Sometimes I wonder how I got this job. What qualifies me to spout 800 words, loosely related to the topic of sex, for the Bowdoin community to read every other week? Because this is the last article I'll be writing for the Orient before I graduate this month, it seems to me like an ideal time to share with you my credentials as a sex columnist. If you want to know the truth, the idea for this column began as a joke that my friends and I hatched over lunch at Moulton early this past fall. I think the idea was that it would be really funny, or ironic, or something, if I wrote the sex column because of my particular situation with regard to sex.

If you've been reading my column this year, you are already well aware of the fact that college has been a very formative experience for me, both sexually and socially. Unsurprisingly, then, with graduation biting at my heels, I still find myself in the position to learn and grow at Bowdoin. Today will be the first time in my four years at this school that I attempt to participate in the Day of Silence.

Bowdoin students are a fortunate bunch. We have so many tools for learning and living at our fingertips, it's hard to believe that any one of us could ever complain about our situation here in Brunswick, Maine. One of the only things that I find deserving of serious lament at Bowdoin is time—there's not enough of it. I'm about to graduate in May, so I'm admittedly a little biased on the subject, but if you'll bear with me I think I have a point. The four years that we spend in college can be particularly formative with regard to our sexual identities.

Whenever I come out to someone, particularly a straight someone, there are two questions that I can expect to be asked sooner or later. Question number one: Did you always know you were gay? Question number two: How do lesbians have sex?

When I was 11, I found the repeat button on my stereo system. Dave Matthews' "Before These Crowded Streets" was spinning around in the CD player and before long, track number eight, "Crush," was looping sweet sounds in and out of my ears for hours on end. There's a part in that song—"Let's go drive 'till morning comes, and watch the sunrise and fill our souls up"—that blew me away the first time I heard it. Those words were so real I could almost taste them. It was like Dave was talking to me, telling me what love was going to be like.

Hello Bowdoin. You look great. And it's so good to see you—it's been so long since I've seen you. Wait a minute, what am I talking about? I can't see you, and you can't see me either. Then again, you do know what I look like, because my picture is printed at the top of this column. So, if you see me walking toward the Union today you might recognize me, but would you say hello—would you give me eye contact?

Despite the fact that most of us have less than 12 days left on campus, i.e., less than 12 days to get all of our work done, confirm travel plans, pack up our stuff and say goodbye to friends, I thought it might be cute, in the spirit of the holidays, to give some suggestions for end of semester sex relations?that is, if you can even find the time to hook-up in this maelstrom of papers and exams.

My nose is stuffy, my lips are chapped, I'm eating dinner at 5 o'clock and my professors have been taunting me all week about preparing for final papers and exams. At least there's one thing that I can look forward to as the semester comes to a close?Thanksgiving.

Americans made history on Tuesday. We showed up to the polls in record numbers and we made a difference. But, to be honest with you, if you had asked me how I felt about the election while I was standing in line waiting to vote I probably would have shrugged and given you some sort of witty and indifferent response. Or maybe I would have said, "Remember when President Clinton 'did not have sexual relations with that woman'?"

About this time three years ago, I lay on my back, listlessly staring up at the stained and dingy ceiling of the Coleman basement. Both of my roommates had long since drifted off into calm and rejuvenating slumber, leaving me awake and alone in that moonlit dungeon I'd begun to call home. I couldn't sleep, you see, because my mind was alive and raging in dire abandon?recalling dark and sweaty encounters in Chilean discotecas, frivolous lawn romps at graduation parties, steamy hot tub indulgences, and nostalgic tributes to auld lang syne in the back seats of cars. I couldn't sleep because I'd never been tested for sexually transmitted infections.

It was dinner time on a Sunday night, early October 2005. Alone with my roommate in a booth at the back of Thorne, I was determined to keep the conversation as general as possible. Something had been festering inside me all day, and now it was pushing its way up into my throat. Avoiding eye contact with my roommate, I tried to keep my lips clenched. But 20 minutes' time found me powerless over my internal burden, and I slipped: "Shelley, I think I might be gay."