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Week at Yale '04
Lust et Veritas!
by
Susan Block, Ph.D. '77
IN
4 PAGES
1 I 2 I 3 I 4
Page 4
Master’s Tea with Master Miller & Me
With Saybrook Master Mary
Miller at my Master's Tea ... PHOTO: ERIC
Saturday was Valentine’s Day, and what better day to give a Master’s Tea on Sex at Yale? I woke up late in my sunny Saybrook guest suite, listening to the bells of Harkness Tower chiming gloriously just outside my window. After a quick coffee, shower and chat with my offices in LA and Cannes, I wandered downstairs and took about seven steps through the courtyard to the stately living room of Master Mary Miller.
The room, foyer and staircase were packed with Saybrugians and other Yalies eager to learn more about their sexuality. Or maybe they were there to poke holes in the hapless alumna’s philosophy of ethical hedonism. Or maybe they were just "curious." In any case, they were unfailingly well-mannered and articulate, each a mini, modern Nathan Hale in-the-making.
I thanked everyone from Eric to Elihu, then got into the subject at hand, starting with my own college years. We never had Sex Week when I went to Yale. Of course, we had sex every day. The late ‘60s--early ‘70s was the time of the “Make Love, Not War” generation. By the time I got to Yale, it was the mid-‘70s, and the Vietnam War was over, so we just did the “Make Love” part.
Indeed, one of the most important lessons I learned at Yale, I didn't learn in a classroom. I learned it from a little book by Betty Dodson called Liberating Masturbation (now Sex for One). What I learned was how to have an orgasm--quite a revelation for a sexually clueless Saybrook sophomore! Master Miller's living room tittered in apparent empathy.
Saybrook
Master's Tea Time ... PHOTO:
ERIC
Of course, I learned a lot more at Yale, and much of it had something to do with sex. As a typical sophomore, I was intensely confused. I had no idea what I wanted to major in, teetering between religion and philosophy. I wanted to make sense of my senseless universe. Also, I was horny, and religion, to me, was all about sex. Actually, it’s all about controlling sex, all about channeling the human sex drive into procreation, prayer and smacking yourself in various ways so you won't have sex for recreation.
But the more I studied religions at Yale, the less I believed in any of them, so I turned to philosophy, immersing myself in Socrates, Epicures, Spinoza, Sartre, Jim Morrison (hey, he was a dead white man too!). Philosophy helped me to make better sense of the real world. But aside from Jim, it was pretty dry. I yearned to get wet—literally and figuratively.
So, my junior year I suddenly switched my major to Theater Studies. Why? Because Theater is NOT dry. You laugh, you cry, you sweat, you make love to your co-actors, you fall in lust with your director. Theater is the sexiest major at Yale, at least it was when I was there, combining passion with tradition with movement.
And my body was cramped from sitting in the library all day. I needed to move, so I took dance with the late great Hone Cole. I needed to BE moved, so I took acting with Nikos Psacharapoulous, another now legendary Yale Theater professor who whipped his students like a dominatrix. The flirtatiousness of the Yale Dramat was intoxicating. In plays, I found myself kissing guys I barely knew--with an audience! Even if I didn’t have a kissing scene, I did a lot of touching. I didn’t do a lot of touching in the library (unless I were making out in the StaXXX, of course). No professor made us touch each other in other classes, like professors did all the time in theater class.
Not that I was particularly good at acting. I’m no Meryl Streep DRA '74. I've always tended to play myself. But I loved doing plays with the Yale Dramat, as well as my late night radio shows at WYBC. The sexiest thing I did with WYBC was a live interview while streaking across Freshman Campus. This was the 70s, man—nobody would have noticed Janet Jackson’s boob. We were streaking all over Yale!
In between shows and fantasies, I managed to have a few regular boyfriends. Since I was in Yale's third undergraduate class to accept women (we were 40% female), I pretty much had my pick. In high school, I’d been limited by what people expected of me: I was an artsy type, and that’s what my boyfriends were expected to be. At Yale, I could try men of all sorts—future diplomats, mathematicians, jocks, intellectuals, musicians, conservatives, radicals, scientists, actors, geniuses, goof-offs, plus my usual artsy types--all different races and religions—every male character in Doonesbury and more. I wish I could have gotten credit at Yale for men. Now you probably could. At least you could write an essay on men, and get credit for that.
It sounds like I was a swinger. But like most Yalies, I was a studious kid, and I met my guys mostly in classes. In a way, these guys were classes. I studied their sexuality and their personality, soaking up information. Little did I know I was preparing myself for my work as a sex therapist when I’d have to help all these types of men and more with their sexual problems.
Saybrook College Entrance
and Archway to the Guest Suite . PHOTOS: SUZY
I studied a lot of guys, but I didn’t fall in love until I got a bursury job in Ezra Stiles dining hall, where I began to learn the art of “serving others,” as opposed to serving my own needs as a student. Maybe it was just happenstance. Or maybe I met someone special while serving up beef stroganoff from the steam tables, because being in a real love relationship involves serving, giving pleasure, giving your heart to someone else. It sounds so simple, and it is. But it’s the opposite drive to that of being a student, especially a Yale student, who is encouraged, and even pressured to follow his or her own heart, and serve his or her own needs, or the needs of his or her secret society..
Maybe Sex Week at Yale is part of a change in that aspect of higher education. In the 50s (even before my time!), they used to say that ladies got their “MRS” in college. Now I think that everyone—men and women—ought to get their MRS. Because there’s nothing more important than learning how to find and cultivate love in life.
And sex is an important part of love. One of the fun parts! Though it can be an awful part, especially when you're uneducated..
Socrates said: "Know thyself." I say: Know thy sex. Get sex educated. Education is power. Sex education is sexual power. The power to attract and cultivate healthy, exciting relationships, the power to understand and partake in the pervasive sexual dynamics of life, the power to give and receive pleasure, the power to love and be loved.
Yale's Great Gothic
Phallus: Harkness Tower.. PHOTO:
SUZY
Why don’t we study pleasure as much as we study pain? Why don’t we study sex as much as we study war? The closest thing I could find to studying sex at Yale was Theater. Now Yale offers various kinds of studies in sex and relationships (even a course with Dr. Ruth!), and whole weeks of sex like SWAY. Modern Yalies have much more access to all sorts of sex education. We had to dig up copies of “Our Bodies, Our Selves” just to find out where our clitorises were.
Modern Yalies also have more varied opportunities for erotic exploration. We had the Dramat, the StaXXX, streaking and frat parties. Yalies now have ethernet, cell phones, webcams, vibrators, so many springboards to virtual sex of all kinds. I’m jealous; I wish I could've exchanged hot instant messages with that cute guy I never talked to in my Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy class. A lot of modern scolds say that the Internet is ruining American youth's ability to be intimate. I think it just fosters different kinds of intimacy than those of us who didn't grow up with the Web are used to.
But I also think Yalies today might have less opportunity for touch than we had in the Stone Age of the '70s. Dr. Ruth, among others, have famously said "sex is between the ears, not the legs." I say that's only true to some extent. Our sexuality does have a lot to do with our fantasies and desires. But it is inextricably tied to our physical feelings, to sensation, especially to our sense of touch.
And touch is just so dangerous these days. You could get a disease! Of course, we could too in the old days, but we were blissfully ignorant of that possibility. Nowadays, if you make the wrong move, you could get charged with sexual harassment! We only worried about rejection or sweaty palms.
Not that anyone should be touched when they don’t want to be touched. But schools all over America overcompensate for that possibility, making all kinds of touch taboo. This seems like the safest route. But who wants to grow up touch-free? Studies have shown what we all know in our bones: Lack of touch is bad for your health.
Not that I was courageous or revolutionary enough to turn my Master’s Tea into a nude massage workshop, but don’t think it never occurred to me. I did give out free Doc Johnson sex toys to the first 20 Yalies who arrived, as well as to anyone who asked a question, and anyone who really looked like he or she needed one. There being a war on, I had plenty of Pocket Rockets—the erotic answer to the Patriot Missile, and much safer. Small enough to fit in your purse or glove compartment, but powerful enough to get the job done in minutes. The humble Pocket Rocket may hold the key to Peace on Earth: No Exploding Ordnance, Just Exploding Orgasms!
Since Yalies do a lot of writing, I also gave out DJ’s Vibrating Pens. Take notes with it in class, then use it to arouse your lover or yourself. Gives a whole new meaning to “Can I borrow your pen?” The Yalies went for those Vibrating Pens and Pocket Rockets like starving people for food packets. But, unlike at my shows, nobody tried them out right there. Even SWAY Yalies have some discretion.
Image Party!
That night, a bunch of us blew off the steam of the Week at Image, a New Haven nightclub. SWAY had been a smashing success with packed lecture halls for almost every event, and it looked like some of the younger students were primed to carry it on, making SWAY a new Yale tradition! Everybody clamored for SWAY '04 T-shirts, Wicked tank tops and "Girls Gone Wild" hats. I even got some Yalies to bare their chests (male and female) for SWAY swag. Boolah-boolah-ooh-la-lah!
Yale Brothers Steve
'04 and Mike Kroon '06 and an anonymous Yale Sister bare their chests for
SWAY Swag at Image.. PHOTO: SUZY
Eric was a little unnerved by the magnitutde of media misunderstanding of SWAY. Most students and faculty loved, believed in and understood the Week. But the press, predictably, tossed its spears, mostly complaining that there wasn't enough about “intimacy,” even though several lectures and Masters Teas, including one by “Kosher Sex” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, another by Dr. Judy Kuriansky and another by Harvard's Nancy Slotnick, dealt with precisely that subject. This just goes to show that when you put a porn star on the speakers' roster, the typical journalist can’t see anyone or anything else.
Yale Beauties
Michelle Shapiro '04 and Jay Blount '05 at Image PHOTOS: SUZY
Being a Yalie, Eric felt compelled to write a whole thesis in defense of his brainchild. I felt for him, but then, it’s all a learning experience. Now Eric is learning that people who promote sex, whether they’re from the elite societies of the Ivy League or the wrong side of the Valley, are always taken to task, especially by the sensationalist but sanctimonious American media. The press loves to cover sex; sex attracts that audience! But they also love to condemn anyone involved in sex; so as to placate the prudes in their board rooms.
Of course, like anything, SWAY had its mishaps, most of which seemed to occur at Image. The biggest disappointment of the evening was that we didn't get to hear Michelle Shaprow '04 sing. At least, we got to dance to Jay Blount '05's band. And then there were the exciting Flash-for-SWAY-Swag interludes... But between the Sopranos-ish club owner and his Matrix-ish security guards mixing it up with the Yalies and the Townies, the whole Image Party didn’t go as planned. Like I've often said, "The best laid plans may not get you laid the way that you planned.” So we SWAYed with the flow.
Alston Lambert and other
Yalies blow off the steam of the Week at Image
Eric flanked by Image
Nightclub's Sopranos-ish Owner and one of his Matrix-ish security guards
. PHOTOS: SUZY
Dancing with Mike Kroon
'04, Drumming with Jay Blount '05
Eric and SWAY are squarely in the Yale tradition of improving university education in all areas, now branching out into the controversial realm of sexual pleasure. And yet Sex Week at Yale still feels a little incongruous, because it brings sex out into the open in a place steeped in Gothic secrecy. Yalies have "needs" just like everybody, but their indulgence in kink and pleasure has mostly gone on not just behind closed doors, but behind doors without doorknobs in buildings without windows.
HAPPY SEX WEEK AT YALE!
All of which makes sex educational events like SWAY all the more important. Why? Because repression relies on ignorance. We need education in the sexual sciences to wipe out damaging, sometimes-deadly superstitions and misinformation. We need education in the sexual arts to help improve our erotic lives and keep our families intact. We need education in sexual psychology and philosophy to help us determine our true sexual nature and cultivate it in a fulfilling, responsible manner.
"Why learn about sex?” folks ask me time and again, “Isn’t sex natural?” Sure, sex is “natural,” if you're happy being a male premature ejaculator or a preorgasmic woman or a couple that stops making love after infatuation wears off. But if you want sex to be good, if you want love to last, you have to learn a thing or two. As that horny old Latin lover Ovid said a millenium and a half before Masters and Johnson, “Skill makes love unending.”
It's also (not to overstate the obvious) fun! Even if SWAY wasn't always so educational, college life isn't just about education. It’s about celebration of a special, extremely erotic time between adolescence and adulthood. So, why shouldn't the scions and scholars of Yale celebrate sex, as the ancients did in Festivals of Eros and Venus, with a strong dose of Bacchus to take the edge off Winter's chill? It's a fantasy of incongruity in a school of secret societies, but it could happen: Sex Week climaxing in a Sex Festival Weekend, like Carnival or the Pimps 'N Ho's of Mardi Gras with Porn 'N Chicken for Everyone, or the old Festivals des Beaux-Arts in Paris, when secrets spill into the streets and courtyards, students masquerade, photos snap, cherries pop, and revolutions begin... Though for now, I'll be happy if some brave Yalies just manage to carry the torch forward into SWAY ’06. This is one Yale tradition we bulldogs must not let die.
F I N I T
SeX
Week at Yale '04
Lust et Veritas!
by
Susan Block, Ph.D. '77
IN
4 PAGES
1 I 2 I 3 I 4
© June
10, 2004, Dr.
Susan Block
For reprint rights, please contact rox@blockbooks.com
Dr. Susan Block is a sex educator, cultural commentator, host of The Dr. Susan Block Show and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her website at http://www.drsusanblock.com
Send all hate mail, love letters, commentary, questions and confessions to her at liberties@blockbooks.com.
These pages are not associated with Yale University.
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