Much Ado About Nothing

I'm currently writing an essay for university. It's not particularly that interesting - it's about hypothetical situations with hypothetical people. It's not even about the hypothetical people - it's about decisions one has to make when dealing with these people. Yeah, I know - theoretical training via the "learn by thinking about it" method. You'd think that we'd have learned this stuff through the practical side of the course. Ah well. Get it done and hand it in and then I can go back to being sulky, resentful and highly sexed.

I've never liked this course or this university. But at least some time ago sex was mentioned, even in a slightly perfunctory fashion and not even covering all bases. I am also aware that sex really isn't exactly much to do with this course or the job that it's training you up for. But it's one of the basic needs if you look at all as Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. (I didn't even know I was familiar with Maslow's hierarchy. That just slipped out. Bizarre.) As a result, I gave that perfectly irrelevant presentation about expressing sexuality last year, played mostly for laughs.

The problem I have isn't with this essay (although I'd rather not be writing it... I'd rather be lying on my back reading Green Arrow, or lying on top of a girl, preferably in a manner that involves penetration); it's with the stupid attitude my university takes towards sexuality - they don't really mention it. I'm not even talking about my course here. I've talked to students at the same university not studying the same course, natch. English students (ahh, those were the days...) studying Doctor Faustus (I repeat...) don't seem to have anything based on the subject at all. In three years. Back at my old alma mater we had an entire module on queer theory - not that I did the module, but it was an option - plus the opportunity to edit an anthology (my group chose sex, of course), hosted by a tutor who was very gleeful in being able to say the word "fuck". None of that here.

I've chatted online to an ex-computer science student (she quit after one year) who, according to her LJ profile, does incredibly erotic things to people over IRC. But back in my old university, there was also a computer science student who, so I hear, goes even further than that. This one graduated. As an English bod myself, I wouldn't have known her had I not heard her talking openly about online sex chat rooms.

There's an atmosphere of no sex in this university. It all feels very stilted. The one student who mentioned it, myself notwithstanding, only did so to tell me that she'd had sex with Johnny Borrell. She's not even there any more. People give me odd, even dirty, looks when I sit in a chair and read Belle de Jour. I'm afraid to even mention the subject in case I gain a reputation (as if I don't already have a reputation; I'm the resentful weird one with the loud voice). Where are the posters? Where's the music? Where are the people making snide references to prostitution and reading John Donne's The Flea?

My university doesn't 'do' sex. And I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it.