I Was A Slut In College And I'm Glad

I was that college girl who slept around. You know who she was. I had steady boyfriends — for brief periods of time. I don’t remember my number, but it’s somewhere about twenty. My blowjob number? Oh God. So high I don’t remember, and fuck you if you’re slut shaming me right now. I had a blast. My only regret: the two friends I didn’t hook up with, who I’m still close to. We’ve laughed about it. “I always thought we would bang,” I said to one of them once, quoting our favorite TV show.

“Same with me, girl,” P. said. “Same with me.”

Truth: I lived in a dorm for freak kids. We were the kids who didn’t fit in high school: the drama kids, the art kids, the gay kids and lesbians and weirdos. So, miracle of miracles, no one slut shamed me. Most people knew I slept with a lot of people. Most people didn’t care. In fact, we used to play a game: name two people in our dorm and connect them based on who they’d fucked. Sort of like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with sex. We always joked that if you could connect someone to a certain guy, J., you were home free, since he’d slept with everyone.

We were very sex-positive.

I Did It All

I was such a slut I pulled four v-cards. Four. Once, when I was dating someone I didn’t want to cheat on, I sneaked into his bathroom and used soap to scrawl “Too bad I can’t fuck you” on his mirror, then ducked out. We had a birthday party that turned into an orgy: multiple people making out and switching partners. I had multiple threesomes with two guys (and got wildly pissed when they didn’t inform that one dude was engaged, those bastards. I still feel guilty about that).

Remember Clerks? Remember when Dante Hicks yells, “Try not to suck any dick on your way through the parking lot!”

That girl was me.

I had one-night stands. I had boyfriends who lasted and boyfriends I cheated on (but he was cheating on me too, so turnabout’s fair play). Once, I slept with my resident hall advisor, who was totally off limits. He fucked me in an art school classroom while I banged my shoulder against a pencil sharpener.

I. Was. A. Slut.

And I loved it.

I’m Glad I Was A Slut

Miraculously, I never caught an STD and I never got pregnant. I was meticulous about asking who’d been tested, and obsessed with birth control. I spent five years (I’m counting my first year of graduate school) having oodles of consequence-free, amazing sex. I wore Catholic school uniforms. I used toys. I got tied down. I banged friends and strangers and almost fucked an English dude.

Dammit, I should have fucked that English dude. I never did bone an uncut guy.

And I’m happy with all that sex.

I grew up in a repressed Catholic home. Sex was evil. Sex was bad. Sex would send you straight to hell, but God forbid anyone tell you more than that. Our sex ed: this is how babies are made, and don’t you dare do it until you’re married. My parents left that part up to school. Even when they had to know I was banging guys, they never once mentioned it.

When I escaped that misery, I was ready to slut it up, and smart enough to protect myself. And I sought out non-judgmental friends who were either having as much sex as I did, or wanted to have as much sex as I did. No one called me a slut. No one shamed me for it. They showed up at the next naked party instead. Or they banged my ex-boyfriend.

Two Decades Later, I’m Monogamous And Happy

I settled down just after my slut days, when I met my husband in my second year of graduate school. We’ve been together ever since, and I’ve never cheated on him. All that sex made me really, really good in bed — he’s told me so.

But mostly, I miss being young. I don’t miss being a slut so much as I miss that time in my life, when I was free to do what I wanted, when I sat in our dorm hallway and tried to connect two people via who they’d slept with. The sleeping around, the newness — that was only part of being young, not an end to itself. Yeah, I was a slut. But mostly I was nineteen, twenty, and in love with the world’s possibilities.

I’m happy now. I’m settled and in love being in love. I have an amazing partner who knows me inside and out, not fleeting encounters. Everyone’s right: the sex gets better every time. There’s a joy in being settled, a happiness in those smooth rhythms of marriage. There’s still passion there, but of a different sort: a leap when he walks in from work, a joy when he picks that perfect present, a beauty in his deep desire to understand me.

Being a slut: those encounters were fun. But that fun faded fast, so I jumped onto the next pretty boy. I needed the next high. I laugh about it now. I’m glad I experienced it. I liked it while it lasted: I loved being young, and that was part of it. But I love being forty-something more. I stand in gratitude for both. I think that’s how it should be.