Monday, December 01, 2003
(8:27 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Hills Hall: Gay Bath House?
Although I have been highly critical of Olivet Nazarene University in the past, there is one area where I absolutely cannot fault the school: the male bonding. The administration spared no effort or expense in making sure that the men of Olivet would find in one another not simply casual friends or people to "hang out" with, but genuinely intimate confidants. With the exception of three horrible hours a week, they allowed us men to have our refuge in all the dorms, but primarily (in my heart and mind) Hills Hall.
Freed from the pressures to put up a front for women, we shared everything with one another. Many lifted weights together; many shared prayer and devotional times together; many gave selflessly in order to help one another with studies; everyone banded together to help those in emotional distress. Our lively interconnectedness was illustrated most perfectly in our community shower time. Walking down the hall in nothing but a towel (if that), rounding up a good group of friends, we would come together in the showers -- there, nothing was out of bounds.
It is impossible to lie to someone who is looking at your penis, we all found, and I think I speak for all Hills residents when I declare that the bonding that took place in the shower was the cement holding my spiritual and emotional life together during my entire career at Olivet Nazarene University. We helped each other get at those hard-to-reach spots, and sometimes, imitating our Savior's blessed example, we would wash the easy-to-reach spots for each other as well.
Our zeal in helping each other knew no bounds -- many would go to great lengths to demonstrate that the body parts they had helped to wash were clean enough to eat off of. And how liberating it was to be in a place where public erections were not a source of embarrassment! We were all men in the very bloom of youth, and the occasional random erection was met with understanding and with help. All of us were familiar with the discomfort of a long-term erection, and so if anyone needed to "finish it off," either on his own or with some outside assistance, that was considered more than appropriate.
Often we would confide with one another about the sexual temptations we were facing with the husband-hungry girls who litter Olivet Nazarene University. Although we all wanted to save ourselves for our future wives, we were sometimes tempted to cross the line with our dates, to soil our souls with a meaningless release of pleasure. Even if we had determined never to engage in intercourse, living in our decadent American culture, we could not help but know about the "options" available to us: oral sex, "dry humping," etc. They were all the more insidious for being seemingly consequence-free -- no one ends up pregnant, even though the soul is fertilized with the seeds of sin.
Often, when one of our number was struggling with the temptation to receive a "blow job" from his date, one of us would step up and demonstrate that it was not sufficiently pleasurable to endanger our souls. From then on, the unfortunate struggler would know that if he was plagued with thoughts of blow jobs, he could receive the momentary relief he needed right in the shower, among his close, intimate friends. The same was true, of course, of dry humping and intracrurial sex (with or without reach-around), but we drew the line at anal sex -- that's just gay.
And so, administrators of Olivet Nazarene University, on behalf of all those male Christian students whose chastity was spared as a result of your foresight and prudence in setting residence hall policies, I can only say, "Thank you."
