Have you ever had brain sex? Yes, you probably have. Before you start trying to remember a time you left your drink unattended, read a little further.
As it has been explained to me, brain sex has no consensual or spiritual basis, it has little to do with attraction and desire, and it does not happen for the usual immaterial reasons that actual sex does, like exercise and revenge. The difference between brain sex and actual sex, besides the obvious, is that brain sex occurs by happenstance and often without notice. The intellectual tendencies of you and your sexual partner just happen to match up in all the right places. In short, your brains are compatible with one another to the point that they can unite into an academic ecstasy.
Indeed, brain sex is still a dual act; it does not include individual cases of hard thinking. Spending hours at the video store trying to decide between The Day the Earth Stood Still and the Day the Earth Stopped is the type of head-hurting dissolution that might constitute brain-masturbation, but not brain sex. The “sex,” as usual, still requires a mate, as well as the roundabout formalities.
First base: Suppose you are at university sporting your favourite Battlestar Galactica t-shirt. A nice looking girl comes and sits near you and remarks on how she is also a fan of the show. The two of you spark up a light conversation about space battles and glamorous Cylons, and before you know it you have . . . introduced yourselves. Has brain sex occurred? Not quite. You’re just rounding first.
Second base: The Battlestar conversation continues, but it is not exactly the symposium that your throbbing intellectual urges are drooling for. Thus far you have only scratched the surface of your proficiency with simple remarks on how widescreen film better showcases the vacuous nature of space. Together, your brains are capable of more, so you take it a little further, now exploring the show’s enriched philosophies on humanism and democracy. You’re getting there.
Third base: By this point you should have moved on to the topic of alternate realities, dissecting the details of a world without fruitcake, until eventually one of you mentions that you just read George Orwell’s 1984 and are relishing in dystopian societies. Things are getting hot.
The sex: Before you know it the clothes are off and the two of you are deeply engrossed in a back and forth about totalitarianism and the future of our world. Words like “solipsism” and “doublethink” make their way into the discourse. You are putting the “heat” in heated debate. You are giving new meaning to oral sex. Your brains may not see completely eye to eye, but that is irrelevant so long as the dialogue proceeds argumentatively, objectively, and without pause. Finally, the two of you center on one specific attribute of the conversation that paralyzes you both in a brief moment of communion until one of you smacks the table and bellows “yes . . . yes, I agree!”
The sex is now over. Things calm down. You may now cuddle with topics such as “candy cane vs. candy apple.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is brain sex.
Or, to put it bluntly, brain sex occurs when you and another person have a powerful and intellectual conversation — one that wears you down. That’s an easier and less brain- sexual way of putting it.
So, as the school year gets started, I say be a slut. A good round of brain sex is what makes university fun, and pleasureful.