The Realization That You Can Have Sex in the Stacks

Your friends are out drinking, and you’ve just walked off the elevator on to the 4th floor of Perkins in pursuit of PS3527.A15 L6 1992 c.2. Off to your left are a few students with their heads buried in their books, and maybe even that girl you’ve always wanted to talk to but never have—her face framed in dirty blonde curls, one tanned leg tucked under the other, cozied and warmed by soft gray sweatpants. It’s quiet.  

You start wandering down the stacks, constantly checking back to your scrap of paper. You think you’ve found the right aisle and suddenly, you’re alone in an alley. The books offer wide patches of cover while still allowing tantalizing peep holes to the outside.

By now the silence is heavy and books that probably haven’t been touched in decades are calling out to you, throwing themselves at you.  

You’ve tunneled. You scaled Baldwin. Maybe you even borrowed a friend’s Jeep and tore around the traffic circle backwards a few times. And now here you are, a senior in Perkins on a Wednesday night at 12:47 a.m., sober, researching a thesis and you’re thinking about it. You can’t not think about it. Bare heels digging into that rough carpet, its passive yellow mustiness begging to be offended, appalled, shocked, violated! Books wobble off the shelves and foreign sounds break the mandated blanket of quiet.

Someone might find you. Maybe it’s a sultry librarian. And now you’re thinking about her sexy glasses and pinned back hair discovering you and a partner up against the shelves and before you know it you’re having yourself a full-fledged fantasy, and congratulations! You’ve just come to the realization that you could totally have sex in the stacks.

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