As the writer of a blog called Sex and the Ivy, Harvard student Lena Chen promotes herself as something of an authority on sex. The 20-year-old sociology major is a minor celebrity around campus for her musings on hook-ups, booty calls and friends with benefits. So Chen, as self-appointed poster girl for what could be called a group of brainy girls gone wild, was an obvious choice to document a week’s worth of conquests for a national magazine’s online sex diary. Except for the tallies at the end of the week: Total acts of intercourse? Zero.

Yep, me too.

As a former campus “sexpert” (although I actually wrote about dating, NOT sex), I can say with absolute assurance that the prevailing idea - if you talk/write/act as if you are familiar with the concept of sex, you must therefore be having a lot of it - is such complete bullshit that one would think reasonable people would have gotten the Irony Memo already.  

In fact, I would counter that the people who seem the MOST uptight about sex are probably those secretly off Eyes-Wide-Shutting it up …  

As for me, I have a difficult time finding an appropriate position on the issue.  On the one hand, if what I hear from friends & acquaintances is true, I’m having less sex than 95% of most New Yorkers.  In my undergrad days, that would be something to trumpet - “I’m a bigger prude than you!”  But that’s a strange and sort of sad thing to brag about.

I don’t like the concept of “prudes” in general.  I think sex is a wonderful thing, and it should be valued and appreciated.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that I only feel comfortable and happy sleeping with men with whom I’ve fallen in love.  Ugh … I realize that makes me sound very Holier-than-Thou, which is NOT my attitude at all.

Honestly, it was just a practical decision: the fact is, I’m a HOPELESS romantic, and in order to stay that way, I have to be careful.

Although intellectually I believe women should be able to sleep with whomever we want, whenever we want, the truth is, sex is a very dangerous weapon.  While I’ve certainly kissed men I don’t care about (and haven’t felt guilty in the morning!), I don’t trust myself to go “all the way” and not get hurt.

Sex just makes me feel VERY vulnerable, and if I’m going to put myself in that position, I want to know that there’s love there.  (I mean, christ, even when there IS love, you can get emotionally obliterated.  sigh.)