Looking back on the semester

By: John Bailey

Posted: 12/3/08

Excuse me! What are you doing? Were you paying attention? So I've been standing up here shrieking about penises all semester and you've just been texting the whole time? Fine! Pop quiz, class. It's 50 percent of your grade, and if you fail, we kill your family. Yeah, I'm sorry, but that's how it's gotta be. I don't just hand A's out for free. I hand them out when you do well on the Sex and the UniverCity retrospective quiz. Also, I sometimes hand them out for hefty material compensation.

1. Sept. 3: You need your space! If your relationship is turning into a suffocating roll of bubble-wrap, you should...

A. Sit your significant other down and say, with helpful hand gestures, that you need some more space.

B. Scare your significant other away with your grasp of simile and metaphor. "Honey, my love is like a country. You are global warming. Globally, you are warming the country of my love. It is too warm."

C. Drop silently out of the ventilation shaft and break your lover's neck, like a deer passing through a grove of young ferns.

2. Sept. 16: The proper way to promote healthy sexuality for women is to...

A. Encourage an open forum for frank, honest, respectful discussion of both male and female sexuality.

B. Drink until sex seems like a good idea.

C. Prevent them from ever hearing the words "sex," "butt," and "hug," unless you're talking about hugging Christ. Also, blindfold them and keep them locked in the basement until they're thirty.

3. Sept. 1: Ideally, you should introduce sexual fetishes in a relationship through...

A. Building an intimate, communicative relationship. Make it clear that you both love each other, and will keep an open mind to whatever the other has to say - even if you think it's strange, you'll withhold judgment.

B. Threatening to hold their stuffed animals hostage.

C. Buying a flip-chart and a 20-pack of magic markers. Draw an elaborate diagram. "I go here, you go here, the cactus goes there, the slip 'n' slide will be aimed out the window." If they balk, knock them out with chloroform.

4. Oct. 15: When your male partner finds himself muttering "sorry, honey," a little too often, you should...

A. Encourage him to get in touch with his own sexual response patterns.

B. Put up posters of his likeness all over campus with the words "SHORT TRAIN, NO CABOOSE."

C. Sleep with his roommate.

5. Nov. 5: Barack Obama's election is good for men everywhere because...

A. We'll appreciate and attempt to emulate his intellectual-but-charismatic, restrained-but-confident masculinity.

B. We'll get tons better at jump shots, dancing and freestyle rapping.

C. We think he's much hotter than George Bush.

Correct answers: A, A, A, A, A. You all fail. The correct answer is always: talk, be open, be honest and then talk some more. If you'd been paying attention all semester instead of reading about and dumb movies and rock 'n' roll music, maybe you'd be able to get out of this quiz with your pride intact. As it is, you've demonstrated to me that none of you are fit to even possess genitalia - or cars, for that matter. I'll be sending someone around to collect your cars over the break.