Cheers to the Nostalgia

As the year has come to close, it’s pertinent that we bid a proper farewell to EC and the memories; cheers to the nostalgia! (NOTE: This must be done with either a drink or joint in hand- preferably both)

Cheers to Wild Weekends, Wasted Wednesdays, Thunder Thursdays, Fucked-Up Fridays and the other nights of the week that we have all celebrated but won’t tell respectable people about.

To the hundreds of ounces smoked out of nearly every window of the building, to the hot boxing of our rooms and to the RA’s who have both recognized that Mary Jane is pretty tight friends with a fair number of us and those that still don’t know what it smells like.

To five hours of uninterrupted Shisha in the common room and a year’s worth of spontaneous sessions around campus.

Cheers to the only bunny in living memory to have more friends in EC than men donning fishnet. (Who’d have thunk?)

To the exotic Raphael, who successfully snuck into, and stayed in, the building to wish a rather bouncy Happy Birthday from his waxed and muscular bottom to the tip of his naked self.

Cheers to the numerous and creatively broken doors; from backwards handles to general jams, from flyaway punches to the battery of permanent markers that have made exiting and entering our home all that much more adventurous.

To the four-hundred-thirty-seven invented facts submitted by the four, five or six EC students stupid enough to register for Rosa Harris-Adler’s class.

Cheers to our honorary building mates, who have successfully confused the fuck out of a sizable percentage of those of us who actually live there.

To Dormcest and the inability of the campus male-female ratio to inhibit driving teenage hormones; what would the year have been like without knowing you shouldn’t shower in the right-hand stall or lay on the second floor common room’s carpet?

To the poor purple birthday cake that ended up ground into the carpet, but eaten despite the fact.

Cheers to burning toast and the subsequent four fire alarms that served to keep us on our toes; aside, of course, from those who were still too saturated from the night before to get out of bed.

To the hygienic capabilities of a concentration of university students that not only failed to keep us smelling sweet, but concluded in the circulation of coughs, snivels, mono and (last, but most definitely not least) lice.

To dancing on washing machines and raving with the driers.

Cheers to the constant nudity, parties lacking pants and, of course, Tit-Shock-Therapy on the third floor.

Take ‘er EC for the summer!

A Guide to Playing and Laying

Edited October 2008; pre-Martlet.

Being the class act that I am, I chose the very delicate topic of rugby and sex for my main feature. Writing class is definately fun as fuck.

Mud, blood and glory has only taken me so far, really. It can usually get me that tackle, the team’s respect and about as much as a high five from the guy that I would have hoped to secure by the night’s end. While the glory may be all well and good for potential conquests, it’s the mud, blood and rugby that tend to off my evening game. Try as I might, it seems to be quite impossible to score off the field when that sexy skirt only serves to highlight the bruises and rake marks left by my female competition on the pitch.

Don’t get me wrong; being seen as more than an average woman with a waist and a pair of melons can be more gratifying than the game-saving hit, but it leaves an impression that doesn’t lend itself towards the femininity needed in certain male-female interactions. Sure being introduced as a rugby player may instantly win me eye-to-eye respect, but when shaking hands with a man of exemplary muscle, I can’t be confident I wouldn’t rather be faced eye-to-chest instead. Unfortunately, it appears that being seen as one of the guys often puts me in a category that pretty firmly supersedes sex; if anything, shouldn’t my ability to keep up with the guys generally apply to my libido too? One gentleman I had been chatting up at a party heard that I played the game and punched me in the arm, saying “Shit son, that’s cool.” Not necessarily the reaction I had been hoping for.

Convinced I couldn’t be the only one whose sex life was compromised thanks to the game I play, I seized the opportunity to reassure my ego at one of my UVic team’s pre-practice stretch circles. Flopping down on an edge of the grassy ring, I mentioned my ongoing lack of action to Sarah, one of the many girls who contended regularly with bruise patterns and had long since forgone the preposterous idea of wearing skirts. After first trying to tell me that she had not, in fact, had any sort of trouble, she finally conceded to having primarily dated other rugby players. Her small town home Port Alberni has all of one rugby club with mixed genders; a cocktail of players who love the game and don’t mind having to watch out for the accumulation of bruises and scrapes while in the midst of action.

Hearing our conversation, a couple of the other girls piped up and, much to the relief of my sensitive pride, informed me that playing rugby and getting laid are polar opposites for estrogen endowed players. “Leave the lights off!” shouted Thalia, one of our forwards, shaking her head at my apparent ignorance. “Can’t show off your bruises ‘till later, T.” Apparently there were rules to the late night game and my beloved war wounds were a trademark no-no; after all, why wouldn’t I have shown off the trophies I collect on the pitch?

“Bruises aren’t sexy,” confessed my friend Neil, cringing like he had just been forced to tell me that Santa isn’t real. And according to the guys I had gathered for the sake of explaining away my recent failures, neither are biceps or ripped legs, which is something they just know would be overdeveloped in a female rugby player. Damn it. In the name of thorough research, though, I decided to even out the playing field by getting my eager volunteers to choose between two equally sexy women- one of which played my sport. Ultimately, the five or six guys who wandered in and out of the room unanimously snuck in their votes for the one who didn’t play; a choice most of them couldn’t explain. The exception, mind you, was left to my classiest gentleman friend who, upon throwing in his two cents, shrugged and explained that the rugby player was probably gay, leaving the choice obvious. It seems our reputation as players precedes us.

Despite the decided unattractiveness of trained muscles, however, it was determined that a rugby girl could still make for a good evening; a good “Vegas story.” There is apparently a little something in that swagger we get as we walk off the field that announces not only our arrival, but our inherent dominance. It has to be the right sort of evening, though, for one of the guys to be interested in submitting themselves; being out-muscled by their female partner is generally not something that makes them feel appropriately effective where it counts. Consequently, Jeff, an ex-player himself, declared that “rugby girls scare the shit out of me.”

None of this was very surprising according to my loving father and sexual selection expert, the good doctor Petr. After having survived the usual string of questions about laundry and grades when I called home, my mom ventured into “when are you bringing home a boyfriend?” territory and I mentioned my recent attempt to unravel the mysteries of my sex life. Hastily avoiding the correlation to my ability to score, I began by relating some of the reactions I had gotten from my male friends around campus and was answered by the scholarly, but unfortunate, response of “That actually sounds about right.” Leave it to dad to shut down my plans on winning the female game.

According to my father and the bearer of bad news, sexual selection dictates that the most attractive attributes of either sex are signs of vitality and vigour; clear skin, a straight walk, shiny hair- cleat rakes and fingerprint bruises excluded. Mammalian males, he says, are on average larger than their female counterparts and biologically designed for combat and protection, leaving a man with a beefy woman feeling about as useful as a deflated rugby ball. While we, the women of rugby, may pride ourselves in our ability to outflex the competition and come off covered in the glory of a fair fight, it’s, them, the men of our affections, that aren’t falling for the looming threat of being beaten by their fair maidens. And although it may sting the ego to discover, it does explain why I’ve never managed to score on evenings when I’ve had to explain why only one eye is shadowed purple.

Being introduced as a rugby player also serves to mark me as an aggressive woman which, for a man who (despite what he thinks) is innately seeking a partner to raise his young, is a key sign that I would not focus all my attention on the survival of our young; even if I would gladly focus on the production of them. “Why do you think some cultures keep their women at home?” dad says, explaining that the male is instinctively seeking out a female who will not be distracted by competition or be able to undermine their status in male social circles. I suppose it might be time I stopped showing off my biceps and my capacity to drink rum like water. On second thought, it might also help if I didn’t spend most of my night out dancing on speakers with all limbs flailing.

As enlightening as my dad’s biological insight was, it only served to further confirm that the best way to win the game is to pretend you don’t play it. The trick, it appears, is to maintain an un-muddied, un-bloodied female image until after the guy has been assured that he is not hooking up with a “ham beast.” It might be time I reconnected with my femininity. Then again, what determines that a passion for playing the game, any game, isn’t sexy in itself?