Duke, Horizontal

It’s time to grow up.

If I could condense two semesters' worth of adolescent angst into a brief thematic idea, this sentence would certainly describe my senior-year demeanor. Sometimes, I get the urge to make good on a four-year investment and begin furiously outlining my future in zealous detail. At other moments, I scrap every shred of planning and goal-oriented enthusiasm, wondering why I gave up my first grade private-investigation work (a la the Olsen Twins), a seemingly easier career path than any of my current objectives. Then there are the times when I pretend to like red wine while watching Law and Order: SVU, trying to make myself feel depressed about something other than grad-school applications.

I never thought I’d have a “light-bulb moment,” an epiphany where the entire record of my youthful existence would suddenly create an obvious trajectory to a world of future success and adulthood, full of two-car garages and a Sam’s Club membership. I also never realized I had been practicing my destined career for years within the normal social patterns of my everyday life. More importantly, I never believed writing about boobs and blowjobs would ever link to a legitimate (and legal) paying job.

When it comes to sex, relationships and other aspects of social collision, I like to observe and listen. I also like to fix. My friends claim to accept my advice without consternation, although the sources of this perceived wisdom are not always clear. Thus, when I pressed one friend for an explanation of her trust, wondering if she merely thought I’d been around the block, she noted that experience was not always an explanation for successful knowledge. This is evidenced by the seasoned mutual friend who believes Vaseline is a better lubricant than KY Jelly and doesn’t always pin the right vocabulary word on the correct anatomical part.

Asking another friend why he felt comfortable relaying intimate details for the sake of my unfounded acumen, I discounted the role of life experience. In reply, he explained, “I talk to you because you’re not judgmental. You’d make a good therapist because nothing I’d say would offend, shock or disgust you.” It’s probably not the career center’s method for personal discovery, but talking about sex and other complicated aspects of human nature has brought me to the doorsteps of the grown-up threshold.

I don’t plan on translating my experience with this column into sexual journalism, mostly because my boyfriend would probably leave me and I’d have to continue fielding Carrie Bradshaw references for the rest of my life. That being said, this column has been a solid exercise in the practice of non-judgment, appropriate for a therapist’s life of listening and problem-solving. I like to laugh at awkwardness in the spirit of self-deprecation, but I never condemn. I rarely write like an advice columnist, but I hope I bring more people under the banner of normalcy and acceptability, if only by parading the endless list of my and my friends’ abnormalities. In light of the heat I sometimes take in laughing and preaching about sex through a public venue, it is only logical that judgment becomes an expendable product in this discussion. The world may not be ready to say it, but they’re at least comfortable reading it, and I’ll always be interested in writing about it. And I know what I want to be when I grow up because this column helped me get there.

Brooke Hartley is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.