[sebbie]

Guys frequently have this really complicated relationship going on with their own bodies. And Randall is no different than any other guy his age. Roommate Shawn too, but more about that later. Guys realize at a very early age that whether or not a guy is feeling horny or not feeling horny depends on a weird mixture of the psychological and the physical, and for there to be something physical, there ordinarily at least needs to be some sort of psychological “triggering mechanism”.

I suppose that the most generally recognized psychological triggering mechanism involves the potential for some sort of direct physical contact with a sexual partner, traditionally a female about the same age as the guy experiencing the phenomenon. But having said this, the reality is a whole lot more complex and intriguing. Historically, guys bought magazines with photos of unclad female bodies with the underlying idea that in simply looking at such pictures they were make guys feel horny. Nowadays the common thing to do is to pull up a porno video on the internet and watch that while jerking oneself off. Doing this is simply accepted as common behavior for ordinary guys such as Shawn and Randall as college freshmen. Indeed, something might be wrong if each of them did NOT do this to and with themselves perhaps fairly regularly. OK there are some really “serious" guys out there who like to keep this part of their psyche deeply hidden, if it exists at all.

Yet few guys are comfortable revealing to their male friends the extent of their behaviors in this regard. No guy wants to be known as simply a guy who enjoys jerking off watching porn to the exclusion of everything else such as sexual activity that directly involves another person. Yet jerking ff while watching porn has its advantages as well, in that there are not all those messy relationship-related issues to contend with. And we live in a time in which a guy who thought he was having a consensual sexual relationship with a female is informed 15 years later that the same female now thinks that whatever happened was not consensual but forced sex.

This quickly gets to be messy stuff, in which a guy’s entire career and life is deeply affected by events that may or may not have happened a long time ago. If this is the world we live in what is to stop any sexual partner from potentially turning on the guy at whatever point in time this might serve some political end? That on top of all the other issues floating around that haunt partner sex between unmarried couples in all its forms, including the pregnancy risk, transmission of serious sexually transmitted diseases and so on. Given all of this, it’s a wonder that sexual partnerships ever happen at all.

And indeed, a lot of guys are probably trying to seek a pathway that avoids as much of this complicated and messy stuff, at least until they get out of college.

I realize that many male college students manage to somehow navigate their college years having one or more sexual partners on a more or less continuing basis without getting themselves too deeply involved in the various downsides of trying to do this even as they pursue a college degree. I also realize that a lot of college students see the social aspects of where they are as being extremely important perhaps more important than the academic parts of their life. I also realize that lots of college students struggle in meeting minimum academic requirements and some of these eventually don’t make the cut academically , so to speak.

Still, there are also plenty of college students whose lives don’t revolve around having partner sex two or three times a week. Students like Randall and Shawn perhaps. But Randall and Shawn both occasionally (ahem!) feel horny. What to do? There are a variety of solutions to this puzzle of course, and some of these solutions might prove to be a bit embarrassing but ultimately not be a significant problem.

For example, suppose that Shawn comes home early because a class got dismissed early and find Randall sitting in his underwear watching porn in a video on his smart phone, and Randall obviously has a raging hard on. What does Shawn say to Randall? Is there a phrase that represents proper etiquette in such a “situation”. When someone dies, a proper phrase is “I am sorry for your loss” Or to a veteran coming home from serving in the military “thank you for your service!”, but is there an appropriate way to acknowledge that your roommate is really enjoying himself without being too silly or up front about what is obviously going on? I don’t know that any books have been written on the subject. “May I join you” seems just a little bit too front and forward it would seem.

Randall must always realize by now that enjoying himself is a lot more fun if at the same time he is wearing an article of clothing that fits particularly snug and tight, and exactly what he is wearing should Shawn drop in the room unexpectedly might affect how things proceed from that point. But still, Randall is not having to deal with any of the messy issues that would occur should he be having partner sex. And, of course, college roommates have been known to wander in unexpectedly when that is going on too. What is the proper way for the guys to deal with that situation? Say nothing and act like absolutely nothing is going on? And what happens if the two people engaging in partner sex are both guys, and the male roommate is the third male in the dorm room?

These are complicated questions, all of them.

To be continued…