Sexually frustrated during exam term?

10:30pm: all of the housemates are still in the library. There is nothing of interest going on.

It’s a normal exam-period night, leafing through a book of Catalan love poetry when I’m suddenly struck by the tension in the air. I look around me, pale faces, red-strained eyes and tensed jaws illuminated by laptop screens and underscored by the eerie sound of pen scratching feverishly against paper.

The moment is pregnant. The debauched Valencian poet I’m reading seems to infer that we’re currently at an age where we can’t and shouldn’t fight our natural urges to have sex with other hot-blooded youths and share and bask in our collective energy and beauty.

The room is full of potential. If I combine the sentiments of the poet with my wide knowledge-base of adolescent behaviour, mainly gained from watching the first, second and half of the third series of Skins, then any moment now someone is going to produce a bag of some illicit drug and say “Fuck this; let’s revise when we’re too old to party.” The room will be transformed into an orgy of limbs and toned naked bodies, underscored by a catchy tune from an up-and-coming British indie-electro band, as everyone submits to the burning carnal temptations coursing through their veins.

Too mainstream?

The incessant typing continues, the glow on people’s faces seems to be showing their laptops, books and notepads sucking every drop of libido from the pores of their skin. A single bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and I realise I have to get out.

The only things that have been present in exam-term life so far are incredibly dull (discussions of best places to work in the library, detailed analyses of each item of college food, play-by-play of each other’s bowel movements and sleeping habits) therefore, I’m going to make like a lateral-thinking arts student and discuss what is ABSENT, analyse the importance of what this term is LACKING.

Sex.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that this university has become even more sexless than it was before. The sun shining, we’re the youngest we’ll ever be, and hormones are exploding with a cacophony of unreasonable demands and desires as we desperately try to fill our brains with facts. No area is safe, not the library, definitely not the gym… Even in the examination hall I double-take as I hear the Invigilator say “You may now turn over the SEXamination paper”.

Sadly, Tinder provides no respite either, constantly swiping left in an almost anti-masturbatory gesture of continual dissatisfaction and unrealised potential.

Charming

At times I start to regret my decision to be a ‘free spirit with no ties’, but it doesn’t even seem to be exclusively single students who are suffering from sexual frustration – couples simply ‘don’t have time’. To be frank, neither do I – scanning over my revision timetable I can see there definitely aren’t enough ‘break gaps’ to schedule it in, not without sacrificing Game of Thrones hour, and that’s just not going to happen.

Nevertheless, the end of this period is approaching, I see it appear majestically and begin to rise up on the horizon like a… yeah. There’s no shame in this pent up anxiety, we’re only human, but I can’t help thinking that this crescendo of worry is not simply to do with sex.

In fact, if I really think about it, perhaps I’m just incredibly nervous about exams and have transferred all of that worry onto something easier to solve and less important in the long term. Last year it was the dirty kitchen, this year my kitchen isn’t dirty. Therefore, I have no other choice than to decide that I am irremediably sexually frustrated and write an article about it.

The fact of the matter is, I want the other late-night library freak-out students to know that they’re not alone, I want you all to realise that ‘having lots of sex to get rid of stress’ in exam term definitely isn’t happening. We’ve all become as twitchy, irritable and anti-social as each other and the last thing a caffeine-riddled, nicotine-stained, exhausted body needs is sex.

Sleep, relax, study and wait for May Week, when the library will undoubtedly become a haven of intoxicant-fuelled orgies, right?