*dear conservative folks/religious people/those who are family and feel this is TMI-this is between R and X rated. Written as a lonely, single medical student dedicated to my future husband. You’ve been warned*

**to those same people-I love y’all, but I’ve been married to him for 13 years now, let’s calm down. That shouldn’t even have to be true to avoid getting judged for being…human. We are too uptight about this ish. There’s almost seven billion people and an AIDS endemic worldwide. We are hypocrites. It’s a problem, and perpetuates rape culture too 👀**

***I asked him years later, he had no clue we had this intense ’moment’. Men***

****feel free to laugh at what a rookie at life I was BUT you have no idea how much courage it took to share this, so be kind please****

Biology is a powerful thing.

Though I studied biology in college, and am now delving deeper and deeper into this material (pun intended?), it never actually occurred to me to apply it to everyday life.  But biology rules us even-especially even!-when we don’t want it to.

Take, for example, the human sex drive.   What happens when you put 300 sexually repressed medical students in a lecture hall, and the professor begins talking about the biological basis of sexual behavior? On VALENTINE’S Day, of all days?

Pure chaos.

It started out innocently enough.   He began talking about criteria for sexual identification, the basis of gonadal development in the fetus, etc.  All relatively small potatoes for us since we had completed Embryology the year before.  Hormones start to become discussed-dihydrotesterone, estrogen, progesterone, etc. etc.  All of a sudden, I become only too aware of my own.

Take the female menstrual cycle.  Exactly what hormones where pumping through my blood as the professor spoke?  Well, I know what
hormones-estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone-but how much was present?  What part of the cycle was I on?  Did that peak in estrogen-wow, is that why I wrote an irrational letter to my mom, and a good friend from home?  Is it the reason I crave weird things only at certain times of the month?  (Today, I ate bananas with peanut butter and jelly, and then ate lunchmeat with hummus!!!)  Before I started this stage in my career, I always attributed the above mentioned events to stress.  It takes me years into my studies to realize-duh!-that there is a hormonal basis to my behavior. Though I knew the facts alone (this hormone does this,that hormone does that, whatnot), I didn’t actually make the association.  I knew, but I didn’t know, you know?

Then talk shifts towards the magical topic-sex.

The talk begins to turn towards the Masters and Johnson model of sexual response-excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. Stuff I heard in my biology and psychology classes in
undergrad.  So I tune out.  And wonder about Masters and Johnson-two people who dedicated their lives watching other people have sex.  What drove them?  How did they keep their cool watching all these people doing it  over and over again over the years?

Then, my thoughts shifted towards me.
V-day is TODAY and I’m single?  I’m always single, geez.  I turn around to see how the class is reacting as a whole and saw one guy fidgeting in his chair………….

I turn back around, shift in my chair, and begin tapping my feet.   Gently.  The casual observer would attribute my behavior to anxiety.

The professor start talking about each of the stages, and what happens physiologically and psychologically to men and women in each
stage.  About disorders in each of these stages,how to treat them, etc. etc.

I shift in my chair again, and this time, notice a few more people doing so as well.   Apparently, I am not alone in my thoughts.

The talk finally peaks-literally!-to the orgasm phase in men and women.  More fidgeting, more awkward laughs from the island feverish, sexually repressed medical students.  I learn that in men, there is a dramatic change in pulse, respiration, and blood pressure.  I learn that contractions of the anal sphincter occur, and that there is a emission and propulsion phase. in which-you guessed it!-there is build up of fluids in the prostate, and in the propulsion phase, the ejaculation of semen occurs.  For women, the basin of the uterus attains its greatest size, muscular contractions occur, along with uterine and vaginal contractions.  Dramatic changes in pulse, respiration, and blood pressure, as well as contractions of anal sphincter, occur as well.

Well, that’s what I would have learned, had my mind not been elsewhere.

Instead, I looked back at the mysterious gentleman behind me. Again.

He was wearing glasses.  Not the nerdy kind, the cool kind, the GQ kind.  One day stubble,beautiful brown eyes slightly blurry from lack of sleep. Dark black hair. Smooth Indian skin made golden-brown from the harsh heat of the Caribbean sun.  He was classically, conventionally handsome-the kind you’d bring home to mom (lets’ pretend that’s where my mind was at the moment).  Tall, well built, but until that day, I didn’t really notice him.  Well, I’d talked to him a few times, but that was it.  He was supposedly friends with so-and-so, who had hooked up with so-and-so and such-and-such party. I think we had a few post exam drunken gab sessions, but not LIKE THAT…One of those things.  But all I noticed in that moment was that he was fidgeting again…….hmmmm.

Our eyes met.

He didn’t smile, neither did I.  I had only spoken to him a few times, and him, likewise.  But in that second we had passionate, across the room eye-sex.  All of a sudden, the room felt much too hot, and much too small.  The world disappeared.  My cheeks became flushed.  A flush that remained with me for the rest of the day, according to my friends (I blamed it on the heat, of course).  I’m surprised that all the seats, all the rows that separated us didn’t spontaneously burst into flames.

That moment was everything you read about in Cosmo and Maxim, and then some. That moment was like something out a trashy romance novel, a
novel so over the top and scandalous that most women won’t admit to having read it(including myself).  The kind of passion most middle
age women could only dream about, the kind that their Viagra popping husbands can no longer fulfill.  The kind that every woman wants, really, secretly, regardless of her age, level of education, and whether she’s a feminista or not.

It was hot.  It was fabulous. It was also totally in
our heads.  Or maybe just my head.  I don’t know.

Wow.  Welcome to Temptation Island, Grenada.
Stay posted, and I’ll tell you who’s sleeping
with whom next week (across the room, nonetheless).

So this is what happens in the recesses of my dirty little mind when I’m trying to get an education.  Oh God.  Oh no.

I’m a good Indian girl.  I’m here to
study.  At least that what it appears like externally. In my mind, I’m as bad as a nymphomaniac on death row.

AND SO IS EVERYONE ELSE HERE, that’s what really scares me.

But as of now, I’m just trying to memorize everything that I had just told you, and then some.  Hopefully, I will treat anyone who comes in with desire, arousal, plateau, and orgasmic disorders.

Hopefully I can control these emotions, control myself and fulfill my purpose in life.  Which I can do with the help of God, and with my own hard work.

And by keeping my eyes of the gentleman in the back row.