America is a place of sinful depravity, college especially so. Every weekend is a celebration of the debauchery that comes hand-in-hand with democracy. Orgies and promiscuity are rife, and the Satanic tincture we know as alcohol is poured out as libation to Bacchus. One passes out every now and then only to wake up to take a drink. Wondering where the party went, one dons the hat of the reveler and fills himself with the gouty fluid — the sinful sauce.
But the worst of Joe Houston and Jane Austen’s collegiate alcoholisms are nothing compared to the moral depths they plumb in their sexual escapades. Pre-marital, over-the-counter-sex is freely exchanged, bought and sold, given as gifts of love or mild affection (in the case of certain friends of mine, very mild). In certain situations, young men and women don’t even wait until they’re properly introduced to go at it like Little Joe in Italy!
It used to be the custom for your average Dork and Mandy to wait bovinely for three or four years in a proper engagement. You’d bloviate about the nature of Love and you’d do it without touching, dammit! But not anymore! Not in this decaying and perverted society! Here, it’s natural to break out the “Kama Sutra” and talk about one’s favorite positions until you have enough time to rush into a nearby bathroom stall and finish the job! I think Trwstrynd Aylsquythe-Poynsenby summed it up best when he called America:
“A stable of slop artists, a Bauhaus of buffoons,
A carmagnole of caricatures, a gallery of gawkers,
A parade of ponces, a festival of fops,
A pageant of panderers, a nest of narcissists,
A latrine of lechers, a den of debauchers...”
And so on. Good old Trwstrynd, he knows how to sum things up.
But all things being said and done, this extravagant, stale, flat, unprofitable and morally corrupt sexuality is what I came to America for. Hunched-up and hamletted, unwashed and girlfriendless in Dhaka, Bangladesh, my friend Muhammad Kala Arif and I decided that some things had gotten too far while we hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. It was the year 2000, and we were huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the glorious life of “Baywatch.” And that, buddy, along with a horribly inequitable economic system (think pre-revolution France), was the main reason most of my brown pals and I decided to apply to college in America.
I dreamed of an academic Riverdale where I would play the part of Arafat Andrews, with Busty Betty and Vampy Veronica vying for my postcolonial attentions. We would drink malteds at Pop’s, and my best friend, Jarhead, would be an amiable-if-foolish frat guy with a passion for beer instead of burgers.
Life would be beautiful — not sad. I would go on dates with girls, and we would kiss. There would be dorm room parties where 88-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon (cost:$5) would be consumed by the keg, and I would deftly allow coquettes to seduce me in the musty hallways of Shelton.
I imagined an Eden where my foreignness would be exotic, where I would discourse about subcontinental sunsets and quote Omar Khaiyam. I would pun extravagantly, explaining that although I had a useless major — English — it was all copacetic in da’ hood because it wasn’t my first language. Sighs would be exchanged, frottage would be rampant. Life would be good because, after all, America is the new Rome. These capitalist pigs are going to Hell for a reason, right? And it’s better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, bunky!
But O poor me, I bleed, I die! It seems like all those lonely housewives writing to Penthouse exaggerated. If I didn’t have so much faith in humanity, I’d even say that they lied. It’s Saturday night here, and while I’m indulging in Lucifer’s liquid, i.e. Newcastle Brown Ale, this brown still ails! I’m completely alone!
Martyred and mussed, feeble and fussed, heart and soul covered in cement, my personal experience leads me to believe that America’s international reputation for tawdry eroticism is the racial equivalent of a mid-life crisis. Sex is the grand compensation machine, except we’re just talking about it. I know I am. And thinking about it, dreaming about it. And honestly, what’s the good of complete sexual freedom and all that good stuff if people are going to discriminate about whom they bed? Where’s the sin, people? To produce as much pleasure as America’s reputed to do, you can’t be all that choosy!
My friends contend that it’s only my native ineptitude that keeps only me — as opposed to the rest of the U.S. — from getting the horizontal consummation devoutly to be wish’d. But faugh to them! Tchah! I know that I’m not alone in being alone at midnight on a Saturday without saturnalia, listening to Iron Maiden and rocking out by myself! I know that there’s a girl out there for me! And if there isn’t, I’ll just go back home, get my parents to arrange a marriage or two, and go back to condemning this decadent and self-indulgent country! So there!
Arafat Kazi, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press and can be reached at futhman@thewatsonbrothers.com
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