Most people who know me (hi, Mom!) know that I have a boyfriend. For those of you who have read my supremely geeky arts columns over the past year, this may come as something of a surprise. Even more surprising, actually, is not only that I have done this, but that I have done it more than once during my time at Harvard. I’m not saying it was easy; few and far between are the men who can understand a reference to Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo or get pumped about spending a Saturday evening plowing through Gandhi. Suffice it to say, I did find one of these men, and that he is charming, intelligent, hilarious, and just as much of an enormous geek as I am. We’ve been together for eighteen months, and while our relationship isn’t always perfect (I cannot for the life of me understand the appeal of basketball blogs or playing old Zelda games on one’s laptop), it’s certainly been fun.

According to the latest in the Harvard door-drop scene, however, people like my boyfriend and I don’t really exist — we’re mere exceptions, caught in the all-Harvard war between the Puritans and the sex-crazed. While I admit that normal, boring, old dating doesn’t exactly make for much of a puff piece, it seems that Harvard has something of a schizophrenic attitude about relationships.

Take, for example, the mighty Crimson, which has featured not one, but two front-page stories this semester on non-mainstream relationships. One discussed students who date but choose to abstain from sex, while another profiled couples in the class of ’07 who are headed to the altar. (Perhaps this latter group is superhuman, because I can’t even finish my papers on time, much less plan a wedding on the side.) The abstinence article, written by Nan Ni, paints a Stepford-perfect picture of one of these couples: “A boyfriend and girlfriend matched in height and sunny dispositions, they demonstrate a discreet, natural sort of affection in public — often trading conspiratorial smiles or finishing each other’s sentences. They play racquetball together, study together, and spend hours engaged in conversation together.” Who knew that racquetball was the dating equivalent of a cold shower?

The aforementioned couple are spiritual affiliates, but not members, of True Love Revolution, Harvard’s new abstinence support group (though I’m sure they’d be a great team in any TLR-sponsored sporting event.) However, a number of people on campus are interested in abstinence, perhaps a partial explanation for the UHS statistic that 47 percent of Harvard has never engaged in vaginal intercourse. Subtracting, say, three or four percentage points for the gay men of Harvard (most of whom, as far as I know, are not qualifiers for TLR), that leaves almost half the campus as virginal as the hero of an ’80s teen comedy. Naturally, as TLR has proved, some of these students have chosen to wait for the right time; the rest, I assume, merely lack adequate space for the act within the Lamont reading room. So, where does that leave the other, copulating half of the student body?

The Crimson rings in with the buzzer again! Their answer: random hook-ups. The paper’s magazine, Fifteen Minutes, leads this opposite charge, featuring the weekly “As It Were” page, in which photographs of grinding, snogging young scholars surround a weekly party rating chart that includes the category of “ass.” (I’m happy to say that the one party I ever helped to throw received a respectable A- in this field.) The mini-articles in the front also make no bones about the hook-up scene, with a semi-weekly party report and the oft-raunchy “Bell Lap” column, which almost always deals with the follies of its authors in getting laid. FM is not all naughty fun and games; the scrutiny, a more serious feature article that is the anchor of the paper, is typically about disillusioned, marginalized, or traumatized groups at Harvard and their attempt to find peace in their busy, troubled lives — in other words, a real libido-killer. Flip the page, however, and you might find those wacky “As It Were” folks, an article by staffer/sex blogger Lena Chen, or even, as in a recent issue, a chat with Dr. Ruth Westheimer. While the magazine’s content varies weekly and is not always so sexy, I think it’s reasonable to say that if all your knowledge of Harvard College came from a year’s supply of FM, you would probably think we party and get it on far more often than we actually do. On your arrival to campus, this theory would be confirmed by the popularity of the FemSex seminar and annual female orgasm talk (about to return for its third year), and the continued détente between Harvard and the independently-owned, famously all-male finals clubs, a veritable parade of campus hook-up hotspots.

But what of us, the non-abstaining couples who also enjoy love and trust and all that mushy stuff? While my boyfriend and I haven’t exactly become infatuated with racquetball and long walks by the river, I still think we’re a pretty good pair. I know that there are many others like us, people who love, or at least like, each other; while we may have a, um, “fun” time at the end of a Saturday night, we know we’re going to be able to scarf brunch and do some homework together on Sunday morning. We have our cake and go to the movies with it, too. From the looks of the Harvard press, however, you’d probably never know it. My relationship will likely not end in marriage, but it has ended in love and a best friend to always hang out with, and that’s a pretty good reward in itself. While I respect the choices of those who are putting off sex or who prefer one-night stands, I also think that there should also be a more open emphasis on those of us who have managed to build successful relationships, which can often be a safety net in the free fall that is Harvard life. If that’s where you want to be, keep your eyes open: while they may not be your ideal, someone good is bound to be out there for you. And if it works out, don’t take it personally if you can’t relate to the faces in the paper.


Allie Pape ’08 (pape@fas) will try harder with this Nintendo thing, even if it means being coerced to applaud Link’s horse’s galloping qualities.



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