Sex, perhaps especially in college, can become public in some unexpected ways.

Case in point: my freshmen year, Boy X and I were interrupted post-coitus by his roommate. Not that bad, right? Well, in tow were several other (very drunk) members of the athletic team both boys were on, and they proceeded to turn the situation into a group-snuggle/pass-out-and-fall-asleep session. With us. In Boy X’s twin bed. (Relax, this wasn’t at Brown. Cease pointing fingers.)

I’ve racked up a number of reproachful gazes from roommates intruded upon in the middle of the night; been asked rather curtly to please stop making out in the hallway, thank you very much; had to avoid eye contact with my lovers’ known cohabiters (whom I sincerely hope sleep with earplugs); and surprised at least a couple of suitemates making my exit from their respective showers. Yes, I’ve been involved in more than a few sexiling snafus and had my fair share of there’s-no-way-I-can-pretend-I-didn’t-sleep-with-your-suitemate-last-night-because-I’m-making-eye-contact-with-you-and-yes-that’s-a-hickey-thanks-for-staring-I-was-just-leaving moments.

Imagine sharing a room with someone you’ve only known for a matter of months and living in a place where essentially every space you inhabit is communal. Now add sex and love and all that’s in between to the equation. This is, of course, freshman year at Brown. Take a walk through the halls of Keeney any Friday or Saturday night, and you’ll see it all unfold: the condom drama, the spatial reshufflings and awkward half-naked encounters, the sexiling and gossip and walks of shame. Because after all, sex—especially in college, especially freshman year—is never just sex. It’s where we negotiate boundaries with others and define our own limits, where we, consciously or not, construct our identities and reputations and relationships. And suffice it to say that it can become pretty complicated pretty quickly.

Your C’s are for condoms

Given Brown’s liberal bent on social issues, it should come as no surprise that the Residential Peer Leaders who head up freshman units do not police or punish the sexual exploits of students here in the same way that their parietal-enforcing counterparts at a school like, say, Boston College or Notre Dame—both of which have strict fraternization rules, and the latter of which can actually expel students for doing it.

Compare to Brown, where freshmen—and their sometimes shocked parents—are introduced to the laissez-faire attitude about sex on campus as soon as they begin settling into their dorm rooms. After all, we’ve all seen the condoms and dental dams for sale displayed prominently on RPLs’ doors in addition to the pamphlets and colorful block letters spelling out their names. The point is to provide freshmen with a way to have safe sex, according to Ethan Levine, an RC in Keeney.

“I would prefer kids are having safe sex at Brown rather than getting STDs or getting pregnant,” he said, adding that despite the fact that residents often steal condoms, he would front the costs of condoms in order to ensure that his residents always have that option.

Logistical issues of providing condoms aside, RPLs rarely interfere with their residents’ sex lives in any professional capacity unless an issue arises within the unit. But there are some beds on campus they try to keep their freshmen out of: their own.

Romantic involvement between RPLs and their residents is “very frowned upon,” said residential counselor (and Post- contributing writer) Fred Milgrim, a sophomore. He said the phrase tossed around during RPL training was, “Love can wait ‘til May.”

All’s Fair in Love and…Sexiling?

Perhaps its Brown’s notoriously free-loving student body and relatively hands-off RPLs that makes places like Keeney a hotbed for all kinds of hooking up. And doing the dirty in a double almost always means one thing: sexiling a roommate.

Kara Kaufman ’12, an RC in Keeney, said she can recall numerous instances from her freshman year in which friends and floor-mates kicked out or were kicked out by their respective roommates, whether for the occasional one-night stand or for frequent accommodation of long-term relationships.

“I think it’s part of the freshmen experience,” she said.

Sexiling “happens all the time,”  said an anonymous male freshman, who said he’d kicked his roommate out “many times” already this year and called it “frequent”  occurrence in his unit.

Frequent enough, apparently, that his unit uses a smiley face drawn on a door’s dry-erase board as a collectively understood “do not disturb” signal (though some girls in the unit said they prefer to use hearts instead).

As Milgrim put it, he’s seen freshmen in his unit taking small-scale walks of shame back from each other’s rooms, and the condoms on his door have been disappearing at a steady clip. It’s a fact, and not a terribly surprising one, that they’re having sex, often with each other, which means that some people are bound to get sexiled and dormcest is more or less inevitable.

Embracing the potential hang-ups that come along with being two sexually active guys sharing a room, Ben Peipert ’13 and his roommate operate on a flexible give-and-take system where each has been, at times, the “sexilee” and “sexiler.”

“He’s kicked me out of the room. I’ve kicked him out of the room,” Peipert said matter-of-factly.

In many ways, sexiling and being sexiled are just two of the many aspects of living in a double—simply another way roommates have to figure out how to share space and negotiate boundaries.

In general, roommate relations can sour, Milgrim said, “when you start taking advantage of your living situation and your roommate.”

But getting intimate in a shared space has the potential to create what Kaufman called “really awkward encounters”  between roommates that are a little different than, say, asking your roommate to talk on the phone somewhere else so you can study. For instance, on Milgrim’s floor last year, one roommate walked in on the other and, Milgrim said, “made eye contact for like 10 seconds” before leaving, which exacerbated the already awkward and tense relationship between the two.

In theory, the roommate contract freshmen fill out at the beginning of the year should address issues like this. And while the contract “helps to put (sex and sharing a room) on the table,” said Faiz, “whether or not it solves the issue is another story.”

Peipert acknowledged that the informal system he has with his roommate is only possible because they get along well.

“If I didn’t like my roommate, I probably wouldn’t kick him out. I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable kicking him out,” he said.

And as anyone who has lived in a dorm can tell you, not all roommates are perfect matches or even functional cohabiters. Less-than-great relationships between roommates often make hooking up in the shared space of the room tricky and, sometimes, not worth the trouble.

Just ask Ryan Gladych ’13. He summed up his thoughts on sexiling in three words: “Don’t do it,” he said. “Go to the girl’s room,” he added.

xoxo, gossip girl

Practically everyone in one Keeney unit knows what one male freshman did last weekend: he blacked out, lied about his age to two girls and somehow ended up having a late-night threesome in a kitchen in his building. The story seems to have reached a point of near-common knowledge within the unit. Perhaps it’s not surprising that many of his peers have heard the story. The freshman unit is a shared space and a tight-knit community of residents. Certain aspects of the personal become public simply as a byproduct of the living arrangement. Other aspects enter into the collective consciousness of a unit or a dorm simply because people like to talk.

The dramas of our (sex) lives may spread to various circles on campus, get retold to friends back home, or be passed along in any number of unexpected ways. But we chalk it up that to the fleeting recklessness that goes hand-in-hand with the college experience—or maybe if we’re feeling honest, life—and move forward because, at the end of the day, having two people you barely know discussing the fact that you swung a threesome in a dorm kitchen as freshman is not exactly the worst thing in world.

Correction appended October 1.

Filed under: Features by Sarah H
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Where’s Mary?

Mary Tassone has attended court every weekday for the past 10 years, but for more than two months now her reserved seat in Judge Lageux’s courtroom has been empty.

“Court room Mary, we call her,” said Special Deputy U.S. Marshal Tony Medeiros while monitoring the sidewalk. “She hasn’t been around at least a couple months.”

Medeiros and the other marshals patrol the perimeter of the federal courthouse in downtown Providence. None of them remember a day without Mary until this past holiday season, when she stopped coming. She had been attending court before any of them started working there.

“I heard she had a few heart attacks,” said one marshal who would declined to give his name. “She’s alright though,” he added with a smile.

“She’ll be back on the courthouse circuit in a few weeks,” said Stu Kenett, a marshal who confirmed that Mary has reserved seating in multiple courtrooms. “She’s a nice old lady,” he said.

Tassone, a retired floral designer, was admitted to the Emergency Room on February 12^th of this year when she went in complaining of a stomach pain.

“They was tellin’ me I had a mini heart attack,” said the 73-year-old mother. Tassone had three subsequent surgeries—they removed gallstones, her gallbladder and a part of her liver.

“Believe me, the condition I was in, I didn’t wanna make it either,” she said. “But I feel wonderful now.”

Tassone was hooked up to IVs and bags and a tube ran out of her mouth. After two months at the hospital, she returned to the Elmhurst Nursing Home in Providence, the building converted from a hospital where Tassone was born in the 1930s. Already fairly limited in her motion, the elderly woman was given a cane when returning to her apartment in late April.

WALKING USED TO be easy for Tassone, but she started having trouble with her soft feet a few years back. Now, the six blocks that separate the Grace Church Apartment and Kennedy Plaza, where the courthouse is, is traveled by bus. If you peer down Washington Street from the apartment, you can make out the massive gray building, with the canal and the bottom of College Hill just behind it.

She used to cross Memorial Boulevard too, to attend Superior Court. “Before I get clipped, I better stop,” Tassone said, “I says, lemme just go to one court.” Memorial Boulevard, a simple cross-walk to most is a bit more ominous for a shuffler.

MARY’S FAVORITE CASES usually involve murder or drug trafficking, but it was during Operation Plunder Dome that she began attending every moment for nine weeks. Former Mayor Buddy Cianci’s was tried in 2002 for corruption and eventually indicted.

“The first I met him, I told him he looked like Little Caesar,” Tassone said with a giggle. That was long before Cianci fell into trouble.

During the case, she ate lunch with a high profile U.S. Attorney, Richard Rose. He payed for her meal at Tommy’s Restaurant on Westminster Street for eight weeks. Her friend Peggy Hewitt, who attended the trial as well, bought her lunch for the final week.

Tassone makes an appearance in Mike Stanton’s book The Prince of Providence about Cianci. “I’m on page 341 and 342,” she said. But she didn’t even know she was until a friend called her. She shuffles through a cabinet and pulls out an unopened copy of the book. The author describes her as a courtroom regular and had even pulled a quote from her that was printed in the Providence Journal.

“I couldn’t believe it, I pinched myself,” she said. Tassone has had her 15 minutes of fame.

She was occasionally seen exiting the courthouse on television after Cianci’s trials. Star and Time magazines both did stories on her. She’s been in the Providence Journal numerous times. In fact, Tassone is such a prominent figure in the Providence judiciary system, that many of the attorneys ask her how she thinks the jury will swing.

“You can never estimate a jury, believe me,” she said. Don’t be fooled, she’s usually right when she predicts the winner.

She boasts that all the judges know her by name. “I like them all, they’re not stuck up even though they’re high up.” Ronald Lageux is her favorite (he presided over Operation Plunderdome).

“If I ever have to get a lawyer, the judges told me I can’t go to Federal Court, because they all know me,” she said. “It’s a conflict of interest.”

ENTERING TASSONE’s three room apartment, it is easy to see where her interests lie. Taped to her kitchen cabinet is a series of photos of Channel 10 news anchors, each photo with a personal message written to Mary. “I see them all the time at the courthouse,” she said, “especially Jim Taricani.’ The same reporter received six months house arrest for declining to give sources during Plunderdome.

Also scattered about the apartment are pictures of the Pope and JFK. More importantly, however, are the pictures of her daughter Melissa. “I wanted to give her a good life,” Tassone said. She refused to send her daughter to Central High School or Hope High, instead rounding up money to send her to the private LaSalle Academy. She even sent her to the Holy Ghost School for grade school.

Understanding the effort Tassone put into her daughter’s life becomes more surreal when you consider that she raised her daughter by herself on welfare. Tassone herself was orphaned at a young age and grew up in Providence, eventually going to live by herself when she was 21. She had been through Stay at home schools and foster homes and lived with her grandmother for a short period of time before finally settling down by herself and getting a job at Calart where she made artificial flowers.

When she became pregnant, she stopped working, and raised Melissa by herself. “He drank, smoke, gambled and never had anything,” she said of the father. “I would never bring him in the house when she was there.” Tassone refused to let the man ruin Melissa’s life. She had always wanted a baby girl, and she would make sure that Melissa got all the opportunities she didn’t.

Melissa is now in her 30s, working the night shift at the Post Office after attending Rhode Island College. When Tassone became ill she told her daughter not to visit all that much. “When you’re sick you don’t feel like having lots of company anyway.” She was more worried about her daughter when she was on her death bed.

BUT MARY IS HOME now, and counting down the days until she can return to her daily form of entertainment. “It’s something to do,” Tassone said, shrugging her shoulders, “It gets you out of the house. I’m surprised more seniors don’t go. They’d rather spend their money at the casino. Sometimes I just go in the morning, and if it’s a case I enjoy I stay all day.”

Sometimes she is the only viewer in the courtroom. She used to watch Perry Mason all the time, the fabled television lawyer, but found live court to be a great replacement. “I’ll be glad to get back,” said Tassone who likely has to wait another week or two before she has the strength to board the bus to Kennedy Plaza.

The one thing she is not looking forward to? “It’s cold in there,” she said, “I think they do it to keep the defendants awake. I always have to bundle up though.”

Until then she’ll settle for Cianci’s radio talk show on WPRO and Judge Judy at 4 o’clock. “I get a kick out of her,” she said.

TASSONE has always dreamed of being on a jury. The one time she was called for jury duty they asked her what she did. “I like to go to court,” she said. They asked her to leave. “Next time I’ll just keep quiet.”

Note: This story was researched in spring 2009, and so some facts may not be up to date.

Filed under: Slice by Fred Milgrim
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9:00 p.m.- Roll call. All present.

9:03 - Findings of the Exploratory Committee on RISD girls: RISD girls are an untapped resource. Further research deemed necessary.

9:05 – A.J. Warren motions that all future mentions of him in the minutes refer to “Teen Wolf Warren.” Motion passes by acclaim.

9:06 – Smelly Sam motions that all future mentions of him in the minutes omit the epithet “smelly.” Motion shouted down.

9:07 – Special elections: Nominations needed next week to fill vacancies in the positions of Treasurer and Commodore of Karkov (left by tragic “Night of a Thousand Kegstands”).

9:07 – Moment of silence for “Night of a Thousand Kegstands.”

9:08 – Amendments to the coat of arms: Smitty submits for the replacement of the Mace of Wisdom with the Spatula of Burgers. Brody submits for the replacement of the house motto “per aspera ad astra” with “Bro hard or Bro home”

9:09 – Teen Wolf Warren suggests heeding the lessons of history, changing motto to “Bro softly and carry a big stick.” All marvel at his wisdom.

9:09 – Smelly Sam motions that all mottos be translated to Latin.

9:10 - “Nerd Alert” formally declared. Noogies threatened, but not executed.

9:12- The next Class F: Suggestions solicited.

9:13- Smelly Sam suggests exclusively serving Busch heavies at next class F. Brody motions for the censure of Smelly Sam.

9:14- Censure passes by acclaim.

9:16 Teen Wolf Warren suggests a “Sex, Drugs and P. Swayze” party.

9:17- Too soon.

9:18- Smitty suggests “Baroque Bros and Renaissance Hos.” Suggestion taken under consideration.

9:19- Brody raises question of “that girl.” The one with the nose ring, who is always on Wriston.

9:19- General consensus that “that girl” is definitely hot. Who is that girl? Discussion ensues.

9:23- Concluded that the name of “that girl” is not remembered at this time, but is definitely something hot, most likely starting with a “J.” Further research deemed necessary.

9:24- Charitable works: What cause will ßRW support this year?

9:24- Brody suggests tutoring at-risk children from Providence’s poorest neighborhoods. Billy McFlow adds that perhaps something should be done about world hunger.

9:25- A good laugh is had by all.

9:28- Teen Wolf Warren motions to continue decades-long practice of mentoring Wheeler students. Motion passes by acclaim.

9:29- Brody shotguns a beer.

9:30- Meeting adjourned.

Filed under: Soapbox by Ben Schreckinger
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My personal best long jump, recorded during my freshman year of high school, was seventeen feet, six inches—enough to win a bid to the state championship. I loved running and jumping: moving because I was moving me.

I eventually eschewed track for theatre; I was tired of skittering my then-skinny twig legs around the world just to land in the same spot. I wanted to go somewhere, but I was precocious and self-important—ignorant enough to figure I’d seen everything I would ever need to see. I wanted to get deep. I decided that, in the theatre, I could dig.

I shoveled my way through Shakespeare and Beckett; even Sondheim became a muddy little underground friend. I became an expert at speaking in other people’s voices, at running in other people’s (costume-shop) shoes. I studied character intention, historicization, contextualization; but, I didn’t know myself—I didn’t know what Lauren would say if she ever opened her mouth, what excuse she’d give for jogging the last one hundred meters of a sprint, what distraction she’d cite for slipping out of first place. I only moved when someone else was moving me.

Then, someone killed Matthew Shepard because he was gay. Yet, like I always did, I found solace in the fact that I could still run away in some other person’s shoes. For years, Shepard’s death was not enough to move me in the right direction. If I had been Matthew, I would have escaped in someone else’s (heterosexual) shoes. I didn’t speak honestly, my mouth wouldn’t dare mouth true words. But at least I had shoes; at least I was alive, I thought; at least I could still move.

I became complacent. I began to walk without fear of the consequences of catching a shoelace in a cement crack. I stopped looking down. I walked straight, I talked straight, I was straight: there was no reason, I thought, to walk with my head down. I took the ground for granted. The ground was—granted—immobile.

My footing inevitably fell from under me. I fell in love with the wrong person, the wrong sex. I fell to the ground, through the ground, to the other side, the wrong end up. I slipped into a world void of gravity’s righting, normative function. The earth quaked and destroyed all faith I had in my ability to run away from anything.

At the same time, Moisés Kaufman halted his theatre company’s performances of other playwrights’ work in favor of writing the company’s own, so that he could deal with the issue of text, with the matter of words. His theatre company is Tectonic. Tectonic, notes the group’s website, refers “to the art and science of structure… how things are made, and how they might be made differently.” Tectonic Theater Company wrote The Laramie Project to document the life of a small Wyoming town in the residuum of an unforgivable murder. Upon witnessing this play in performance, I, for all my self-hating, stubborn denial, was remade.

Tectonic’s epochal work epitomizes the potentially exponential reach of one solitary, potent story. This story will reach you, if you let it, if you understand that one event, like the event of Matthew’s murder, is much more than a methodical sequence of happenings. The event of his cold-blooded killing frosted the surface of the earth with Matthew’s face. His face is the face of The Laramie Project and its interviewees, from 1998 through 2009. His face is the face of each student who lived with the play’s words during weeks of rehearsals. His face is the face of every audience member—fifty million and counting—who has experienced the invitation to enter into dialogue with the play. His face is the face of every violent act that remains faceless because its true face wasn’t quite pretty and light enough to grace the nightly news.

When I see Matthew’s face, I see the face of every single one of my friends: they are queer, they are people of color, they are broke(n). The list of differences for which others can and have justified raising violence, hatred, and eyebrows in opposition to their humanity approaches infinity; This is a list scorched with, what I imagine to be, hellishly reductive hate crime headlines. When Matthew Shepard crosses my mind I consider writer Greg Pierotti’s words during my recent interview with members of Tectonic Theater Project on behalf of my work for the Matthew Shepard Foundation. I contemplate the “peak emotional experience” that was Matthew’s murder.  I wonder why Matthew’s sympathizers “can’t have the peak experience continuously,” because I do. I wonder where they get the “discipline [and] structure to help support and leverage the more emotional experience,” because it is something I lack.

When I think of Matthew, the butterflies in my stomach make a date with the cat captor of my tongue, because—from my perch in the middle of the debate regarding LGBTQ equality—I swear I feel our terrestrial landscape grumble defiantly at the God Of How Things Ought To Be. I am moved. I move.

I find the strength to break an evil spell—the warmth and resolve to force blood into my fingertips and nausea from my esophagus—when I consider the reach of Matthew’s face: its splintered shards etching bloody question marks into the numb flesh of hateful, hypothermic hands. How have we, as humans, become so indifferent? I start running when I think of how many times I will be willing to break my back, to step over and suture every crack on this planet until I am certain that this—Matthew’s shattered face, tilted, unhinged Earth scaling the hoops of Saturn’s wedded rings, historically indifferent shadows obscuring the visibility of victims not ‘worthy’ of this Son’s light—will never happen again.

Moisés Kaufman wanted to know if theatre can participate in (inter)national dialogue. Yes, it can. And thanks to Matthew Shepard, and to the theatre, and to an earthquake, so can I. I know who I am. I am a formerly athletic, pointedly theatrical, biracial little gay girl who thinks all these words don’t mean a thing if they get frozen, forever, on the page. I’ve finally got my words, and it’s time to move. The race is on. The race is toward, never away. The race starts today.

On October 12th, the eleventh anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death, over one hundred performances of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later will simultaneously transpire across the globe. If you would like to involve yourself (in any capacity) with Brown University’s undergraduate reading of the piece, or if you would like to answer a call for written works related to any issue/theme addressed in the piece above (to be incorporated into the staged reading), please contact Lauren Neal at i.am.lauren.neal@gmail.com.

Filed under: Theatre by Lauren Neal
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This summer a friend introduced me to my new favorite acronym— HALT. It’s borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous and the four letters stand for the four states in which we make our worst decisions: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. I’ve since used this rubric to check myself when I’m on the verge of making all manner of stupid decisions, especially when it comes to assessing my most impulsive, irrational, emotionally-driven decisions of all: the ones about sex.

Often when I’m manifesting a HALT symptom, but mainly when it’s an L or a T, I start feeling like I want some intimacy. Nothing too involved, nothing too serious. Certainly not anything that would rock the boat or disturb anyone’s peace of mind. I want…causal intimacy. The wish for casual intimacy is not to be confused with the desire for a hookup. People pretend that hookups exist in a vacuum. We try to keep our emotions contained, the idea being that hookups are the strictly carnal fulfillments of knee-jerk physical attraction. Casual intimacy implies more than what we think a hookup can offer. Physical intimacy, yes. But also a mutual appreciation that extends beyond the admiration of our partners’ physical appearances. Platonic fellow feeling. In essence, the ability to enjoy each other’s company in other places bedsides bed.

Causal intimacy exists in Limbo, suspended somewhere between the studied nonchalance of a hookup and the burdensome emotional responsibilities of a relationship. We all believe that this state exists, or at least we all want to. How many times has someone told you, “I don’t want anything serious?” Better yet, how many times have you said these words to someone you’re involved with? I’m sure that you meant what you said. But answer me this: after making this pronouncement, how successful were you at keeping your intimacy casual?

Casual intimacy fulfills a fantasy of enrichment without commitment that so many Brown students (yours truly included) hold dear to their hearts. Your casually intimate partner is someone you fool around with, but also someone you hang out with—and it’s not weird. Maybe you even do some things together that would count as dates except for the fact that they lack that essential awkward quality that comes part and parcel with dating.

This is a pretty picture, but I don’t buy it. This vision of casual intimacy is, I think, just a mirage. When it comes to intimacy, there is no such thing as stasis. It is a process that can’t be halted; once you open yourself to someone, feelings start to grow. It’s like yeast. Or a fetus. I believe this especially as it applies to physical intimacy. Nine times out of ten, taking your pants off opens up Pandora’s Box. If you claim that no, you actually don’t feel a thing, I think you’re full of shit. You may have numbed yourself out, but physical closeness and emotional closeness almost always come as a packaged set, and those little beasties you pretended not to see when you first let them out (vulnerability being the most troublesome of them all) get bigger and meaner the longer you ignore their existence.

I really wish that casual intimacy did exist. It would make forlorn Friday nights so much nicer. I wouldn’t feel so panicked whenever I consider taking the plunge into a new romantic escapade. And whenever I told someone, “I don’t want anything serious” I’d continue to feel that way long after I take off my clothes.

I wrote this column mainly based on the belief that there is no such thing as a free sexual lunch. Casual intimacy as I described it above is as imaginary as the Easter Bunny. And yet—

It is possible to be intimate without becoming emotionally entangled. But it’s also a lot of work. It means staying present for the process unfolding for you and your partner. It demands that you honor each other’s boundaries and desires. It requires quite a lot of communication. And most important of all, it necessitates that you go into the experience prepared to let it go when it’s over.

Engaging with healthy casual intimacy takes a tremendous amount of maturity and thoughtful awareness. Ironically, it’s not very casual at all. If you’re up to the challenge of staying open and detached at the same time, I think there is another option.

We can be like Joel at the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Accept that in becoming intimate we’re letting someone in. Accept that we will inevitably encounter angst and pain because of it. And rather than freaking out at that prospect, we can jump in. Ditch the fantasy of casual intimacy on the shore. It may feel abandoned, but at least we won’t be alone.

Filed under: Sex by Post- Magazine
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