It being the last day of classes and all, I doubt there is a better time to admit it: I think sex and alcohol are two of the very best things in life. Seriously.
I would guess that well over half of my favorite memories with friends involved some amount of drinking, and I know for a fact my most treasured romantic moments were those of physical intimacy.
I remember one night over Winter Break during my sophomore year. My girlfriend had come to Minnesota to celebrate New Year's at my friend's cabin up north. Upon arrival, those present included eight of my best friends from high school, my girlfriend who had only met everyone else just a few hours earlier, and a big box full of alcohol.
The night resulted in one of my most beloved memories of college. My Minnesota friends immediately embraced my girlfriend, I reconnected with one of my best friends from high school and outrageous laughter filled the room through out the entire night.
As for sex (or simply being physical), I had an equally positive experience during my freshman year. I had flown into Boston to visit my girlfriend, and we had arranged to spend the weekend exploring Cape Cod. And though we did make it to our hotel (which was actually on the cape), for the three days we were there we probably spent less than two hours outside of our room.
We normally enjoyed getting out and being active, but being at the peak of our relationship, there were simply too many things that needed to be said-most of which could not be expressed in words. The memory of falling in and out of sleep next to her for hours on end remains as one of the most peaceful of my life.
But it's the damnedest thing: Alcohol and physicality have also been present in nearly all of my life's most regrettable moments too. And not surprisingly, the worst of the worst usually included both.
I am sure we have all had those moments. Those feelings of sickness and regret that cause us to utter the most overused phrase in college. "I am never drinking again." And though we may sometimes say this in response to actual physical discomfort, I think in the times when we really mean it, it is spoken not out of pain but guilt.
This is not to say that one should necessarily feel guilty about drinking-that's for you to decide. Rather, I think it is simply important to note that many of us (including myself) oftentimes do. And, if we can accept that many of us sometimes regret our drunken actions, our central question then becomes, "How is one to approach sex and alcohol given the fact that they can cause so much harm yet be the source of so much good?"
I respond as one of my favorite professors often does. "You do it just like porcupines screw... very carefully." Just like all the best things in life, what makes sex and alcohol so potent and powerful can also make them dangerous. And I believe the difference between when they lead to regret as opposed to joy is dependent on one thing: the extent to which they become selfish.
Sometimes we drink because we want to enjoy a night conversing and laughing with friends. Other times, we drink to escape the ways we normally act, to be more outrageous than usual and do things we would not usually be OK with. At times we may feel compelled to kiss someone out of a desire to show them how much we appreciate and care for them. Other times, we do it simply because we like the way it physically feels for ourselves.
The difference in these scenarios is the direction of our focus: internal or external.
Hence, sex and alcohol provide two of the most profound (and enjoyable) ways to engage and interact with the external world around us. However, they can also serve as two of the most objectifying and perverse ways to retreat into the internal world of selfish desires.
It's LDOC. Sex and alcohol will be in their highest concentrations of the year. It has been a long semester, and we all deserve to kick back and have some fun. So let us drink and be merry and all that. I guess I just ask that if we choose to drink or hook up with the people around us, we do so not because of what we want, but because of who they are.
Mark Stoltenberg is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday. This is his final column.
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