i like you, but i'm not ready to bond.

like a moth to the flame (is this phrase a little out-of-date? can we start saying halogen lamp yet?), i seem to be perpetually drawn against my will to news about harvard and the various types of people that reside there (read: the various types of people i dislike). The latest bit of news is this new york times magazine article about the new leadership of my favorite club: True Love Revolution. sidenote: thats not actually sarcasm, they really are my favorite. just not maybe for the reasons they'd want.

anyways, this article led me to have two thoughts, which i will share with you now:

1) i know i may have asked this question before, but is there seriously NO other news? its one thing to publish an article about a 12-member club at an undergraduate college, its another, even more ridiculously sad for your publication, thing to publish more than one. don't think i didn't already read the article last summer about TLR. i read it. i thought it was absurd. i thought, "at least now that i've read it, i probably won't have to read it again." wrong. it just leaves you wondering what the big fascination is. word on the street is scientists are developing a machine that could accidentally implode the earth. but i guess the philosophical (not religious! i swear!) musings of a 21 year old virgin are also news.

2) while reading the article (LOST is in re-runs until april 24th, so the last few pages where leo confesses his secret sexy thoughts about janie were great monday night entertainment for me), it dawned on me that i think these people are a little confused. ok, i already knew they were a little confused, but you probably know all my old stale reasons. like "rational thought." here is my new one: this girl's whole argument is that she doesn't want to have sex with her boyfriend because that will release oxytocin (ahhh! run away!) and cause her to bond with him. which will then make her irrational, and will cause her to be heartbroken when they inevitably break up. To be safe, she's going to wait til she's married to take a hit off the oxytocin everyone's been getting so damn high off of. Here's the thing: if she's not basing her marriage off some sort of intimacy, "bonding," we might call it, how exactly IS she deciding who to marry? apparently her current boyfriend is cool and respects her and all that, but she doesn't want to get too attached. she could walk away at any moment. which is great if bonding is what you're trying to avoid, but then maybe they should change the name to "true like revolution." because i'm not feelin the love.

moral of the story: the whole claim that sex causes intimacy (which leads to disaster!) is probably true (ish). but if you're not having sex with your boyfriend, you're not particularly 'bonded' with him, and you could walk away whenever you felt like, chances are your lack of intimacy is about a bit more than lack of sex. so its probably not going to be a great discovery for you when you get married, have sex, and realize the oxytocin wasn't quite a big enough boost to make your relationship a functional one. luckily, you've also got oxytocin's hip older brother, oxycontin, to get you through the hard times.


as an additional aside, because i just can't help myself, i especially enjoyed the part where they say they're not homophobic because they haven't come out (chuckle) and said explicitly that gays aren't welcome. right. I recently had a conversation with someone on a different subject where they said the presidential race hasn't been racist at all because no one has called barack obama the N word, and no hecklers have yelled at him to "shine their shoes." I think its pretty much time for people to learn that you don't get a gold star for managing to not express your bigotry in the most blatant way possible. I'm thinking of starting a support group. It will be called "i hate you, but i had no idea you were smart enough to notice." just 12 steps and you, too, will be able to interact with minorities without making them want slap you upside your head. sign up today!