Living with roommates in residence is definitely something that can hinder your sex life. In my first year at Queen’s, I was assigned to a quad room with very little privacy.
Seriously, I could swing an arm and hit my roommate’s bed beside me. To make matters worse, it’s very common in first year to find partners who also share their room with others. This was a year-long battle that I eventually overcame and I’m happy to share with all of you the tips I learned to tough it out.
Now, I think it’s safe to say no one wants to be sleeping in a bed two feet away from people doing the deed. And if your roommate does want to be there, it’s a problem that would constitute an entirely separate article.
Luckily, there are some age old tricks that many roommates who came before me invented, such as the good old sock on the door.
For those of you living under a rock who aren’t familiar with this approach, you simply place a sock on the door knob when you and your partner have reserved the room for however long you need. You can modernize this old-school technique with whatever works for you and your housemates — a quick text or a secret symbol written on your res door white board.
However, in my experience, not all roommates are going to be okay with being sexiled by a sock or a text. In these circumstances, I was given the choice to either embrace the audience or find an alternate location.
Now, embracing the audience wasn’t always the easiest choice due to the fact that this involves making little noise while hoping the other people in the room aren’t paying attention to the moving covers right beside them. That choice can give you a rush in the moment but leads to lots of awkward conversation when you all have breakfast the next day.
The alternative option is enjoying the exhilarating concept of sex in a public place. Shower sex is not at all uncommon in some people’s everyday sex life but in residence’s public showers it can give you an even bigger audience than your roommates. However, Queen’s being as wonderful and advanced as it is, has introduced a perfect solution to this in the form of a tub room.
You’re now probably wondering what a tub room is and if it’s sanitary. Well, a tub room is a residence bathroom found on specific residence floors consisting of a sink, toilet and tub, with a door that can be locked while the room is occupied.
Whether this is sanitary is difficult to say as it’s my opinion there are very few 18 year olds that are actually taking baths in a public washroom, leaving me to believe these rooms may be used more commonly for the purposes that we’re discussing. I found this route also eliminated the awkwardness while keeping things exciting.
Therefore, although having roommates while still trying to get that good loving can introduce a set of problems, it honestly wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be. If you find your own way of getting it on when you live in a small room with other people it makes things so much easier. And honestly it’s a part of living in residence, I’m not the only one that has navigated through this problem and I won’t be the last.
-Barrie Cradshaw
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.
