If you haven't read Part One yet, go read it now. It's cool. I'll wait.
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My first roommate was Kelly*. She was in ROTC. She got suspended first semester for going to a party where there was alcohol. Enough about Kelly.
Because this part of the story isn't about Kelly. Kelly doesn't count. This is about my real college roommate. Brunhilda*.
I first met Brunhilda at orientation. She was an introverted girl hiding in the back corner of the cafeteria. I was an agressively friendly extrovert seeking out people who didn't already have friends. It was love/hate at first sight. I take great pride in the fact that when we first met, I scared her. Because from then on, it was the other way around.
Brunhilda was the kind of person who jokes about becoming a serial killer, and you honestly aren't sure she's joking. And, of course, she was a nursing major.
This, obviously, made her the ideal candidate for my best friend.
We moved in together the last few weeks of first semester. Kelly had practically moved out, Brunhilda's didn't get along well with her previous roommate, it seemed perfect. So, we packed up my room, shoved it all 5 doors down the hall, and started a friendship that would last our entire college career and beyond.
Now, Brunhilda didn't come from quite as conservative a background as mine, although she certainly didn't come from some progressive hippie house. Her family was only slightly less conservative than mine, but somehow, she was far bolder and more progressive than me already. I blame this, in part, in the emotional abuse I'd unknowingly received from my father, training me never to question his - and subsequently anyone else's - authority. Brunhilda became the Honest John to my Pinocchio, leading me off to the "pleasure island" of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Despite being introverted, she had a very strong personality that both appealed to me and ultimately began to rub off on me. Now, before you accuse me of succumbing to peer pressure or anything, the reason her personality rubbed off on me so easily is not because of the stereotypical "if your friends jumped off a bridge" nature of young adults, but because here was the type of bold, empowered individual I'd always secretly dreamed of becoming, but had never dared.
In October, I started dating George*. This was my first real relationship, and my first boyfriend since freshman year of high school. George and I had started as close friends for my last two years of high school, and had been leaning toward something more for quite some time, so when, two months into my freshman year at Olivet, he confessed to me that he loved me, I was elated. Although it was a long-distance relationship - he was two years younger than me, and so was still finishing high school back in my hometown - we began chatting every night. It was bliss.
When I was twelve, I decided I was going to save my first kiss for my wedding day, and I think it's a pretty serious indicator of the kind of family I grew up in that my parents took this 12-year-old vow seriously. At the age of twelve, I had barely started puberty, but somehow this qualified me to make sweeping sexual declarations, and my parents expected me to follow through, even long after I had realized how unreasonable a goal it had become. It went from joking around the dinner table to a very serious expectation - one that, should I renege, would break my poor mother's heart.
It is for this reason, I remember waltzing, smugly, into my room after a long weekend home, during which I had received my first kiss, as if kissing a boy at the ripe young age of nineteen was somehow a secret, taboo sort of behavior, the kind of bold activity that would create scandals and shock my peers. I remember excited late-night whispers, as I regaled the tale of my very first sexual experience with a boy.
I remember the kiss itself, too. Riddled with guilt and shame. How dare I desire to share something so sacred with a mere boyfriend? Nevermind that it started as an accident - I had gone to kiss his cheek and missed (he confessed to me later that was a lie. I was not angry. I had already known.) - I was tainted goods now. I was so ashamed it took me a full year and a half to finally tell my mother. Another month after that to tell my father.
It was in telling Brunhilda about it, however, just days after the initial event, that caused me to start to think, perhaps this is not so monumentally shameful as I thought. After all, people had been kissing boyfriends for ages, and somehow the entire institution of marriage had not crumbled beneath a sea of infidelity. Between Brunhilda and George, somehow, I began to accept my sexuality as a normal thing. This was the first step to becoming a heathen. Now, I was sexually active.
Now, the funny thing about shaming people into behaving a certain way is that, when they do finally break the rules and realize how not-guilty they feel, it leads to a long thought process of questioning everything you've ever told them. This is the true nature of the "slippery slope of sexual immorality." A combination of painfully repressed sexual curiosity, coupled with the sudden realization that everything you've ever known might potentially be a lie, leads fairly quickly from first kiss to first makeout to first grope to first blowjob. It still takes time, but ultimately, curiosity gets the best of you.
The truth is, sexuality is normal, and when you make it taboo, as my parents had done, all you do is make it sexier. Everyone wants what they can't have, and when you glorify it into some exceedingly desirable, but strictly forbidden fruit, it makes it all the more delicious, and all the more impossible to resist, so that when you finally do give in, it's not in small bites - you eat the whole damned thing.
You know, it's a funny thing, becoming a heathen. It never happens slowly. It always seems to happen all at once. Because when you're already going to hell, why not go further?
[Continued in Part Three]
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*Names have been changed for privacy.
--------------------
My first roommate was Kelly*. She was in ROTC. She got suspended first semester for going to a party where there was alcohol. Enough about Kelly.
Because this part of the story isn't about Kelly. Kelly doesn't count. This is about my real college roommate. Brunhilda*.
I first met Brunhilda at orientation. She was an introverted girl hiding in the back corner of the cafeteria. I was an agressively friendly extrovert seeking out people who didn't already have friends. It was love/hate at first sight. I take great pride in the fact that when we first met, I scared her. Because from then on, it was the other way around.
Brunhilda was the kind of person who jokes about becoming a serial killer, and you honestly aren't sure she's joking. And, of course, she was a nursing major.
This, obviously, made her the ideal candidate for my best friend.
We moved in together the last few weeks of first semester. Kelly had practically moved out, Brunhilda's didn't get along well with her previous roommate, it seemed perfect. So, we packed up my room, shoved it all 5 doors down the hall, and started a friendship that would last our entire college career and beyond.
Now, Brunhilda didn't come from quite as conservative a background as mine, although she certainly didn't come from some progressive hippie house. Her family was only slightly less conservative than mine, but somehow, she was far bolder and more progressive than me already. I blame this, in part, in the emotional abuse I'd unknowingly received from my father, training me never to question his - and subsequently anyone else's - authority. Brunhilda became the Honest John to my Pinocchio, leading me off to the "pleasure island" of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Despite being introverted, she had a very strong personality that both appealed to me and ultimately began to rub off on me. Now, before you accuse me of succumbing to peer pressure or anything, the reason her personality rubbed off on me so easily is not because of the stereotypical "if your friends jumped off a bridge" nature of young adults, but because here was the type of bold, empowered individual I'd always secretly dreamed of becoming, but had never dared.
In October, I started dating George*. This was my first real relationship, and my first boyfriend since freshman year of high school. George and I had started as close friends for my last two years of high school, and had been leaning toward something more for quite some time, so when, two months into my freshman year at Olivet, he confessed to me that he loved me, I was elated. Although it was a long-distance relationship - he was two years younger than me, and so was still finishing high school back in my hometown - we began chatting every night. It was bliss.
When I was twelve, I decided I was going to save my first kiss for my wedding day, and I think it's a pretty serious indicator of the kind of family I grew up in that my parents took this 12-year-old vow seriously. At the age of twelve, I had barely started puberty, but somehow this qualified me to make sweeping sexual declarations, and my parents expected me to follow through, even long after I had realized how unreasonable a goal it had become. It went from joking around the dinner table to a very serious expectation - one that, should I renege, would break my poor mother's heart.
It is for this reason, I remember waltzing, smugly, into my room after a long weekend home, during which I had received my first kiss, as if kissing a boy at the ripe young age of nineteen was somehow a secret, taboo sort of behavior, the kind of bold activity that would create scandals and shock my peers. I remember excited late-night whispers, as I regaled the tale of my very first sexual experience with a boy.
I remember the kiss itself, too. Riddled with guilt and shame. How dare I desire to share something so sacred with a mere boyfriend? Nevermind that it started as an accident - I had gone to kiss his cheek and missed (he confessed to me later that was a lie. I was not angry. I had already known.) - I was tainted goods now. I was so ashamed it took me a full year and a half to finally tell my mother. Another month after that to tell my father.
It was in telling Brunhilda about it, however, just days after the initial event, that caused me to start to think, perhaps this is not so monumentally shameful as I thought. After all, people had been kissing boyfriends for ages, and somehow the entire institution of marriage had not crumbled beneath a sea of infidelity. Between Brunhilda and George, somehow, I began to accept my sexuality as a normal thing. This was the first step to becoming a heathen. Now, I was sexually active.
Now, the funny thing about shaming people into behaving a certain way is that, when they do finally break the rules and realize how not-guilty they feel, it leads to a long thought process of questioning everything you've ever told them. This is the true nature of the "slippery slope of sexual immorality." A combination of painfully repressed sexual curiosity, coupled with the sudden realization that everything you've ever known might potentially be a lie, leads fairly quickly from first kiss to first makeout to first grope to first blowjob. It still takes time, but ultimately, curiosity gets the best of you.
The truth is, sexuality is normal, and when you make it taboo, as my parents had done, all you do is make it sexier. Everyone wants what they can't have, and when you glorify it into some exceedingly desirable, but strictly forbidden fruit, it makes it all the more delicious, and all the more impossible to resist, so that when you finally do give in, it's not in small bites - you eat the whole damned thing.
You know, it's a funny thing, becoming a heathen. It never happens slowly. It always seems to happen all at once. Because when you're already going to hell, why not go further?
[Continued in Part Three]
--------------------
*Names have been changed for privacy.
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