“On the right side of the Personal Hygiene aisle next to the hair gel.”
“They hide it next to the Pregnancy tests.”
“It’s totally there. But can’t you just use Icy Hot?”
It seems clear that condoms and birth control will never be sold on Georgetown’s campus. But you’d be surprised at what you find while meandering down the aisles of Vital Vittles. Although students must make the “walk of shame” to procure a pack of condoms at our secular humanist dens of sin like 7/11, once upon a time they could take a “walk of glory” down the aisles of Vital Vittles to find KY jelly. For years students passed on these precise directions like conquistadors in search of the Seven Cities of Lube. Despite hours spent on my hands and knees probing the shelves, it appears that Vittles has given up lube-mongering. Why the CORP decided to pull it from their shelves is unclear, but it certainly meant something to all those students who knew exactly where to find it.
Why would the CORP stock an item whose sole purpose is the enhancement of intimacy? For argument’s sake, maybe lube does possess some hidden utility for the masses. The back of a typical lube tube reads: “An excellent lubrication for insertion of rectal thermometers, enemas, douches, and similar types of nozzles.” Maybe I’m not familiar with the clandestine Hoya party circle that takes pleasure in a Saturday night enema, but my guess is the CORP’s stock of personal lubricant went right to the dirty deed that I like to call boom-boom-boom-shake-da-room.
But GASP and GASP again, you utter, you thought sex was entirely taboo at Georgetown University? I return to the tube of personal lubricant in search of penetrating answers: “This product is not a spermicide and cannot be used as a contraceptive.” The fact that Georgetown University would sell you the KY but not the condom makes me rethink the traditional sex debate on our campus. Sex is not taboo at Georgetown; safe sex is.
When it comes to the sexual health of its students, it seems like the fervently Catholic who defend our medieval condom policy would like nothing better than to see its sexually active student body barefoot, pregnant, and sprinkled with scabies. I always expected that the University would defend its policy with the ever popular “LA-LA-LA-I-CAN’T-HEAR-YOU” defense that the Vatican strategically employs to prop up Church dogma that clashes with modern societies or Christ’s message of love, tolerance, and social justice. So what kind of message does it carry that, once upon a time, the CORP stocked lube? As a student of Georgetown University, I can waltz down the checkout line with my buckets of lube, my pregnancy test, and my post-coital pack of Mentos because I have the right to impregnate and/or infect as many students in the most pleasurable way possible. If you’re going to sin, sin big.
In all seriousness, I doubt the fleeting appearance of KY Jelly on our shelves revealed some conscious crack in the edifice of zealous Catholic dogma. Its fifteen minutes of fame was probably just another oversight by our infamously inept bureaucracy.
This leads me to wonder what exactly is so offensive about a tube of lube or a pack of condoms. Back in Oct. 2002, the administration forbid H*yas for Choice from distributing condoms in dormitories. Then Vice President of Student Affairs Juan Gonzalez argued that according to the University’s speech and expression code, students did not have the right to place condoms on their doors because condoms are “offensive to other students,” and may also threaten the beliefs of other students. Hate speech, sexual assault, and homophobia, for example, threaten my beliefs and my safety. But a condom? If your beliefs are threatened by a piece of latex smothered in spermicide or water-based goo, perhaps they weren’t very strong to begin with.
