to modernize. Although girls might still spend days "deciding the size, length, 'will it go with the tie Bimbo

always wears' problems," recalls then-Vassar student Faye Fation, Yalies had begun to take a greater interest in a woman's intellect. By the end of the decade, the New Haven Register reported that, "Only a scant handful of prom girls arrive with a chaperone." The Yak Daily News recounted that in preparation for the prom, "Swarms of femininity poured out of trains coming from the vital centers (Poughkeepsie, Northampton, Wellesley) into outstretched arms of waitingYale men."

1940s "I don't like Kinsey! I don't like his report; I don't like anything about it," Professor George A. Baitsell wrote in a 1948 article in the Yak Daily News. This encapsulates the campus-wide sentiments regarding Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a study challepging American myths of fidelity and normative heterosexu- Âˇ ality published that same year. Kinsey's classification system for sexual preferences contributed to Yale lingo in the form of the term "Kinsey 6," used to refer to exclusively gay men. Among those entering Yale that year was Martin Duberman (SM '52), a "Kinsey 6" and author of Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey, which was published in 1991. In his book, he recalls making his sister pose as his girlfriend to avoid embarrassment. His quest to explore his sexuality while at Yale led only to anonymous, guiltand fear-ridden late-night trysts with strangers from the park benches and cruising cars of the Green.

1950s "The weekends were .all about dating and Sf;X," Edward Rosen (BR '50) recalls. Weekends were a time of football and dances, at Yale or at any of the neighboring women's colleges such as Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, and Radcliffe. The major events, such as the Yale prom and Harvard weekend, were the most sexually charged. Even then, Harvard weekend was an occasion for campus-wide parties, and the prom was recognizably formal and lavish, with live music and an elegant dinner. These events were a prime opportunity to invite your "favorite date" down for the weekend; and there would, Rosen says, "presumably be dessert after the main course." Relationships spanned the recognizable gamut. Rosen

explains, "Some relationships were intimate, some were carnal, some were matrimonial, and some were frustrating." Yale made little effort during this time to discourage sexual activity. Girls were not allowed to spend the night in Yale dorms, and even the Hotel Taft made some effort to chaperone its guests. Both rules were half-heartedly enforced, however, and if one secured a room at the Hotel Gard, he would be assured of having no questions asked. Another difficulty was that Connecticut law then prohibited the sale of condoms, but again, determined students had little trouble resolving the problem. "You just had to be a little resourceful," Rosen says, and the obstacles could be overcome.

1960s Sex was on everyone's mind as Yale pondered co-education. In fact, administrators and commentators feared that co-education would cause Yalies to think of little else. During a trial Co-education Week, the Yak Banner reported, "Rapes and other personal fouls were consistently avoided." Mixers continued to play a large role in the social scene. Even with co-education, however, the white-gloved "weekend women" were

bussed in from Smith and Vassar. Only a small minority of the Yale student body was female, but many of these women were offended by the perceived need to import women to fuel the sexually charged atmosphere of the dances. By the end of the 1960s, Julia Preston (BR '73), writing in The New journal, described the relationships berween men and women as sex-or-nothing. She wrote of women entering long-term relationships to save themselves from unwelcome advances from peers, professors, and TAs. The few female students rarely formed friendships among themselves, and often lived entirely within their boyfriends' ~ocial circles. Preston also mentioned the now common concerns about entering romantic relationships within one's college, "because the tense intimacy of the community precludes privacy." She added, "Yale men and women deal with each other through the medium of sexuality as if it were an immensely complicated peace treaty. You break the terms of the contract and you can expect some kind of warfare." She worried that "friendship is in danger of becoming an insult, merely a state of sexual rejection," and argued that the sexual liberation many Yalies tout was false and a

THÂŁ NEw JouRNAL

poor substitute for a "full co-education" that would allow male-female relationships to develop in a healthy f.tshion.

1970s The tension between Yale men and women was dwarfed by the sudden acceptance of sex in general. Carrie Wingate (MC '77) says that sex during her time was seen as "just a really nice thing to do with another person." Unlike the previous decade when women were concerned about their reputations, the 1970s attached little stigma to promiscuity. The new sexual freedom was connected with the general freedom that Wingate's contemporaries strove for. "We didn't want cars, or mortgages, or possessional relationships." Wingate remembers this philosophy leading to empty, frustrating encounters and repressed jealousy. As Wingate recalls, this new permissiveness extended to homosexual relationships as well. There were still homophobic incidents on campus and, several gay and lesbian-oriented groups had appeared, including {at various times) Yalesbians, the Yale Lesbian-Gay Cooperative, the Gay Alliance at Yale, and the Gay Student Center. While the 1970s were marked by political struggles, such as fighting for permission to tabletent in Branford, the decade was also marked by an increase in the acceptance of homosexual relationships.

1980s Playboy's "Women of the Ivy League," issue hit newsstands complete with Yale coeds. Yale could not revel in its sexuality, however, since this period also brought AIDS awareness. Recognizing the dangers of the disease and the need for education, Yale hired the founder of the Student AIDS Educators. During this time, gay and lesbian groups became more active and accepted on campus, starting a peer counseling group and pushing (unsuccessfully) for specifically gay freshman counselors. The Women's Center and the sexually focused feminist magazine Aurora were founded during this period. 1111 J~ss Champagn~.

a fr~shman in &rk~ky Colon th~ staff ofTNJ. David Slifka, a foshman in jonathan Edwards Co/kg~. is on th~ staffofTNJ. leg~. is

Lorna Sarrel: A View from the Counselor's Chair As I walk in the door, Lorna Sarrel is handing me literature about sex at Yale. I begin to sit in a chair, but she stops me. She cells me that the chair is hers; the couch is for students. I want oo remind her that I am not a patient, but before I open my mouth she has picked up her pad and pen-"out of habit," she explains. I imagine Sarrel with a student in her office almost 30 years ago. She sits in her chair with pen and paper ready. Her patient, clad in bellbottoms and a printed shirr, sits on the couch ready to receive the sex oounsdor's advice. I see the same scene repeated through the years. After a decade the bdlborrorns are tight jeans; ten }'eal$ after that, the printed shin is a flannd. Sarrel counseled students during the 1969 integration ofwomen into Yale College, the sexual revolution of the 1970s, the oonservative swing of the 1980s, and the (so-far) undefined 1990s. She's seen the arrival of herpes and AIDS, the increased acceptance of homosexuality, the onset of the terms "date rape" and "sexual harassment." "We're a lot older and wiser as a society, a little sadder maybe, a little less romantic in $0m,e • ·· ways, about our ideas of sa," she says, thinking back on her three decades in Yale's Menpf Hygiene department of University Health Services. She and her husband, fdJow sex eounselor :· and gynecologist Dr. Philip Sarrel. carne to Yale in 1969. After co-teaching their course, Topics in Human Sexuality, to students at prominent institutions like Brown, Smith, and Amherst, the Sands brought their lecture to Yale in the spring of 1970. "The very first year we gave the course, 1,200 students signed up," she recalls. "The only place big enough to hold it was Bat-tell Chapel. So we stood in the chapel talking about orgasms and penises-which was a very odd experience." They oontinued to teach the non-cm:l.it course oo Yale students for almost 25 years. But over time, the number of students enrolled in the course gtew smaller and smaller. "The whole enterprise ran out of steam. The need fur information now is not as great as it once was." The last version of the course was offered five ~ago. After years of training and experience, including time spent in 1971 learning fiom Masttrs and Johnson-the sex: experts of the era-Sand understands the intricacies of changing sexual attitudes. "One consequence of the sexual revolution was that fur people at Yale there was suddenly a pressure to be sexual. It was bad to be a virgin," she says. "That was the sexual rev~ olurion pendulum swinging too far." Indeed~ Yale, along with the help of the Sarrds, may have lent momentum to this shift in attitudes towards sex. Sex and tiM Yak Student, fur which the Sarrels were consultants, exemplifies Yale's progressive stance in the sexual revolution. The pamphlet was first printed in 1970 using funds from the small fee fur their Human Sexuality course. It was written by the Student Committee on Human Sexuality, a Yale group remgni7.cd and approved by the university's administration. While today's freshmen are inundated with Jecrures and information on sex, the first distribution of Sex at Yak made the pages of TheN~ Y01i Tunes. In 1971, an expanded version was published in paperback by Signet. The Stu4ent Guitle IQ Sex on Campus trumpeted itself as, "'The first sex guide written by college students. for college students. about oollege students." The campus version of the book became graphically explicit-the 1974 edition included photographs of people demonstrating how to put on a condom and insert a diaphragm. By the 1979 edition, the guide was toned down, the photographs repJaced by illustrations. "By the late 1970s, early 1980s, there was a swing back row.uds the more oonser~ vative petspcctive, which I think in some ways was good." Sand says, explaining dw one of the problems of the sexual revolution was that everyone thought they wa-c the only viigin left. It is obvious upon meeting Sand that she's spent many~ rdlccting upon all things~ ual. She's very oomfonable with the subject. But does thinking about sex all the time lasen its allure? Sand puts it best, "My husband and I talk about sex • if it were mrn flaka." -MichtJJ Gnlm

The Numbers on the Naughty and the Nice Jesse Dillon and Erika Fricke Desire. Consumption. Dissatisfaction. Sex and food at Yale. Take for example pork, which you might already know as "the other white meat," but perhaps had forgotten may function as slang for makin' whoopee, grindin' , or doin' the nasty (i.e. "We pocked for 0-5 minutes and we both came"). Approaching the average Yalie, we might assume that he or she has probably consumed lettuce, french fries, vegetable barley soup, and maybe blueberry pancakes. But, have you tasted a breaded porkchop? We have no idea. But we do know whether or not you have pocked, and even whether you liked it. Yale students do have sex. Not all of them (thank God), but 57.1 percent of the undergraduates have engaged in penetrative intercourse {ouch). But bear in mind, the other 42.9 percent are not necessarily keepin' their blue-jeans clean. Of this 42.9 percent of students not engaging in intercourse, 48.0 percent are having oral sex, while 33.0 percent are manually stimulating one another. Fifty percent of the non-virgin women lost their virginity before coming to Yale, whereas 65.4 percent of the men who have lost it," lost it before college (Figure 1). In response to our question, "Were you a virgin when you came to Yale?" one particular man, so assured of his pre-collegiate prowess, took it upon himself to rewrite our poll's simple "no" as "not even close," although he was only deflowered at the (gasp) shockingly innocent age of 17. The same boy (we hardly think him a man, despite his Marky Mark stance) answered our "Have you had sex?" question with yet another personal touch: "Yes, a lot," though he has only had sex one time this year. While this boasting was most common among male respondents, women also surprised us with gender-specific quirks. Of the virgins, 2.4 percent used pink pens, while 3.8 percent of non-vir-

gins employed this feminine hue. None of the men used colored writing utensils. Ever. What's up with the girlie ink, ladies? And since we're in an interrogative mode, what's up with the fake orgasms? Of non-virgins polled, 63.5 percent of the women had at some point faked an orgasm, in contrast with only 13.5 percent of the men. Faking may seem like a harmless prank, but realize that it only fuels the foolishness of youngsters like the respondent above. And what's up with the fake male orgasms? Asked one sophomore: "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" Well, pretend that you're a tired little porker, even though you could make another trip to the trough. In the meantime, fellows beware, women who fake orgasms, and are left unsatisfied, might just search for the platonic form of their simulated pleasure in greener, moister, more delicious pastures (Figure 2). They serve pork most anywhere these days. (Okay, only three women-hardly a sufficient sample-said they always faked it. But hey, we're not doing a Gallup Poll and, besides, those two girls must be stopped.) A whopping 42.0 percent of the students polled claimed to have pulled the proverbial wool over his or her significant other's eyes while pullin' the pants off someone else. The question was simple: "Have you ever cheated on a significant other? a.yes b.no," but one morally self-conscious polygamist opted (as was quite popular in this survey) to supply her own answer: "c. Kind of, it was a long time ago" (Figure 3). We forgive you. Kind _oÂŁ Give us a couple of years. We need physical and temporal distance from this poll. I8J

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THE NEw JouRNAL

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Enough lainie Rutkow

IM AND HER BOYFRIEND KNEW HOW TO USE A

condom. They had been in a seven-month monogamous relationship, and, like many college students, condoms were their contraception of choice. They never discussed, or even really considered, the possibility that Kim could get pregnant. They nev~r had unprotected sex. Pregnancy was not an issue. But late one night, Kim realized the condom broke. It seemed impossible at first; it seemed like the kind of accident that could only happen to other people. "When I found out rhÂˇe condom broke, my boyfriend became really nervous. I was nervous, too, but I didn't freak out because I had heard of the morning after pill. I called the emergency number at Health Services the next morning," Kim says. Kim's call was not an uncommon one at Yale University Health Services (YUHS). Several times a month, students call asking for emergency contraception. Through word-ofmouth, the morning after pill has received quiet publicity on campus in the last few years. Student AIDS Educators reveal its existence to freshmen, and physicians mention it to women who receive contraception from YUHS. With its catchy name, the morning after pill sounds like the ultimate pregnancy prevention panacea. And, indeed, it is. Well, usually. Numbers reveal the limits of the morning after pill. When taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, it is 75 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. And, while 72 hours allows for a substantial morning after, 75 percent effectiveness falls notably short of a guarantee. Kim was well within the 72-hour time frame when she called Urgent Care. YUHS responded immediately, and Kim met with a physician later that day. Her visit seemed to move right along until she learned of the morning after pill's 75 percent success rate. Kim found herself weighing

the odds. In this high-stakes game of chance, the failure rate was 25 percent. "The possibility that the morning after pill might not work and that I might get pregnant was huge to me," Kim explains. Hours earlier, she had witnessed the 2 to 12 percent failure rate of condoms. On any given day, without contraception, she had up to a 30 percent chance of becoming pregnant. The morning after pill decreases this chance, but introduces side effects including nausea. With no desire to conceive and few options, Kim chose to play . the numbers and take the morning after pill. The vomiting started shortly after Kim's first dose and continued until the second and final dose 12 hours la,ter. Again, the odds were against Kim. Only 30 to 60 percent of women experience this side effect. Kim was quite conscious of the gravity of her situation. Feeling sick and alone, she regretted using only a condom. This accident forced her to recognize that contraception is more than just a necessary evil of sex. "I realized that sex really does have a cause and effect. And I realized that I alone was the one who would have to deal with that," Kim says. Within a day, sex changed from an integral part of a romantic relationship to an action with far-reaching consequences.

hese consequences are best displayed in the waiting area of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) at YUHS. Chairs line a dimly lit corridor littered with subscription offers to American Baby. An endtable overflows with issues of Lamaze magazine, the copy of Preparing for Fatherhood peeks out from beneath them. Two pregnant women wait for their appointments. Amid the drone of fluorescent lights and muted conversations, boyfriends and husbands are scarce. One can easily imagine an anxiety-ridden college stu-

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dent seated amongst this fertile ensemble on a Monday morning. She ponders the events of the weekend and laments the moment of recklessness when she forgot to insert her diaphragm. She can still picture it sitting sterile and unused in its case on her dresser. Her boyfriend remembered hearing something about the morning after pill, and they agreed that she would call YUHS the next morning. The wall clock confirms that she remains safely within the 72 hour window of time. The pregnant woman sitting beside her embodies the student's most pressing fears. As the woman reads Mothering, the student smirks at the absurdity of the moment, and considers exchanging her diaphragm for birth control pills or maybe even Norplant. If the wait is much longer, she will miss her next class. The scene is shattered by the voice of Dr. Joann Knudson calling for her next appointment. As the Chief of OB/GYN at YUHS, Knudson chats with many students about birth control. On a daily basis, she sees the consequences of sex, safe sex, and safer sex. She is familiar with the options for most imaginable situations. With her youthful face and unassuming air, she appears more like an informed friend than a trained physician. Seated at a table scattered with pamphlets detailing emergency contraception, Knudson explains that YUHS offers the morning after piJI as a service to all Yale students. She recites the requisite 72 hours, 75 percent effective statistics and adds one important distinction. Contrary to what many people believe, she explains, the morning after pill does not cause an abortion. It has no relation to the controversial drug RU486, also known as the abortion pill. The drug tagged "the morning after pill" is only a higher than usual dose of standard birth control pills. The discussion becomes increasingly technical as she explains the mechan-

FEBRUARY 13, 1998

ics of the morning after pill. In medical jargon, Knudson describes how the morning after pill chemically prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg in the lining of a woman's uterus. Throughout our conversation, Knudson remains within the safe boundaries of the biochemical workings of the medication. She does not mention the emotional side effects that often accompany it, and she seems surprised that a woman would feel anything other than relief. Yet, in interviews and informal discussions with over a dozen women who have taken the morning after pill, feelings of isolation, depression or anxiety were nearly universal experiences. Knudson dismisses the potential for emotional repercussions and relegates them to the auspices of in-house counseling. With the subject successfully avoided, Knudson reverts to the availability of the morning after pill, leaving complex topics such as psychological ramifications virtually untouched. Back in the waiting area, with mothers-to-be and sleepdeprived students, Knudson's words sound too cool and polished. Her explanation of the morning after pill only reiterates the words of the pamphlets she produced. Feelings of loneliness have no place in this practical depiction of quick-fix emergency contraception. If Knudson's assessment is correct, the sense of isolation that Kim felt resulted from a lack of support. And yet, Kim says her boyftiend was as supportive as she could have hoped. While Kim was sick in her room, he was with her.

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him sex was still for pleasure and love, bur for me it became pleasure, love and this really big weight hanging over my shoulders," Kim says. Between sips of tea, she recalls the days following her deci-

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sion to take the morning after pill. Hearing her explain it this way, in the feigned intimacy of a coffee shop, Kim's story sounds like it happened to someone elsethe experience of a friend of a friend. She recalls her emotions with determined accuracy and defies Knudson's scenario. For Kim, the morning after pill didn't fulfill its promise of relief. Instead, it imparted a permanent anxiety about sex. In the following weeks, Kim's relation" ship with her boyfriend quickly changed when he did not understand her new concerns about the consequences of sex. Knowing that contraception can fail, Kim could no longer justify sex for its own sake. "I didn't think sex was worth it if I was going to have to go through getting so sick," Kim says. "I felt upset and uncomfortable for a long time. A condom didn't feel like it was enough." With the absence of sex in fheir relationship, Kim and he.r boyfriend soon noticed the differences between them which sex had masked, and soon afterwards they broke up. Unexpectedly, men ech o Kim's sentiment as well. Like Kim and her boyfriend, Leroy and his girlfriend were also vic_tims of a faulty condom. Hours later, they decided the morning after pill was the best course of action. While his girlfriend went to YUHS, Leroy was left to contemplate their situation. "I just felt really stupid because it's not something that should happen or that you should have to worry about," Leroy says. "It seems like you were just totally careless ahead of time. " But this was not the case. Leroy and his girlfriend had been careful. They had discussed sex and agreed that neither of them was ready to be a parent. T he solution had been condoms. T h ey were convenient and effective. Adeast, they had been until now. Within minutes, condoms had gone from the perfect answer to the ultimate nightmare. The worst part was that an accident such as this one could have happened to anyone. And, when Leroy learned that the morning after pill was 75 percent effective, he realized what a serious accident it had been. "In the back of my mind, i always knew that after you have sex, the possibility is there for you to have a child. But, the reality really set in when I started seeing little kids running

THE NEW JouRNAL

around," Leroy says. Like Kim, Leroy consciously linked sex and its procreative results for the first time. Sex had incurred consequences that had been previously unimaginable. To determine if the morning after pill has worked, a woman must wait up to three weeks to menstruate. If she does not get her period by then, she is most likely pregnant. But, several days later, Leroy's girlfriend knew she was not pregnant. "She took a pregnancy test and wrapped it and put it under my door," Leroy says. "It was a nice present, and a relief, seeing that minus sign." Mter this relief, Leroy knew that condoms alone would not be sufficient protection. But with few forms of male contraception, Leroy was left in an awkward position. "I just felt totally helpless," he says. But Leroy was reassured once his girlfriend opted to take birth control pills. With a failure rate of 0.1 percent, the pill offers nearly perfect contraception. When asked about the relief of avoiding pregnancy, Kim laughs. Her experience with the morning after pill involved almost every emotion except relief. For Kim, the week following her dose of the morning after pill was a time to contemplate serious decisions. If she did not get her period, she would return to YUHS to discuss such matters as adoption or abortion. Her rela:rionship with her boyfriend was deteriorating, and pregnancy would be the worst possible scenario. With these thoughts weighing on her, Kim tried to will her body's response. She repeated a number in her mind-"75 percent effectiveness"-until it became a mantra. In the days that she spent waiting, Kim determined she would get a diaphragm. Combined with a condom, it would provide excellent protection from pregnancy. A week later, Kim's body responded as she had hoped. She was finally on the desir1111 able side of a statistic.

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Kim and Laoy are pseuMnyms. lainie Rutkow, a junior in Moru College, is

production manager ofTNJ. FEBRUARY 13, 1998

In cybersex, your partner is faceless, the props are a modem and a monitor. The lure of logging on to get off seems dubious.

Digital Liciisons Jessica Winter .Âˇ ' ' You HAVE To GET A PICTURE INSIDE YOUR HEAD OF

what you want before you do it," Kate advises me as we stroll purposefully into the computer cluster. Her directive is stern, but the mood is girly-giggly as we sit down at Macs to register for Yahoo!'s chat-line service. Our laughter becomes shrill when the Yahoo! server asks us to choose an online nickname. Mindful of the rather salacious purpose of this wee-hour venture to Connecticut Hall, Kate tries to log on as "moist," but the computer retorts, matter-of-factly, "That user name already exists." "Cunning_linguist" has also been claimed by another Yahoo! patron, and Kate finally sQcceeds with "hotmoist." I'm turned down as both "Caligula" and "littleboots," Âˇ and must resign myself to the moniker "smallboots." The third member of our party, Rachel, succeeds on her first attempt as "reddy_2_whip. " Tittering like seventh-graders, our eyes meet the quizzical stares of slump-shouldered freshmen laboring over their Thursday night OS papers. I'm momentarily chastened, but I see that Rachel has wasted no time getting down to business. A quick glance at her screen places her in the TeenSex chat room, where she has announced her arrival: "Hey there, I'm ready to whip and I wanna talk." It's our maiden voyage on the murky seas of online chat rooms in search of a poorly-charted island called "cybersex," a Bermuda triangle of sorts where boundaries are confused and eager libidos are often lost in the fog. "It's always been one of those words that didn't mean much to me," a computing assistant shrugged when I asked him for the lowdown on cybersex. "Do you mean porn sites on the web? Erotic online chat? Sexual encounters with robots?" I wasn't sure myself, but though my destination was uncertain, I at least knew the exemplar for the person with whom I wanted to dock. He'd be the electronic equivalent of Jim from Nicholson Baker's homage to phone-sex, Vox-arch, hyper-literate, a little eccentric, drolly aware of the absurdity of the sexual situation but diving headlong into it all the same. The kind of guy who gets aroused by the sound of a Cacique catalog phone operator saying, "Yes, we have the pointelle tights in faun"; describes the expression on his face when he climaxes as a "Smurf grimace"; and delivers bon mots like "The idea of women looking down at their breasts drives me absolutely nutso." If Jim has indeed hung up his phone and bought himself a modem, he wasn't putting it to any use this night. Perhaps too anxious to begin my research, I follow the dubiously named "Mis-

taTwerp" into a private room, where he proves himself a frustratingly reticent cyberintimate. Here I am, itemizing each piece of spurned clothing and the manner of its removal and duly noting each changed position, and all MistaTwerp can rejoinder with is "Mmm ...very sexy. " I give MistaTwerp the benefit of the doubtafter aU, typing with one hand expends precious time and energy-and launch into a convoluted monologue employing a garter belt and an ironing board, but my reverie is abruptly broken with the following exchange.

<MistaTwerp> you still there? <MistaTwerp leaves.> <MistaTwerp enters : > <MistaTwerp> you there? <smallboots> I didn't know you had left. I thought you were just being your quiet self. Where were we? _ <MistaTwerp> you sucking my cock. <smallboots leaves.> The problem here, of course, is twofold, deriving first from technical difficulties ("my computer is mesedup," MistaTwerp later apologizes) and second from sharply diverging ideas about what constitutes sexy sex. But as Kate later points out, there's little that is titillating about these electronic encounters in the first place. "I write papers and do e-mail on my computer, and suddenly I'm giving some guy a blowjob," she scoffed. ''I'm reading, 'My tongue is outlining your clit,' and it's not, and there's something so ridiculous and desperate and sad about that. It's not a legitimate sexual arena and I don't think it's socially legitimate either. I mean, how could you sustain a cybersex relationshiphow many variations can you do on 'my hand drifts down and I unbutton your pants'?"

he answer to her question, of course, did not lie in a single field trip to a computing facility. Others find social and sexual validity in chat rooms where Kate does not. After engaging in cybersex over Internet Relay Chat (IRC), William, a junior, arranged to meet his partner in person, commencing an intimate relationship with her that lasted eight months. He has been a heavy user of IRC for two years, but i:he awkward nature of online love srilllingers. "Meeting online acquaintances in real life is really funny-it's still embarrassing," William said. "There's a stigma attached to it. It's seen as weird and nerdy and not just as

THE NEW jOURNAL

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FEBRUARY IJ,

1998

blood variety. "My boyfriend had this strange habit of going on IRC after every meal," recalled Jason, a senior. "He said he was surprised we'd gotten together because by that point he had given up ever meeting people at Yale. He found the gay community self-selective, and he wasn't selected. IRC was like an underground way of connecting with people who maybe weren't comfortable with the social scene, who were interested in flirting or talking or just interested in sex. But after we started dating it was clear that his IRC habit was still sexually motivated." Rumors that his boyfriend had been unfaithful circulated back to Jason following their breakup, but he was troubled by the nature of his beau's IRC encounters in and of themselves. "I have no idea whether or not he arranged to have sex with anyone he met online. What bothered me was that I knew he was propositioning people and being sexually aggressive online, and it may have been a bluff, but it was still a matter of principle." Unfaithfulness by electronic proxy may be a phenomenon peculiar to the Information Age, but the allure of no-name, no-stringsattached sex is not. Still, true anonymity online seems more the exception than the rule. Several of Jason's friends who were also IRC frequenters were able to match a face with a log-on name and tell Jason about his lover's cybersexual opporrunism. And William was hesitant to give me too many intimate details about his online practices; as he said, "There is a discrete number of Yalies who do IRC, and if I said too much they would be able to piece together who I am." Which is to say, the lights in the chat room aren't as low as one might think. Even the routine warning that flashes on the screen so often during transit in Yahoo!-"Any information you may submit is insecure and could be accessed by a third party"--<:an seem like the bright glare of a policeman's flashlight shining in on teenagers parked at Inspiration Point. Just as jarring are the non sequiturs to which cyberlovers seem so prone to uttering in the heat of passion. Kate, easily the most cynical of my subjects, admits she was momentarily won over by "Cainsconscience," who lured her into a private room on Yahoo! "He lays me down on the bed, he's kissing my calves, and then"-Kate's voice reaches an incredulous pitch-"he puts a pillow under the small of my back, so I'm extra-comfortable while he gives me head." Alas, the moment was then irretrievably lost. "And then he says, 'The view from here is great!'" IBII Kat~, Rach~l,

William, and jason au puudonyms.

]mica Winur, a junior in Saybrook Coikg~. is on

th~ staffofTNJ.

Sex and the Asian American Male Samita Sinha

HE SETTING: A LOUD YET UNIMPOSING TECHNO BASS BEAT

fills the comfortable off-campus apartment, the official new hub of MOCKA (Men of China Kick Ass) parties. Cigarette smoke dings to the slim-fitting black pants of attractive Asian American women, most of whom sip the "good" drinks, although some courageously chug beer with the men. A circle of men-with two self-consciously unself-conscious women in their midst-have assembled in the center of the room, replenishing their shot glasses with a fresh round of Goldschlager. On college campuses alcohol and sex are inextricably linked. In Asian American collegiate social circles, this relationship is particularly relevant. Men and women scope each other out across the crowd. Silent observation is the modus operandi until alcohol can move them beyond timidity. MOCKA was formed by a group of Chinese American men in 1995. Clara Soh (PC '99), enthusiastic participant in MOCKA festivities, says, "lr was just a bunch of guys who hung out together, who decided to make their social circle official-in a silly way." They almost incorporated a "W" into the acronym to formally include women in their drinking group, but the catchy name and chauvinistic overtones were decidedly funnier to these men. MOCKA gets together once every few weeks with the ostensible purpose of drinking. Typically, male bonding is associated with images of a men's locker room stuffed with football players compar18

ing notes on who got play last night. But when referring to the Korean American community at Yale, Eugene Auh says, "For Korean men, sex and sexuality are important. But really, Asian men don't talk to each other about sex." Whether it is an exceptional respect for privacy, personal insecurities, or a combination of the two, Asian American men within the "Asian scenes" do not explicitly discuss sex. "A lot of Asian American males feel like they have to measure up and that's a big issue," Auh says. "That's something that you really don't talk about, you know, you're self-conscious. There's a running perception that Asian men have small clicks and shit like that," The stereotype of the inadequate penis size of Asian men is a brutal assault on the male ego within American society. In comparison to stereotypes of the hyper-sexualized African American man or the legendary all-American, hairy-chested football player, the Asian American man is characterized by a smaller frame and stature. "Ninety-five percent of Asian boys are either fat or real skinny," Gene Huang (SM '98) says with a bittersweet, nostalgic smile. He, among others, admitted to being that short, pudgy Asian boy with a nerdy bowl haircut and a peculiar propensity for math. The legs that were exposed by his gym shorts were not nearly as hairy as those of the other guys in the class. At an early age, many Asian American men are aware of the American masculine ideal. They are also aware-intuitively, at least-of how they measure up to this ideaL They may not actively

THE NEw joURNAL

During his iunior year of high school, Gene Hudng (SM '98) experienced an abrupt transition from being an outsider Asian nerd to the big man on campus. "The social image I have set up for myself is one which is consciously, actively trying to escape the fact that I am Asian American," Huang says.

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process the impact their physical differences have upon their selfesteem and sexual identity, but often the real awareness comes retroactively. Of course, the childhood experience of an Asian man growing up in Orange County, California-where the Asian population of a public high school may comprise 50 percent of the students--differs markedly from that child growing up in a small, predominantly caucasian rown in Minnesota. The American media, however, reaches all of these men. Asian American men are emasculated by virtue of their absence. Rarely is an Asian American man cast as the romantic Cassanova of a movie or television show. The typically petite frame of an Asian woman, on the other hand, satisfies the American aesthetic of exotic feminine beauty. For example, James Bond's beauty of choice in Tomorrow Never Dies is Michelle Yueh. The absence of a sexually virile male role model, unless Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan count, breeds sexual insecurity in the psyche of Asian American men. Tequila shots are the panacea.

ack at the MOCKA. party: A couple of guys are sitting on the windowsill in their CK shins and loose-fitting jeans, casually chic, smoking th.eir cigarettes and scoping the mostly familiar crowd in a disinterested manner as they make plans for the next Asian American Student Association basketball tournament. In one corner: a drunken pair is sloppily hooking up to a background buzz.

FEBRUARY IJ, 1998

of not-so-subtle, knowing commentary. "Hasn't she really been into someone else for the longest time? Why is she sucking face with him now? Too much to drink." And in another corner: a guy and girl, holding their accessory drinks, have a friendly chat while swaying absently to the music. In their sobriety, they are physically far apart, and each initiation of physical contact is deliberate. Off to the side of the room: a group of men-and again, a few women who are man enough-assemble for a round of tequila shots. There is a common perception among Asian American women that Asian American men are more brotherly than sexual or sensual. Fuphan Chou (TC '00), a 5'9" Taiwanese American sophomore, has never kissed an Asian man and remains outside of the tight Asian scenes. She has found Asian American men attractive in the past, but attractions are only realized by approaching someone--something she finds men consistently fail to do. These men fall short in both a literal and figurative sense. Fuphan feels like a "big freak giant" around many Asian American men. "You usually flirt with a guy and you think, wow, the guy might be interested-in females? period. But you flirt with an Asian guy and he becomes your brother," she says. Many women within the tight-knit Asian community share Fuphan's sentiments, whether it is due ro a specific male vibe, or by their own paranoia that the Asian American community will become gossipy and incestuous if it views relationships with Asian men in a sexual way. The men have to bear the stigma of feeling asexual, but

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not because asexuality is an inherent trait. This stereotype is frequently imposed upon them. Women, particularly if they are entrenched in a scene where there is potential for gossip, may be guilty of this imposition. The culprit most responsible for the emasculation of Asian American men, however, is the American definition of male sexuality. A male is considered to be sexual only when he is physically aggressive and bold. In an American environment of large gestures and overtly sexual relations between men and women, there is little room for subtlety. ~thin Asian cultures, subtlety of expression is highly valued. This subtlety often hinders the ability to communicate the sexual vibe that is so important in American malefemale interactions. "I was never touchyfeely with people. My family never was, s~ · neither am I," Isaac Cheng (MC '00) says. This is perceptible in those two feet of space, in that physical gap between the man and woman swaying to the music. In examining ·che sexuality of Asian American men, it is important to also examine who these men are approaching. For many Asian American men, the way they approach a woman is often linked to her race. "I prefer women who are outgoing and strong-willed and I often think of Asian women as very reserved. Of course, I'll approach them directly if they don't seem. co have a problem with that," Bertram Chan (SY '00) says. For some men, there may be a weightiness attached to dating someone within their own race due to pressures exerted by family and community. That pressure, to some degree, disallows frivolity and freedom in approaching women of the same race. Dating outside of their race presents a whole different challenge for Asian American men. Complexities may arise because of differences in background, and these differences obstruct an otherwise open channel of communication. Furthermore, as is the case with many minority groups, Asian Americans feel pressure co dace within their own race. Another complexity, one that is purely physical, is height disadvantage. Men feel extremely insecure about approaching taller women for fear they will not be taken seriously. Isaac believes that the only solution to such a situation is first co build a base of

friendship. He says, "You watch movies where the woman goes through all these relationships, chen all of a sudden she goes to her best friend co cry. And that's the one, you know, that's the Asian guy! He's sitting in the backdrops, he's backstage. And she keeps going on stage and coming off until finally she's like, 'Oh, there's a guy back here!' And that's when you can maybe date her."

new setting: fall 1997, in Gene Huang's suite in Silliman. Fair amounts of pot and beer are passed around for the proudly "alternative" crowd at Gene's raging party. He stands near the keg, shjrc off, as is expected of him, feeling empowered and in charge in his role as nexus of the large crew around him. A couple of guys start screwing around, freaking each other to tease the crowd. Never to be outdone, always ready co outdo, 'Gene and his roommate imitate the guys and soon become the center of attention as planned. Responding to the excited hoots and claps, Gene gives them a show. Grabbing his roommate, he sucks his neck until a swelled red mark is visible. Gene is satisfied. Angrily, the roommate frees himself and vengefully reciprocates. Talking later, Gene thoughtfully scratches his eyebrow-the one without the silver hoop-with his thumb, his cigarette suspended between two fingers. "The social image I've set up for myself is one which is consciously, actively trying to escape the fact that I am Asian American. That label doesn't make any sense to who I am. I'm kind of oversexed and it doesn't make any sense to be really repressed about it," he says. Gene's Korean heritage has affected his overall identity, specifically his sexuality, because he has consciously defined himself as not typically Asian. During hjs junior year of high school in Minneapolis, he experienced an abrupt transition from being an outsider Asian nerd to the big man on campus. Marked simply by a physical change, the way he was perceived eventually caused a change in attitude to follow suit. Isaac em braces the opposite end of the spectrum with the same vehemence but without Gene's performative tendencies. Private, grounded, and friendly, Isaac feels that sex and sexuality are superfluous to the parts

THE

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EugeneAuh (CC '99) of his life that really matter. In his easy, matter-of-fact way of speaking that simultaneously puts the listener at ease and on guard, he says, ''I'm less willing to be vocal about things, less forceful. My approach to sexuality is not like the typical male sexuality. Who aspires to that anyway? None of it sounds very good to me." The most important aspect of defining sexuality in relation to race is reconciliation. Both Bert Chan and Eugene Auh seem to have achieved a peaceful balance between dealing with their "issues" and being sexually active within relationships. Each person works toward or against this balance in his own specific way. "If you consciously work against the stereotypes, you won't be associated with them anymore," Gene Huang says, somewhat disturbed by this fact. "But that doesn't mean I don't love those pictures of me as a nerdy little kid!" IBIJ Samita Sinha is a sopho~ in Calhoun College.

fEBRUARY

1J, 1998

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Photo Essay Malerie Marder

T HE NEw JouRNAL

Malerie Marder (ART ' 98} makes photographs of people in the nude. But are they naked? Starkly lit and shot in one-hour motels, these pictures reveal the internal lives of friends and strangers in a way that puts their most private thoughts on display. The selection printed here-less risque examples of her work than the group as a wholelet us see how clothing hides and protects more than just the flesh. These pictures let the viewer see the most vulnerable of human moments, instants of awkwardness and ecstasy, uncertainty and fulfillment.

FEBRUARY 13,

1998

T HE NEW jOURNAL

FEBRUARY IJ, 1998

•

• ~· II

HIV at the Ivies? Eli Ki nti sch

'' I 'M

WRITING A PIECE ABOUT STUDENTS IJ YALE WHO ARE LIV-

ing with HN and/or AIDS. What I have sent you is a totally anonymous interview. I gave this letter, along with the envelope addressed to me, to the person who knows you, and he or she got this package to you. The purpose of this piece is to raise awareness. I want to understand better why there is such a stigma; why our culture demands that HN patients must keep their disease a secret." I sealed the envelopes and sent out the letters. I checked my mailbox each morning, hoping for a· response to my questions, but no luck. People who knew HN-positive Yalies-and some of the doctors who treated them-had delivered my letters. Yet each day at the post office I was greeted by a shiny metal corridor-nothing. A letter would mean a chance to give voice to the silent, the infected. But as the days passed, I found myself wondering what HN meant to the throngs hurrying past me and my empty mailbox.

N is here at Yale. Doctors tell me there are HN-positive· undergraduates. Students tell me they have friends with HIY. Yet HN is an issue few discuss, few consider, and few grasp as pan of their lives. In 1995, The New journal devoted an entire issue to AIDS without a mention of the disease on campus. Three years later, HN remains an issue from which most students consistently distance themselves. Why do so few people consider this disease a pan of their day-today lives? Why don't we think it happens at Yale? "HN at Yale? It's just something I guess I never thought of," Atturo Martinez (ES '99) says. "I only think about it when I see it in magazines, on TY. It's not an everyday topic of discussion." In trying to learn about HN's psychological presence at Yale, I encountered this distancing in student after student. Most everybody realizes that HN exists, but few see it as more than a public service announcement or news story. But whether or not we think we know someone who deals with HN at Yale, the virus is in our midst. "The rate of HN occurrence within the Yale communiry is 0.5 percent, the same as the rest of the American population," Dr. James Perlotto (ES '74), Universiry Health Services' AIDS specialist tells me. "I believe there are 25 to 75 people with HN at Yale. The majority of those are graduate students, but there are undergraduates who test positive for HIV." In a 1994 study of24 college campuses, the Center for Disease Control reponed that 1 in 500 students tested positive for HIY. Yale is no different. HN is here. In the U.S., the AIDS epidemic has entered a somewhat hopeful phase. Over the past five years, researchers have found effective ways to deter the growth of HIV. A 1996 New MJrk Times Magazine anicle by

Andrew Sullivan, entitled "The End of AIDS," argued that with the advent of protease inhibitors and multi-drug cocktail regimens, AIDS would become an analogue to diabetes and other chronic diseases-a lifealtering condition, but not an instant death sentence. What once was a nation facing the uncenainty of a plague can now view the next five years of the epidemic with very cautious optimism, even as the disease continues to slowly spread. AIDS is no longer quite the "sexy" media topic it once was, though third-world and inner-city rates of infection skyrocket and the poor cannot afford the medications that allow infected patients to fight the disease.

began searching for HN-positive students in order to hear what coping with the virus meant to people at a place so established and intellectual that its emotional tenor can at best be described as aloo£ With the knowledge that fellow students have HIY, I talked to undergraduates by the dozen, explaining what I was doing. I spoke at meetings, to sports teams, to classmates. I called and called and called. Still no responses. Soon I realized it wasn't the students who knew people with HN who would answer my question. Instead it was the people who didn't know someone who would tell me the most. As I explained that I was writing about HIY, the majority ofstudents readied themselves for policy questions and prepared their most enlightened attitudes for the safe-sex survey queries we're all used to. When asked matter-of-faccly if they knew someone who had HN at Yale, I saw my classmates act uncomfonable, put-off, and initially skeptical. Most were very surprised by the statistics. At first, hearing that one in 200 people in the Yale community has HN was frightenjng. And many did not believe that students had tested positive at YUHS. "College students think they're supermen," Angel Falcon, (ES '99) says. "People talk lots about hooking up at Yale, but no one ever mentions getting HN or anything else. When I go home to Jersey, people talk about HN much more-people are scared." Many students aren't surprised that HN isn't discussed. "Yale is a different community than most," Cameron MacDougall (ES '98) explains. "Not to be elitist, but the reason that HN isn't an issue here is that you're dealing with a highly educated population, coming from good homes. They know the proper precautions to take, and they're less sexually active than most students. If this were UVA, it would be a different story." Dr. Perlotto knqws the story is, in fact, not "so different. As an AIDS specialist, his HN-positive patients come to him to talk about the disease and get help. Since his arrival at Yale in 1990, he's broken the news to dozens of HN-positive students, made dose associations with many patients, and mourned the deaths of students alongside their families.

-THE NEW JouRNAL

•

• • • • • • • • • • • ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ II II II II II

Depending on the week, 5 to 20 percent of Dr. Perlotto's caseload is devoted to HN counseling, testing, and treating his nine graduate student HN patients-some with symptoms of AIDS. Dr. Perlotto's patients research, work on their theses, and teach sections. AIDS is only debilitating in its late stages and few show visible symptoms of the disease. Watching Dr. Perlotto speak candidly about the difficulties of treating AIDS patients, I see how he has gained a reputation as an honest, dedicated caregiver. Yet even at an "enlightened" place like Yale, Perlotto's reputation as "the AIDS doctor" can frighten non-HN patients. "Sometimes people are afraid to come see me for anything," he says, frustrated. "They're worried that someone will think they are coming to be treated for AIDS."

((HN

ness has spread. "In 1985, the few students who carne for testing were very worried," a doctor says. "Nowadays, getting tested is a more casual thing, and many more students come. Some of my patients who come are high-risk cases. A few seek testing with an incident in mind, some are anxious about a rumor about a past lover, and others have another STD which makes them fear HN. Others show up with litt1e or no risk of infection. They are the worried well. I don't look forward to the day I have to tell someone they're HN-positive." At YUHS, test results are given one week after the blood is sampled. In the ten minutes prior to the second appointment, the moments of contemplation in the sterile waiting area can add a dose of bitter reality to a hectic day ofcontrived importance. But once back in Yale World, safely negative, it is natural to forget that a moment ago life hinged on one word from a doctor. One races off, late to class. That's as close as many get to HN. The test becomes just another way for the Yale student to make sure the reality of the disease has not accidentily slipped into his or her world. Within a few years, however, all of us will probably know people who are infected. AIDS is the most common cause of death for American men aged 25 to 44, and people aged 18 to 21 are among the fastest growing risk groups for HIV. The statistics are chilling. We worry about our relationships, our jobs, our homework, and our plans for the weekend. Yet most Yale students don't worry about HN. Many Yalies go at least part way towards practicing the measures that help prevent the spread of the disease. "From an anecdotal perspective, freshman counselors report more people are taking condoms than before,

is an iss1,1e on every campus. People are concerned," says Shannon Morrison (TC '00), an AIDS educator and coordinator of the_Yal_e ~bian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Co-op. "The disease crosses boundaries·of race, color, sexual orientation," Morrison says. Yet he also f~els that as the issue has become more politicized, it has receded into the margins. 'J\.lthough the disease touches a lot ofour lives, a lot of people still don't believe that AIDS is not a gay thing. A lot of straight people are tired of hearing about AIDS." But aren't the risks of infection negligible in college? Dr. Alvin Novick, the Yale professor whose class, AIDS and Society, usually attracts several hundred students, warns that despite the relatively low incidence of the disease among college students, it should not be ignored. "Incidence of HN infection in college students is quite low," Dr. Novick says. "For those of college age it's not a threat to society, but it's still important to talk about." "I'm dealing with people who see the risk of infection as real enough ~ to come get tested," said one doctor who counsels undergraduates at .; •U~J~L YUHS. "It's the people I don't see who feel invulnerable." Talking with a doctor before an HN test is one of the few ways students face the reality of AIDS. Despite YUHS's policy of confidential testing-in which positive results are recorded though kept secret as opposed to the anonymous testing available elsewhere in New Haven, in which names are never attached to test results-many undergraduates come each week for HNantibody screening. YUHS won't release statistics on testing. However, one of the five caregivers who administer tests pulled out a folder of test results from the previous year, thick with forms. Between all five they must test hundreds of students. 'Though a lot of students say they should be tested, many never go," AIDS educator Andrew Stadlen OE '98) says. "For many, it's a hassle." Still, YUHS doctors have seen a gradual increase in testing as aware-

FEBRUARY I J,

1998

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Henry R. Schwab Pztblishers POETICS C)F

INFLUENCE HAROLD BLOOM

EdittiliU!d with 1t11 ifttrbliuctiOH by folm HollltiiJn

and we are supplying more," Yale Coordinator of Health Education Sally Rinaldi (MPH '82) says. "We find people are certainly more educated and knowledgable these days. Whether that translates into practice, I don't know." At the AIDS Resource and Counseling Center, Rinaldi directs the public education that Yale students receive about AIDS. "We tun the safer sex talks for freshmen in the fall; we do presentations for fraternities, for cultural houses," she explains. Her elementary school " teacher demeanor contraSts with a cluttered office decorated with condoms, books on eating disorders, and pamphlet upon pamphlet about HIY. Since corning to campus in 1986, Rinaldi has been a pioneer of AIDS education at Yale. For years she ran voluntaCy programs single-handedly, setting up shop in Commons with movies on safe sex. The university itself has been slow to recognize the need for greater AIDS awareness. Only in 1993, after years of requests from Rinaldi; did the administration finally sanction mandatory safer-sex presentations. The often-ridiculed safer-sex meetings is the only time many undergraduates ever face the issues of HIY. And in that one hour, the messages can get lost amongst the spermicide, the dental dams, and the dildos. ''You hope that students will retain the informacion we tell them at the meetings, but that's often an unrealistic expectation," AIDS educator Lauren Anderson (MC '99) admits. Other educators say students were surprised to see a poster campaign advertising the chance of HN infection through oral sex, though the risk had been explained to every student at the meetings. When students use protection, HN is rarely the motivation. "Pregnancy and the other STDs-that's the majority of reasons people use condoms," Rachel Germany (ES '99) says. Cathy Choy (TO '98), an AIDS educator, sees similar attitudes. "I hear it a lot," Choy says. "'I'm on the pill. I don't need to use a condom."' "Whether or not students want to think about what they are protecting themselves from, they are using protection," Shannon Morrison says. But, he admits that few students on campus use any form of protection during oral sex. . Among the majority of students at Yale, HN itself remains unrecognized and unacknowledged. They half-follow the precautions that those who truly understand the risks and TH.E NEW JouRNAL

realities of this disease spend so much time trying to teach.

he day before my deadline for this piece, I found one of the envelopes waiting patiently in my mailbox. Someone had responded to one of my letters. I am a 26-year-old male graduate school (Ph.D.) srudent in the sciences. I regret that I won't be able to be forthcoming on many details and I'll explain why. I discovered I was HN-positive at Yale, in my first year of graduate school, two years ago. I was extremely distressed and confided only in my parents and two close friends. I evenrually told a professor who I was close to. While he was sympathetic, he strongly urged me to keep this a secret sinoe I seriously risked ruining the career I am preparing for.... I was reminded Yale is a small, closely knit community where rumors spread very quickly. Having my status disclosed would do me no good. I am very scared of being discriminated against when I apply for teaching jobs (my prospective employers would know the Yale faculty writing my letters of recommendation). I have been in exoellent health since I've tested. I am on a multi-drug regimen and my viral load is undetectable. thanks to protease inhibitors. I have to say the isolation I feel here is enormous, and things are bearable because I immerse myself in my work and because I am close to my family. I hope this helps you in any way. I am signing under a pseudonym (it feels srupid having to do this bur the risk is roo great). Yours, "Tom"

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So did this letter, in its simple sincerity, answer my questions? Or in looking for H IY, had I made myself one of us searching for a victimized thmz. For most Yalies, dealing with AIDS means making the epidemic an academic question, crowding Professor Novick's AIDS and Society lectures. But for the 0.5 percent, HN is still something only discussed with the closest of loved ones and best of friends, a solitary burden for the patients to carry. As my keys hung from the open mailbox, I read the letter over and over, absorbing the humanity of these handwritten words. laJ

EJi Kintisch, a junior in Ezra Stiles Co/kg~. is on ~ stajfofTNJ.

FEBRUARY 13, 1998

exertion-including driving, using a telephone, and turning on the lights. The laws of Shomer Negiah, which Chavi also practices, seem to demand even more of her. In English, Shomer Negiah means "keeping the touch," and if one is strictly observant, touching a member of the opposite sex is forbidden until marriage. Its tenets of modesty even affecr the way a practicing member chooses to dress-Chavi will wear pants but not shorts. "There are women who won't wear pants. There are women who will ~shorts but not shon-shorts and there are women who take it merely as a method of thinking about your selfhood and your relationship to other people in the world," she says. "To whatever extent, you try to make your physicality a precious thing, a rare thing." Is Yale a difficult place to practice her beliefs? Again, Chavi sees more than one side to this question. ''Yale is amazing for Jews and Yale is also very hard for Jews. It's hard to be observant here, but it's also one of the things I'm proudest oÂŁ And I'm also very glad that I've done it because it gave my Yale experience a dimensionality that it wouldn't have had otherwise." Although Chavi says that people are more curious than judgmental about her beliefs, she worries that many people do not see how the tenets ofShomer Negiah can mesh with the realities oflife in the 1990s. "The people we're talking about here are clearly people who go to a university, who can deal with things like Biblical criticism, who can deal with things like having condom ads," she says, speaking of herself and other devoudy religious students. "We can deal with a lot of things and we have a connecrion to religion that is not always traditional." For insrance, Chavi sees a dear link between the stringent laws of

FEBRUARY 13, 1998

Shomer Negiah and her feminism, noting that both Shomer Negiah and feminism reveal an intimate connection between a woman's body and her mind. "That is a connection that is often ignored," she says. "And I see a lot of women and also men who are harmed. They tend to forget that what they do with their bodies really does affecr their minds." For Chavi, keeping the touch is a day-to-day gesture of respecr for the mind as well as for the body. Chavi's comfon level at Yale seems to a great extent, to stem from her own ability to see things from multiple angles. She attributes this sensitivity to her membership in a community of people whose priorities match her own. Chavi says she's been lucky: "There are people who've had really shocking experiences and then there are people who've had really mediocre ones, and then there are people who've had really amazing ones-you know, what Yale's supposed to be all about: sharing of cultures, sharing of ideas. That happens, and that's happened to me a lot." She also emphasizes that her Faith does not require her to proselytize. "I don't tell people how to act. If there are friends of mine who are in supportive relationship and it's hard on them to remain abstinent I think that perhaps they should have sex. That's healthy. That's not conventional onhodoxy, but I'm a big believer in health of mind, soul, and body." Yale offers a wide range of health and counseling to suppon students' mental and physical well-being. In particular, Consent, 'Walden, and Pathways focus specifically on sexuality as it penains to homosexuality, sexual assault, harassment, AIDS, and STDs. Ar. the moment, however, there is no suppon or outreach group specifically for abstinent students. The University chaplain's office, which offers interfaith counseling services to students, is one option for Yalies attempting to reconcile their

â&#x20AC;˘

religious beliefs with the university's social climate. Associate Chaplain Reverend Cynthia Terry mentions that sitting down to talk with someone, perhaps a counselor or other respected adult, can help clarify what a student really. wants or believes. "I would ask the srudent some questions about their beliefs: what their own personal values are, both about sex and about their religious traditions. Is there a high value placed on the practice of religious values, regardless of agreement with the belief? Is there an emphasis on making an informed decision based on personal values? Mostly, I would want to help a srudent feel that there really is a decision to be made either to have sex or not to have it. My approach is not to uphold a particular religious principle or teaching, but instead to help students identify the values and principles by which they want to live their life." Of course, the prospect of talking about one's sex life with an adult can seem as difficult as one's initial concerns. When Sarah Oelker's boyfriend and friends challenged her religious beliefs during her freshman year, she found herself reluctant to speak with an authority figure about it. "I've never felt like broaching the subject," she says. "I guess I'm very afraid of just getting told flatly, 'No, you are expected to not participate in that activity and that activity is a great sin and you're in big trouble."' While Sarah does believe there are very good reasons to abstain from sex until marriage, she says that at this point in her life these reasons are more practical than religious. "Sex adds a level of seriousness, especially if you've been raised to take it seriously. If you're going out with someone and you decide you're going to have sex with them, you become emotionally

attached," she says. "It's probably going to be about how having had sex was going to affect emotionally easier for you if you don't." the fate of her soul. However, she is sometimes Sarah was raised in a Catholic household afraid to be frank with other people about her where she was expected to be abstinent. She expenence. even had trouble uttering the words for geni"The most trouble was the time my mom talia when she got involved with her first seriand I got on the topic during a lunch conversaous boyfriend during her freshman year. This tion. I was not willing to tell her I'd been sexurelationship was the only one so far in her life ally involved with someone. And she's lecturing that has involved sex. Ultimately, she says, it me on how much of a mixed blessing birth was a positive experience. control is. I can remember listening to her be "We started having more serious discusnegative about it and thinking I feel like crap sions about having sex, and I developed the " because this is kind of closing the barn door ability to say, 1\ll right, I am uncomfortable after the horse is stolen." with Âˇthis.' I was kind of timid in a lot of ways Sarah worries that her conservative Christand had not dated in high school, and I ian friends will think less of her for having sex, remember being kind of afraid when I realized and she is not always comfortable with being that here's this guy who wants to be involved identified as someone who's "in the know." with me. That kind of made me sit back and While talking to one such friend who had spelook at it and say 'Okay, what do I believe?"' cific mechanical questions about sex, Sarah According to Professor Susan Brandon, experienced an awkward moment. "She actualwho teaches The Psychobiology of Sex, ly didn't completely understand what sex was. "unthoughtful" sexual behavior is defined as She asked, 'Does it really work like this?,' and "outside of relationships and without the use of gave me an example. And I said, yeah, it really contraceptives or protection." In addition to works like that. And it was kind of creepy to being thoughtful about the commitment level me because she was a conservative Christian, and I had been raised Christian and she was of her partner and the necessary methods to avoid pregnancy and disease, Sarah needed to coming to me as someone who knew." do some serious thinking about whether or not Although it was not an easy decision for she believed pre-marital sex is a mortal sin. her to make, Sarah believes her choice was the Stealing and lying were always very cutright one for her. She also says that, although and-dry things that one simply was not supshe has not been going to church on a regular posed to do, Sarah says. When it came to sex, basis recently, she is still very interested in being however, the issue seemed less clear. Her a Catholic. "I can't say, 'Bless me Father I have boyfriend, who had been raised in a secular sinned. I've had sex with this guy and I'm household and had no such stigmas attached to sorry.' I'm not sorry. That constirutes a probsex, actively challenged her belie&. A friend of lem." But she believes that the issue of whether you have sex or not isn't the main point of reliSarah's had spoken to a priest before who said that pre-marital sex was not intrinsically bad, gion. It's about caring for other people. Sarah but something you needed to think about and says that at the root of it, she is Catholic do responsibly. Sarah was strongly divided. "I was saying, I feel these urges and I'm being told that they're wrong and that's driving me up a wall. I feel like I'm not going to be satisfied with the outcome either way. One way, I'm kind of fighting back a lot of things that I feel so strongly attracted to. And the other way, I feel like I'm deserting ideas and guidelines that I was raised with." Finally, Sarah chose to have sex. Although she says she is disturbed by how blindly she went into it, looking back on it she thinks she needed to see that an experience she had been so afraid of for so long was not necessarily goingJo be a horrible experience. Sarah does not recall worrying specifically THE NEW JoURNAL

because she believes in God in the form of the Trinity and she likes the strong stand the Catholic Church takes ofi many issues. ''I'm real srubborn about the concepts of stealing and lying and cheating-those basic concepts of not hurting other people. And to be honest, even though I disagree with a lot of the sexual teachings, I like that they've come out and said 'This is what we believe."' At least, she says, the Church's dear stance enables one to choose whether to agree or disagree with it. Sarah leans forward and a silver-dollarsized St. Christopher medal falls out of her shirt. Long the Catholic patron saint of travelers, Christopher is no longer recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Despite this fact, Sarah says, she still loves wearing the piece. She calls it her "Mr. Christopher" medal. For the same reasons she wears "Mr. Christopher," Sarah practices Catholicism for the general ideas behind it and tries not to get too picky about the derails. Although Chavi pays strict attention to the conditions mandated by her religion, she is similarly thoughtful about the way her choices impact her own emotions and the people around her. In her own way, each woman has worked to reconcile her religious background with university life. Cynthia Terry's impression, gleaned from talking to other chaplains and "university folk," is that Yale's environment does not seem to impose more pressure on a religious srudem than any other instirution of higher learning. A srudent's level of comfort with his or her own decisions, she believes, is more influential than Yale's environment. However, she agrees, what seems missing from the university system is a well-articulated voice about the choice not to have sex. As Chavi confirms, even strong voices within one's religious community aren't necessarily followed to the letter. Srudents subject even the stringent laws of Shomer Negiah to their own interpretations. Without a strong, guiding voice, such as that of one's parents, a srudent whose beliefs restrict them from sexual contact faces a series of difficult and delicate choices upon arrival at Yale. However, as Chavi's and Sarah's experiences show, Yale's "promiscuity" does not exclude the possi~~ ofliving a religiously observant life.

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Spend a night at a New Haven strip club, but don't be surprised when you turn out to be just another face in the crowd.

Bookish Days, Boogie Nights Alec Hanley Bemis

Y FRIENDS GRIPPED THE HEADS OF THE HEART-SHAPED

lollipops wiclt their teeth and withdrew them simultaneously from the stripper's G-string guarded crotch. Between the hanging clouds from the smoke machine, the specks of light dancing about the disco ball, and the raucous screams of our fellow audience members, they had no choice but to cross the line. All night the mood of this place-Cleopatra's all-nude juice bar, 133 Hamilton Street, a five-minute drive from Yale's central campushad been molding us to the demands of the stripping milieu. When featured dancer Colette DuPree shimmied out onto the glass bottom stage at 2 a.m., dressed as a latex wet nurse, we definitively slipped into our new selves. Perhaps it was something besides the smoke and lights? Perhaps, but probably not. We had all smoked too many cigarettes, but surely none of us was drunk enough to justify dangling dollar bills from our teeth, clapping for each dancer in turn, watching then leering at the strippers. And what was our excuse when Ms. DuPree placed four small pails of fluorescent paint on the lip of the stage, handing us each a paintbrush? What made us so readily take them from her hand and paint curlicues and circles, pictures and words on her thighs and calves, her belly and breasts? The transition from voyeur to viewer, kitsch-monger to participant took only two hours. Later, I asked one of the friends who took the trip: what made you do it, what made you grab that lollipop with your teeth? "I had to," my friend said, "I had no choice. All the men in the club were screaming. We became pan of her act." At the time, two days earlier, I would have agreed that it was the only way out. Ms. DuPree, legs akimbo and balanced at the edge of the stage, would probably have lain spread-eagle for a half-hour waiting for her chosen ones to withdraw her showstopping lollipops. Away from the club and its attendant atmosphere of carefully orchestrated seediness, another possibility occurred to me. "Well, why didn't you just grab it with your hand?" I asked. "That would have defused it." "You know," my friend replied, "I never thought of that." But as students at one of the top universities in the world, aren't we programmed to think? Yes, we party, we play, we kiss, we drink, but

this is not how we define ourselves. We are workers, doers, and thinkers most of all. Or are we? Something between midnight and 2 a.m. had turned us into one of the crowd. I walked into the strip club worried that the group I had assembled for the trip-a gay man, a straight one, two women friends-would get in the way of having an authentic good time. I thought the five of us would never be able to let go of our Yaletime demeanors, our varying degrees of straight-laced straight-facedness and brassy flirtation, our minds. Alone perhaps I could avoid the feelings of guilt and embarrassment one might feel while cheering for naked women, but with four dose friends? Maybe we would whoop it up for the ladies and have an ironic good time, but I never suspected it would cease being a game. I never suspected we would be just another duster of faces in the throng of testosterone-driven men. drove co Cleopatra's with the admonition of another friend floating in the back of my head. A few hours before I was scheduled co leave, I got a message that Nicky had called. Initially, I tried to assemble my team from a seasoned group of nudie bar veterans, and Nicky's name had been recommended by more than one friend. "I've done the strip club thing five times, so I'm far from an expert," my friend Chris wrote to me in an e-mail. "I do, however, have a suggestion for you: Nicky. When I went to a strip club with Nicky and a bunch of guys she was the only one to get hit on-by the strippers. Although she has many elements, the strip club is definitely one of her better ones. Get her to go. It promises excitement." Through the grapevine, Nicky learned about my little field trip and she wanted to give me some tips to avoid misrepresenting the strip dub scene. Curious, I called back. "Hey Nicky," I said, "You called?" "I heard you're writing an article about strip clubs," she said. "Yeah, I am. I'm told you think I'm going to fuck it up." "It's not that. But it seems that every year all the Yale publications send our their writers to do a disbelieving story on strip clubs. Inevitably the writer writes about how boring it was, how little they were aroused... "

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"Don't worry, Nicky," I said. ''I'm going to try and get aroused." "That's fine and good. I just wanted to give you a few hints." I was intrigued. "Like what." "The important thing to remember is that at a strip club you don't matter. When people go to the clubs for the first time they're often too self-conscious about who they are. They're afraid that they'll be noticed or that somehow they are going to embarrass themselves. The key is no one cares. The dancers have seen it all before. To them everyone in there is just another guy, just another pig, and none of them care what any of you want. No one gives a shit. Just have fun and blend in."

ertainly it wouldn't be that easy. By nature, Yalies overintellectualize. In the classroom discussion focuses on representations, models, theories, and almost never practice. We don't just read novels to enjoy them; we consider where they fit in, how they operate. Enjoyment-what we like--often goes undiscussed. Beyond that, part and parcel of the Yale lore passed from upperclassman to freshman every year is the idea that we are sexless, or at least neutered by our intellect. The undersexed Yalie is part of the Old Blue myth. When we each forked over $10 to the men at the door, when we took our seats at the back of the club, it seemed the magic of actually being there might never happen. We sat in one row, leaned against the wall, knowingly smirking and wondering just where we fit in among the 40-odd men in the clul>-marines on shoreleave, homeboys in hoodies, an essentially undifferentiated, but universally goofy, hypermasculine crop. Nicky was already there with her boyfriend in tow, ready to chastise. "I thought you'd never make it," she said. "We've been here for over an hour." Soon enough our group split up and we scattered ourselves throughout the room. Still near the back of the club, I took my place less than three feet from a man enjoying a lap dance-the stripper whispering suggestive babytalk in his ear, a smile on his face. I felt a

barrier between us greater than the three feet of physical space that separated him from me. I thought of this wall, then looked at the walls-television screens playing video afrer video of swaggering hip hop, then cool Eurodisco, then Billy Ray Cyrus singing about his "Achy Breaky Heart." Unaroused but curious, I moved to the lip of the stage and sat between two of the marines. I held onto my notebook and kept writing and smoking cigarettes. An Asian girl announced as "Kia" took the stage, and the marine next to me growled, "Fuzzy underwear. I love it." Kia awkwardly removed her fuzzy briefs, and I noticed dog tags slapping against her bare chest, jostling juxtapositions in my mind I'd prefer not to make. An African American girl named Ebony followed Kia, then a caucasian girl, Dawn (my friend later dubbed her "the white trash fantasy"). The women were all caricatures-Dawn chewed her gum and wore a fiannel slip, Ebony unenthusiastically slapped her ass as a ritual to bring in tips, Kia had her dog tags. Half an hour later, my friends and I again lined up in a row, this time at the edge of the stage. Over the ceaseless music and the interruptions of the club's announcer-"In 15 minutes, our featured dancer, Colette DuPree. Come on boys, look alive!"-we discussed why some of the women were sexy and why some of them were not. "It's exoticization," one friend said. "Notice the guys just don't give it up the same way for the white girls. They've seen too much of that on television and in fashion magazines." Occasionally one of us would announce how little fun the club was, but over time these objections became less and less insistent. I handed out dollars to my friends in an effort ro follow the rituals of the place. A few enthusiastically passed out their bills, but two of my friends waited. "They have to impress us fuse," one of them explained. At 2 a.m. we made our preparations to leave after one more song. Then Ms. DuPree came out, the latex wet nurse. Our jaws dropped,

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we began to clap like never before, and I caught the glances of my friends, one after another--each looking at me as if to say that Ms. DuPress was a woman of an entirely higher order. The intensity of the sound and lights and smoke multiplied ten-fold in acknowledgment of this simple fact. We painted doodles on her body and begged for her heart-shaped Disney Luv Pops. No, I don't think any of us found the stripping- the thing itself- alluring. (One .. thing I can safely state is that I was not aroused.) But by the end of the night something had happened in that place which put a dizzying electric charge in the air. Brushing a friend's pant leg became an alarming invasion of space, a disturbing proposition. Our awkward smiles hatched sub-plots. Talking about anything but the thing we were watching was certainly not allowed, as if bringing the outside world into the club would irrevocably alter reality itself. ' The wpmen were unattractive, the place wasn't that nice, but dimmed lights and expectation made it sexy and concealed the details that most definitely needed to be hidden. (Colette DuPree hung upside down from the silver pole at center stage, and no one was fazed by the three inch incision scars ringleting her D-cup breasts.) The milieu became the message. The piau was the thing, more so than what we wanted to think of the place, and even more so than the women working the stage. Cleopatra's, then, left me with thoughts of the frustrated erotic expression of this place, where we spend our each and every day. Is it us or is it the stale smell of yellowing books and dusty architecture-the fear of dead white men-that makes us shy from acting out all of those thoughts, the ones we're not supposed to think? I wonder what would happen if one night we walked into our bathrooms and found that custodians had replaced all of the mirrors with video screens, the fluorescent lights with strobes and neon, and the mildewy showers with smoke machines. Wo.uld we drop our toothbrushes and want nothing more than to salivate and fuck? 181

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Akc Hanky Bemis, a senior in Berkeky College, is a managing editor of TNJ. THE NEw JouRNAL

she said by

Preparing for the special issue, we quickly realized that when it comes to sex, men and women seem to speak in different languages. So, we sent two of our editors, armed with tape recorders, to document typical discussions men and women have about sex and relationships when the opposite sex isn't around. To preserve the candid dialogue, we kept the participants anonymous. And, resisting the urge to draw conclusions, we will let the words stand on their own. Tim: Here's rhe thing about me. I never got any in high school. I kissed a girl sophomore year, and I had a girlfriend my junior year, and we hooked up a little, but it was pretty asexual. She even told me once-and this is when I knew I was going to break up with her-"1 like your look, you're kind of like that guy from the Black Crowes, asexual." I was like, "It's over." And then I kissed one girl after that. Greg: So the first time you had sex was at Yale? Tim: Yeah, and after that, things just fell into place. You kind of just hit your stride. And now my roommates think I'm just making up for lost time. Patrick: That's the same with me. I got even less than you in high school. I finally kissed a girl senior year, but never had a girlfriend or anything. Greg: I hooked up more in high school than now, but I only slept with one girl then. Tim: I could not have slept with a girl in high school, I was not ready. Patrick: Yeah, it's weird because now you're well-known as having good luck with the women. Âˇ Tim: The thing that happens with me is that I'll see a girl and I'll want her for a while quietly, and then somehow it just kind of works out. It's happened to me like three or four times. Patrick: It must be nice. Greg: Where was the first rime you had sex? Was it at Yale, like in a bunk bed? Tim: No, it was a single on Old Campus. It had to happen somewhere. I only had sex in my own bed at home once. FEBRUARY 13, 1998

Karen: Faking is an easy topic, so let's talk about that. Linda: You fake? Karen: It's an easy topic because no, I don't. Never. Linda: You don't?! Amy: Yeah, me neither. Never. Melissa: Depends on the situation. Karen: You want to know why I never fake?. See, I never fake because if they're not doing it for me, they better know. I just think it's a waste of your time. Okay, lee's say it's the first time. It's hard to give instructions. but you can move your body in completely suggestive ways. Linda: I fake all the time. No problems with that. Karen: Are you kidding? Is it entertaining for you, like the acting pan of it? Linda: Yeah, it amuses me because, you know, it's like whateverKaren: -yes, you can be like, "They're so stupid!" Amy: It's run through my head before, but never. I couldn't. I feel guilty and also I feel like an orgasm is not the do-all end-all. I mean, I enjoy sex. Bottom fucking line. Linda: I feel guilty if I'm just silent. With some guys you don't even have time to fake it. It's like in, out, and you're like okay, all right, great. Karen: Yeah, it's like, "Clearly you don't know what you're doing." Linda: Right. It's like, "I'll lie here for you next time and we'll work on this." But with some men, I defi nitely feel like I get more excited when I hear them being excited. All: Yeah, definitely. 37

Patrick: That was some of the best sex I've ever had. It was so great. We had to be really quiet. She had to sneak back up to the room she was staying in, because my parents would check. Tim: Having sex in my girlfriend's apartment was weird though, because it was a one-room apartment. We had sex on the fold-out couch and had to fo ld it back in, and then sit there having a conversation on that same couch an hour later with her parents. And one time I thought we left a condom on the floor. I just felt so guilty. ''I'm sorry Mr. So-and-So, I just fucked your daughter." Patrick: You know what's kind of weird? You might be getting kind of a reputation. Tim: Me? Patrick: I don't know, in a little way. I just said your name one time, and they were like, "Yeah, he's really good looking, but doesn't he hook up with anything that moves?" Tim: Ahhh! The reputation thing sucks. I kind of deserve it though. I thought I was discerning about who I hooked up with, but yeah, it's been getting kind of goofy. I don't care, I guess. I mean what does it matter, right? I don't hook up with anything that moves. I'm really careful. If she's a person who can handle a cheap thing, then it's like sure, but if it's someone I care about an d really respect, I'm just not going to get" involved. Reputations suck. Who said it? Greg: Women talk. There's this network. Tim: So, how do you get them to leave Patrick? Greg: You kick them out at six in the morning! Patrick: I don't kick them out. I just-that's my problem, I don't get them to leave. I always kind of play along when they start doing the "I really want to hang out with you" t}ling, .and I'm like, "Yeah, me too." And then you kind of just say what you need to to get them to leave, and then you're like oh shit I think I kind of promised them something and they're going to get hurt. Tim: And then it's going to be a bunch of bumpy phone calls until they realize what you itwally-meant. That's how I feel. Patrick: Or at least, a weird "Hey, how's it going?" when you see them. But I don't understand. It seems like such a 19th century thing to be like, "Oh since we've slept together, that means I'm so committed to you." I've never understood why there should be such a connection in just one night. Greg: I feel that connection. That's why I get all hung up on one woman. Tim: You get hung up on the woman, not the sex. Greg: No, that's not quite it. They're inseperable, the woman as a person and the sex. I don't have sex with a lot of women, and the ones that I do, I then feel bound to. I've only slept with three women, so each one's a big deal ro me. Tim: I was just number 31 for this girl. Greg: Really?! Tim: And it scared the shit out of me, I was like, "What the fuck?" Patrick: How d id this come up, how did she tell you? Tim: It just came up afterwards, you know during that pose-sex safe sex talk: "Now that we've actually had sex, what do you think of STDs?" I was like, "Dude, you're not even a double digit for me." I accidently made her feel bad about it. She was like "Well, thanks for making me feel like a slut." I didn't mean it in that

Linda: For me it's a very aural type of thing. I don't feel guilty when I fake it. I've actually been asked if I've faked it and said no when I had. I lied, I lied. Amy: Are you serious? Now wait, here's a question. I feel like I couldn't even begin to fake it because they feel it. Linda: See, I think that's a lie because I don't think all guys know about that. ~ Melissa: Well, you can contract your muscles on your own. Amy: Yeah, that's true. Linda: You can? Melissa: Yeah, ready? I can do it right now. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Amy: Me, too. K_!fenÂˇ You did not jt.fst say that. Holy shit. .............. ~elissa: It's called Kegel exercises. _ ' Amy: You can totally feel it. Ready contract. Evtiybody practice. it right now. ~areJJ: I can feel it. What did you call it? ~elfssa: Kegel exercises. They're exercises you cah do to tighten :your muscles and you can do that while you're having sex. You \:an do that to grip the member and you know. 1 Linda: Your knowledge never ceases to amaze me. The thing is, for long time I didn't know whether I was having orgasm or not. In-chi!'heginnhtg y ou"Te likew:wthat'tt?' Did 1 just have one? Melissa: Yeah, but then when you do have one, you just know. Amy: Then you realize you've never had one before. Linda: When I have an orgasm it starts with this tingle in my toes. Amy: It starts in the feet. Melissa: That's when you hit the point of no return. Karen: Do you all squirm? I won't stay in one place, especially if I'm on a futon. I'll just walk down the futon. I've literally been told to stay still before because I just keep going. I just love it. It makes my body jerk in ways I obviously can't control. Linda: Do you scream or do you breathe heavily? Karen: I don't scream. Amy: I breathe heavily. Linda: I think I grip arms. Amy and Melissa: Yeah, so do I. Linda: It's kind of like, "If you leave I will kill you." Karen: I totally grip.

Karen: I don't give blow jobs on the first hook up. They could go down on me 800 times and it's so obvious that they want one but I hate giving them. That's all there is too it. Melissa: I disagree. I love giving them. Karen: What?! Melissa: If I'm with someone I find it very intimate. It turns me on. Linda: I have issues with taking my pants off and letting that person make me happy. It's a very protective sort of thing. Like, if I let you excite me then I will be attached to you. Karen: Yeah. Amy: Also, oral sex is more intimate than sex. Karen: It's also very hands on. Linda: It's also very one-sided at the time i:hat it's happening. Karen: Well, not necessarily. Meanwhile, that is fun. Melissa: That is fun. But somet imes it's just too h ard to concentrate. You're like, "Oh my god, what is going on?" You feel THE NEW JouRNAL

way, just wow, that's a lot of people. Greg: Were you nervous because she'd been with so many men? Tim: No, not really. I'd ~efinitely given her signals that I thought she was cut'e. But it wasn't that romantic or that special, it's just not. Last week I went to visit this friend down at Georgetown, and she's just a good friend. We didn't sleep together, we kissed a little bit, but we just slept in the same bed and talked and stuff, and that was much nicer, the kind of thing I'd like to do again. Greg: What was this girl like, how was her body? Tim: She's hot, but like no, it's not about physical hotness, it's about warmth. With some girls you feel more warmth than with others. Greg: Sometimes it's about heat. Tim: No, heat is like exercise. Patrick: It's about heat, about chemistry, but heat is a false feeling. Tim: Yeah, you get like, "Uh-uh," but it only lasts for like an hour. Patrick: Yeah, it's all bullshit though. Tim: It's the warmth that keeps you returning to the same person. Because you're like, "Wow, you made me feel so good to hang out with yesterday that I want to hang out with you again." Greg: I suppose, but there has to be that hot base. Tim: You know what I realized? When I went down to visit this girl at Georgetown, I really felt myself just opening up a little bit. I think I'm this open, talkative guy. But the truth is that I'm really not that open with most peoele. I think ,J,he reason I'm so hung up on my ex-girlfriend and why it hur'tso ihucb when she said goodbye is because our personal lives were so integrated, and that's why I think she got claustrophobic. It was like having a best friend who you can have sex with. It's fucked up when that ends. That's why I'm on this spree of cheap flin~. Cheap flings suck, they're not that special. Patrick: No, it's not that. It's that you kind of always want what you don't have a little bit. Tim: Yeah, when I was with her, I was like, oooh that girl, I'm curious. And the best part is th apptbach, the'1ooks across a party, the "oh you want to come up to my room?" the flirting, getting drunk together, bumming cigarettes, and the walk to the bedroom, and maybe the first kiss, and maybe feeling the breasts-okay, it can go on for a while. Greg: And the wetness between their legs. Tim: Gross. Greg: You can't be like, "Gross," you've got to be into that. Tim: No, I've always been so freaked out by vaginas. I think it's because of my sisters-I'm scared of aU these feminine things. But I think that's part of my secret to relating to women. Greg: The fear of the vagina is his secret! Patrick: I have this question actually, especially because you don't hook up that much, do you feel any pressure to have this active sex life, that your sex life is somehow definitive of your manhood or anything? Greg: Not at all. I feel pretty much no pressure. There was a couple of months last year, when I felt so content, I didn't feel like I needed a woman. I was horny, I masturbated, but I never really looked at the women around me. Like I'd meet someone pretty and be flirting with her, but the possibility just didn't enter my mind. You've never felt that way, that it doesn't matter?

FEBRUARY 13,

1998

like your technique is breaking down because you can't focus. Linda: Do you have technique? Melissa: Yeah, de-finitely. I have a technique. Karen: There's a definite pattern. Melissa: I'll just put in a note as a student AIDS educator that you really shouldn't swallow. Because there is a risk associated with getting diseases through oral sex. Amy: Really? Melissa: Yeah. You can completely reduce your risk by not swallowing. If you don't let any semen in your mouth you really reduce your risk. Linda: What if you spit? Melissa: That's better than swallowing. But if you don't let it into your mouth at all, that's the best. You can do the old "just give me a holler when you're about to you know." Karen: I think in general you can tell. Linda: You can feel a little vein pulse and you know it's about to happen. Meanwhile, it doesn't taste good. Let's just put that out on the table now. Amy: Yeah, and it's a respect. issue too. If you're not in a serious relationship and they expect you to swallow, it's like a violation. Linda: If they don't inform me or even make a motion to pull away, that makes me angry because then it's in your mouth. There's no place to spit it and it's like, "Now what do you expect me to do?" That's not respecting me. Amy: Exactly. Linda: And then there's the whole after-oral-sex-kiss thing. Kiss or no? Amy: Yes. Kiss. Melissa: Yes. Linda: It's like an intimate way of saying that was okay and nice. Melissa: Hey, have you guys ever tried any food products? Karen: Marshmallow. Melissa: Whipped cream. Karen: Nutella. That's totally good. Amy: I want to try Hershey's syrup. Karen: Marshmallows were actuaJly extremely disgusting but extremely incredible. You can put them pretty much anywhere and everywhere. Think taffy. Karen: You know what else? I love right before you hook-up. Linda: Why? Because you've got that feeling that you're going to hook up with someone? Karen: Yeah, anA you also know that you're good. It's like you can stand there and say ro him ~~your mind, "Yeah buddy, you don't even know whauou're atlout to deal with.." The best was in the middle someoQ_,e once.said, "Holy shit." Linda: I got-an "I'm melting." That was grear. Karen: First night: seven'posit1ons. Lillila: What?!'My &rsc:time I could only be on top because it hurt too much an~Chtr way. ' Karen: Mine didn't.ht.trrat all. Melissa: Jlosr my virginity in my own bedroom. Linda: Have you ever done it in your parents' bed? Melissa: Yeah, I've done it there. Karen: Okay, let's talk about positions. Linda: Top is good but after a while your legs start to fucking hurt.

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Tim: If I'm really tired, or depressed, or drunk beyond belief. Patrick: Not for more than 24 hours. Tim: I don't feel pressure to have lots of sex. It kind of just happens. Patrick: There's this myth about being the big man on campus, the guy that every woman wants. You know, you hear about these famous figures that were womanizers: Bertrand Russel, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller. Maybe it's just America, this kind of sense of the man who gets all the women and then throws them away. And if you're not doing that then you're not really a man. Greg: I always had an opposite ideal of manhood, which was the guy who's wounded and has this need to be alone and in solitude, but really has this need to love someone. I saw that as the masculine ideal, almost like Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rim. Tim: Well, wpat about Odysseus? He hooks up with all these girls all the way back home, and no one gives him shit. It was like part of his journey.

Patrick: Here's the thing, in my head, no one ever jerks off except me. Tim: Oh my god, what are you talking about? Patrick: It's like an emasculating thing. It's like you can't get a real woman so you have to stare at these ideal women in these magazmes. Tim: No, it's awesome. Greg: I'm kind of bored of it for the first time in my life. It's been since·I was 12, and I've been jerki~g off every single day. Tim: Every day since 12?! Greg: Yeah, I didn't know w~at was happening the first time. You know those PVC single baseball card holders? The soft plastic kind? I used to put lotion in there and put it on myself and rub up and down. And then one day all this stuff came out of me, and I was like, "Whoa!" Patrick: That kind of happened to me too. I heard about these people sleeping naked, and I was like, "Well, I guess I'll try that." I was like, "Whoa, this feels really cool." Tim: How old were you? Patrick: Maybe 13. You know one thing leads to another. I used to roll up the sheets and make a little tunnel-like thing, and then it was like, that feels pretty awesome. Greg: I did this one thing, where I hollowed out a banana and then put some lotion in it. That felt pretty good. And it split on the edges so I put duct tape around it. So then I told my friends about it, and of course they're going to tell everyone, and pretty soon the whole school knew about it. Patrick: I once heard about Brian Wilson [of the Beach Boys], because the way he found out about it was he had this basketball, and he used to lie down on it and roll around, and it felt really good. That's how he jerked off for years. He'd lie on the basketball until he came. I read this in some magazine, and so I thought if this guy's going to tell me about this, number one, I don't want to hear about it, and number two, my own little story can't be that fucked up. 1111

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Amy: It depends. It can be really fucking good both ways. Melissa: Best position of all time is guy lying on his back and you're lyin~ on top of him, but you're both facing t he same direction. Your cheeks are touching. Linda: You're cheek-to-cheek and hands are free? Melissa: You got it. Linda: Have you ever been on top and turned around? Amy and Melissa: Yeah. Melissa: Sitting on a chair like that is good too. Linda: Chairs are all good. Have you ever hooked up in the library? Amy: I've wanted to hook up in the library. Melissa: In the stacks. Top floor baby. Oh yeah. Another crazy place: in my country house pool. Linda: Water, huh? See I think water can be good but there's also a big friction problem. Shower? Amy: See it depends. The shower keeps pouring down on you. It's like, "Get the water out of my face! " linda: Soft kisses and little kisses are key. I hate it when people don't stop and take a breath. Karen: Or when they don't know how to maneuver. Linda: And sloppy kisses, yuck, those are terrible. You have to keep wiping your mouth. Karen: Sloppy kisses are the worst. Linda: And men who don't shave well. It's like your whole face is red and chafed. T hank you for the exfoliation. Karen: I think 90 percent of kissing is thinking that you do it well. Amy: I feel like people who think a lot, kiss well. People who are attuned to detail, kiss well. They take the time. Melissa: Smart people kiss better. Okay, now let's talk about wearing thongs or G-strings. At first I thought, no I'll never wear one but then I got one and I think it's extremely sexy. It's like I have a secret and you're going to find out soon. And wait uncil they find it because then guys are always like "Dam n, that's exciting!" Karen: I don't know, I always have the fear of getting a big wedgie. Melissa: No, no. You do not get a wedgie. Linda: You have to start with a good pair. Calvin Klein. Melissa: Victoria's Secret. Second Skin Satin. What abou t sex with virgins? H ave you ever slept with guys who are virgins? Linda: One every year that I've been at Yale. Amy: Wow. You attract them. Linda: T he thing is, it's nice because when they tell you, you feel honored that you're the one guiding them through this thing. The bad part is that it's not satisfying. But then you're hoping. For example, when I lost my virginity I became this sex fiend. The great part about being the one who takes someone's virginity is that you hope to be there for when they hit their fiend stage too. It's like, "Sure, I'll be the one you can practice on all day and night." Amy: Sex can complicate matters. Karen: It always does.

Kavita Mariwa//a, a unior in Ezra Stil~s Co//~g~. is a managing ~ditor of TN).

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O, What a Tangled Web ... Dan Kellu m He kissed me, then he kissed this other guy who I kissed lastyear. I don't kiss a lot ofpeople. Maybe he tloes, but that's not the issue. It's more complex than that. I met him last year when he was going out with this guy, David, who he later broke up with. Then he hooked up with the boy that David would go out with the next semester, the boy who would be the rebound for the boy I broke up with early that January. But again that's only one side of the story, because he also hooked up with a boy whom I had dated .roonths before, but then so clid David, and so did the boy I broke up witli in January. These relationships, wh"en thought of abstractly-only a series of hes-seem elegant in the way they follow after each other, like beads strung on a necklace. But the effect is less attractive when connected to a list of names, a catalogue of faces that keep popping up at the corner of York and Elm, then at a party you clidn't really feel like going to anyway. So many of these relationships amount to only glances, a kiss in a crowded room, a phone number scribbled into a matchbook. .. The romantic interests of some of the gay men I know have ambulated within such tight constraints that constructing a map of their liaisons would be confusing, even daunting, such a project ending with a spider's web of former hookups, traded ex-boyfriends. This web speaks to the fact that though there is not one unified gay community at Yale, there are networks of friends that date, even if it means they must impose on old loyalties. Recently, a graduate student I dated in the fall asked a friend of mine on a date. The graduate student had not been that special to me. I guess it didn't matter. But it was scill strange, because this friend had dated or hooked up with many of the same people I had in the past. He asked me for informacion about the grad student: he wanted to know if he was cool, why it had ended

between him and me, whether he should consider going out with him, never voicing any concern as to how invasive his interest might..have been. At the time I clidn't think much of it either, because there are so few gay men at Yale, so few that I could potentially be interested in. But the more I think about these sorts of occurrences, the more I think about how they devalue the meaning of these relationships. How can a hook up even potentially mean anything when it is so weighted with historical implication? Especially among friends who gossip, how can intimacy be attained in the midst of so much shared information? If you aren't thinking seriously about dating non-Yalies in New Haven, then you have to keep turning over the known possibilities, the names and faces of classmates you know to be gay. If you want to date a Yale man you are confronted, then, with a limited-so small its members seem achingly countable-pool of possible dates. You meet someone, you might think he's attractive, then you find out he's gay, then you think about him again. This return, this reconsideration, is important. In this situation the possibility of something turns into the something itself. the person you might not have considered suddenly become the person you leave a party with. It's an enabling compromise--"You're here. You're queer. I'll get used to it."-but maybe it will tum into something amazing, and maybe it's okay that you hooked up with him last year and you both agreed that it wasn't working out.

I'w seen him aroundfor the last couple ofyears. I knew he was gay. Now I'm rta!Ly into him. What tlo you think about him?. A friend said this to me at a party not long ago. He was revisiting his catalog of faces. Maybe the first rime he'd seen this other guy he felt the sparks that people talk about. Maybe my friend was dating someone else

THE NEW jOURNAL

then. Or maybe something changed about the boy in question. Maybe the boy had a new haircut or his conversation suddenly proved compelling, or maybe the boy had put a note in my friend's bookbag, something to the effect of, "I had an amazing time talking to you last weekend, maybe we could continue that conversation next Wednesday?" Maybe that bowled him over. Or maybe sensing the boundary of the possible reigned my friend in, made him consider what he had previously considered only in passing. Attractiveness in the gay community can be calculated much like a mathematical proof. Person X is attractive because Person X, Y, and Z are openly gay, and if we construct a relationship where X, Y, and Z, are compared, X wins. Person X is attractive because maybe X, Y, and Z are all there is right now. And even if person X isn't the ideal person to satisry this equation, he's still person X, and he's attractive even if less than amazing in other respects, and then too, he's gay and both he and you know it. So that's one thing. At least there is that one important thing.

The pairs ofkvm in Shaktsptart's A Midsummer Night's Dream smn inttrchangeabk to rrr.any readers. As if Helma might have mded up with Lysarukr and Htrmia with Dmutrius insttad ofviet vma. It's only import4nt that thty marry in tht md. It only matte'S that tvtrything mds happily, but, thm, that's sort oflike college. It's not who you're hooking up with that mattn"s, just that you're hooking up. A TA told me that. So maybe this dosed-circuit of hook-ups is more a condition of college, of being at the tail-end of adolescence, than of being gay in particular. Since any college community is a confined one, and since the gay community is a small part of that confined communi-

ty, and since loosely-formulated groups of friends are even smaller than that, settling is bound to happen to a certain degree. The thought, "I haven't hooked up in a year," becomes ammunition against any doubts you might have about the person you're flirting with while standing near the pony keg. Everywhere you go there are the same people, the same names, their interest in one another budding or wilting like so many listless flowers, motivated by tropisms rather than any true desire. Which is not to say that these aren't valid attractions, just that the exciting, allencompassing attractions one might expect to find exist in a pervasively disinterested setting, couched in an historically intertwined hook-up narrative.

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But is this situation actualiy a probkm? Should it bothtr those invoivt:d? This is the question I pose to myself. These friends who hook up with one another in spite of what has happened before, are they hurt by their own history? Does this siruation effect pain in the lives of those involved? I'm not really sure that it does. The situation doesn't seem to cause any real headaches, merely rurious bemusement. This messy configuration of entanglements isn't intrinsically a bad thing, because for the most part this history is cloaked in an understanding of adversity and a quiet respect for one another. And, though messy, these entanglements nonetheless contain something worth preserving. Because on the sidewalk in fiont of the Women's Center, or in line for packages at the post office they allow for it to happen. Despite all the intertwining associations, the convoluted mess of history, these links allow the earth-shattering something erstwhile recounted by sonneteers to happen between twO men. g

Dan KtUum, a junior in Silliman College, is on tht stajfofTNJ.

Mustering the Nerve Thinking About Thinking About Sex by Gabriel Snyder Nerve Magazine (http:/;www.nervemag.com)

NUKE RESPECTABLE SITES ON THE

Internet, Nerve immediately confronts the browser with a stern warning, "Nerve is a magazine of daring nude photography and brash writing about sex and gender." The notice hangs over the site like a faux "DANGER" sign on a wooden rollercoast- · er; the caution serves to make you feel like what you are doing is, well, a bit crazy- no matter how much you are counting on the tracks to hold up and the ride operators to know how to make the ride as utterly free of danger as possible. What you have come for is a careful simulation of exactly what you want to avoid. Nerve has dubbed itself "literate smut." The irony is intentional, but only partially. For a sexual culture like the one at Yale, where sex is easily politicized, theorized, and analyzed in seminars and senior essays, where personal feelings on sex are rarely acknowledged openly, where people are much more comfortable with the theory of sex than its practice, Nerve attempts to strike that perfeft balance between reason and passion, intellect and desire. Nerve winks at those of us who see ourselves as too smart to bow to the level of smut and agrees not to insult our intelligence with prurient photos and stories-all the time acknowledging that that's what we came for in the first place. But Nerve is not simply a high-brow version of the corner porn shop. The purpose of dirty movies or Hustkr magazine is to make a person think about having sex. The fantasy that Nerve presents is not of indulging in sex, but rather it is the fantasy of being someone who fantasizes about indulging in sex. SINCE THE SITE WAS U.UNCHED u.sT J UNE,

Nerve has received warm receptions from the

mainstream media which has been attracted more to essays by Nerve's well-known contributors (Norman Mailer, Jocelyn Elders, and Quentin Crisp, to name a few) than to any of the site's racier selections. And the site does not Jack for interesting reads, whether it be an account by a male prostitute, a ~ieee about selling sex toys in homes · (a la ~->Tupperware parties), or porn king AI Gol~stejn:s t~ 'of the beginnings of Screw. .With its ·£~anguished writers and photographers, Nerve aspires to join the pantheon of intelligent web sites, displayed dearly by the site's two main advertisers: Feed and Salon-the two titans, so to speak, of on-line culture. Nerve's two founders, Rufus Griscom and Genevieve Field, cenainly have the credentials to run a hip but smart new media venture. They are both refugees from the trenches of the New York literary world. Griscom even has the good taste to have graduated from an Ivy League school. But perhaps the most imponant qualification to run a site such as Nerve that Field and Griscom hold is that the two have been lovers for the last two years. O n the site, they take on the personas of two sex-crazed teenagers: "We are a couple of garden-variety sex enthusiasts, much like the rest of you mammals. O n a good night we call out to the heavens and thrash abour like hooked bass, clamoring after those precious few seconds of blindness." The content Nerve offers, though, makes all the rancor about smutty high culture seem a little silly. The photographs are as shocking as an art school crit, and the fiction is as daring as a college literary magazine. Everything is "good," to be sure, but with the mission of striking the difficult tone of literate smut, the works are warped into something they wouldn't normally be. Barbara Vaughn tries to

capture the beauty of the nude form by taking photos of herself naked outdoors on rocks and in forests. Field writes of Vaughn's work, "Her greatest challenge .. .is to avoid the deliberate sexuality that the viewer exp<its to find in images of the nude form." Vaughn can be confident that the challenge has been overcome. But, in the context of Nerve, Vaughn's pictures don't seem very smart {or very smutty). With the site's insistence that it means to turn its users on, the viewer who wants to appreciate Vaughn's photos is reduced to a 12-year-old boy snickering at the paintings by Titian by noting that, after all, they are of naked women. Elsewhere on the site, Nerve's attempts to be smutty fall ridiculously flat. For example, in the first installment of Jack Murnighan's column titled "Naughty Bits," he promises, "Every week I will be culling a particularly degant or juicy moment from the last three thousand years of fiction and poetry for your edification and arousal." One can imagine excerpts from D.H. Lawrence or the Kama Sutra filling the space, but Murnighan's choice is the story of Paolo and Francesca from Dante's Inferno. Of such staid lines as, " ... this one, I Who from me will never be taken, I Kissed me, his body all trembling, on the mouth," Murnighan coos like an eighth-grade English teacher, "Even in the Middle Ages they knew how to appreciate the naughty bits!" When Nerve does come dose to making us blush-as in Philip Martin's shott story, "The Eavesdropper"- the layers of irony turn the author into a fool. With "The Eavesdropper" Marcin seems to be ashamed to be stooping so low. His account of a failed marri~ interspersed with a blow-by-blow description

THE NEw joURNAL

of the couple's first time having sex-is not very far removed from a Penthouse letter. But with tips like this dialogu;; we know this isn't what he meant to do at all: "Do you want to fuck me?" She breathed. "More than anything in the world." "You want to fuck me hard?" "I want to fuck your brains out." She laughed. "Oh Will, that's not so original." "No, it's not."

We can't help from laughing either. The edi~ tors and writers know all too well that the smutry and the literate have nothing to do with each other, and the juxtaposition of the rwo is ludicrous to the point of being funny. We can read "The Eavesdropper" as if it were pornography, but only if we ignore Martin's attempts at being original through his uno rig~ inality. And if we want to appreciate it as liter~ ature, we must rationalize the sexuality away until it disappears. This absurd juxtaposition occurs again and again on Nerve. In a photograph by Charles Gatewood, we see a naked woman lying on a waterbed, legs spread toward the camera. She is masturbating, with one hand in her crotch and the other gripping at a breast. Surrounding her are 16 fashionable New York gallery~goers, pensively analyzing the performance artist's every moan. In the context of the drag queens and dominatrixes at discos and street festivals that make up the rest of his photo essay, Gatewood is clearly poking fun at such staid intellectuals. But it is bruising commentary on Nerve's project, as well. Cro~ ping out the gathered crowd of high-brows, he would have an image that he could sell to any porn magazine, but confronted with such a sexual display, the only reaction the culturally informed can muster is quiet study. The unmaking of Nerve is found in the site's statement of intent, tided with mock indignation, "What Are We Thinking? (An Apologia)," where Griscom and Field unwillingly stumble upon their own failings. They complain that smut trying to pass as art does not understand, "that once our desire reaches a certain clip, attempts at artistry become annoying obstacles in the path of the nouns and verbs (or precious IIBJ pixels) that deliver the goods."

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The Write Stuff We constantly feel the need to do it, but can anybody put sex into words? by jason

EX. THE WORD IS ALL SIB ILANCE. IT SOUNDS

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like it feels. Salacious: This word, too, seems to hiss at us. It's as if at the level of some deep, ancient structure of the brain, language and libido coalesce. The compulsion to write melds with the subconscious drive to copulate. This drive Âˇmay lead to obsession, but purportedly, Yalies don't have much sex. What better way to displace our desire than to write about it? It seems to be a trend that Yalies replace actually acting passionately with writing passionately. Unfortunately, in the midst of all this huffing and puffing, writing about sex tends to be lamentably bad. It's not surprising really. Sex is truly one of the most difficult things to write about, and those Yalies who dare to hazard it deserve a medal of valor if not a medal for the product of that valor. In Elizabeth Michaud's (CC '77) poem "Passion by Permit" recently reprinted in Zirkus, one Yalie lays it all on the line: "This vehicle of love I Needs a little affection I Oh baby, won't you honk I In my direction?" Aware that bad sex writing is not confined to Yale literary magazines, trashy romance novels, and sci-fi thrillers, The Lomkm Literary Review gives a prize each year to passages about sex from seri'ous fiction that are "embarrassed, and embarrassing." This little gem comes from Philip Kerr's 1995 prize-winning novel Gridiron: "His tremulous thumbs gathered the elastic waist of her panties and plucked them over the twin gold domes of her behind and up over the suspended sentences and Sobraine filter tips of her stocking tips." What the hell is he talking about? This passage appears in Ben Okri's Booker Prize winning Dangerous Lov~ "Then, as if in a new ritual in which they knew their exact role, they stood up as one. They clung to one another. Omoro breathed in the rich aroma of her hair oils. Then he felt his way down her back with both hands. And he stopped at the rotundity of her backside. After that, things happened rather fast." I'm not sure Okri's readers were all too turned on by "the rotundity of her backside." Nor, I surmise, were they all too impressed with the unabashed evasive maneuvers at the end of the passage. But Yale writers are not necessarily embarrassed about writing

D'Cruz

about sex. Many of us seem to have quite the opposite problem: shamelessness. After all boundaries are crossed, we're left with nothing ~o transgress. Gene Huang's (SM '98) poem "3 a.m. Sunday Morning" appeared in Aurora this year. At first it attempts subtlety, and ta,kes the indirect approach: "I remember the nights of insomnia all too well, the obvious cure I being that which had forced sleep before, waving me under I its arm like a fireman shepherding me though smoke, or a magician I vanishing me as his act." In the next stanza, however, all restraint is thrown to the wind: "We learn we are men by the bunching of skin I and the formation of fist ... " Ugh. Perhaps some fresh air would have helped fight off this bout of sleeplessness. Ever since Norman Mailer and friends opened up the floodgates in the 1960s, discretion has given way to insanely detailed epic sex scenes, more akin to the instruction manual of a new hi-fi stereo system than a description of people making love. Sex became nothing more than a series of actions, painstakingly noted. Of course, forthrightness is a virtue, and candor has its place. Take, for example, Chris Schmidt's (SM '97) inspired Yak Herald review of everyone's favorite cinematic social commentary, Showgirls: "Tits! Tits! Tits! Big tits, buff tits, bouncy tits, and, of course, 'nice tits.' If you've been lacking your requisite mammary fix, there's enough here to last you months." The. cynicism of this film critique reminds us of what happens when sex is no longer about people but rather about things. The mechanics of sex are quite simple, and nothing new or interesting can come out of hashing them out once again. It's the psychological baggage that comes along that can be illuminating: the yearning, the guilt, the vulnerability, the rage, the submission. At the same time, when sex scenes are wrought with fury and emotion, they run the risk of being embarrassingly cliche. Somehow, we have to find the right b;llance. Yale writers can be adventurous and imaginative without spoiling all the fun by spelling everything out. Arriving at this balance is no doubt a task of Herculean proportions. By the looks of it, though, there is no sign that Yalies will stop trying. Ia)

Joson D'Cruz, o sophomore in Ezra Stiles College, is on the stoff ofTNj. THE NEW jOURNAL

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