Page 7 of #Starstruck

As if he knew I had just been thinking about him, my phone chirped at me. I had my account set up to notify me whenever he tweeted. And he said,

Was that about me?

Or did he think meeting my best friend was fated?

As I settled into my Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies class, I kept wondering if Chase was interested in Lexi. Because men usually were. I should have expected it. Instead, it was bothering me, and I didn’t really understand why.

This was a required class I had kept putting off and probably should have taken while I was an underclassman. Er, underclasswoman. But I forgot, and when I met with my counselor to go over my graduation requirements, she pointed out that I hadn’t taken it yet. Which made me the only senior in a room composed mostly of rabid, men-hating freshmen. Freshwomen. Who would probably make women’s studies their major. Our section was small, and I often felt bad for the three guys in the class who never, ever spoke. They probably feared for their lives.

The desks were arranged in a circle, as our professor employed the Socratic method. She didn’t believe in lecturing and felt we would learn more through discussion. I wasn’t sure what they paid her for, since she was essentially an academic version of a reality TV competition host—trying to stir up trouble and restate the obvious.

Our current unit focused on “body politics,” and I handed my paper to my professor when she went around collecting them. I felt her come to a stop behind me, flipping pages. Was that my essay she was reading?

After she had gathered all the papers, she sat down at her spot in the circle, something she did so we would all be on equal footing. “I hope she doesn’t mind, but Ms.Miller turned in an essay entitled ‘Feminist Celibacy.’” She put my essay on her desk. “I thought this would be a good starting point for today’s discussion. What did you mean by calling celibacy feminist?”

I was well aware of the fact that some second- and third-wave feminists advocated against celibacy, which I found to be highly hypocritical. “I thought it was interesting that people of our generation have a lower number of sexual partners and are twice as likely to be abstinent as previous generations. Even though we’re being told the only way to be feminist is to sleep around early and often.”

I probably shouldn’t have tacked on the last part. The room nearly exploded with competing voices.

“Celibacy is the patriarchy’s way of exerting control over women!”

“Haven’t you ever heard of owning your sexuality?”

“Why aren’t you sex positive?”

It wasn’t so much a discussion as a dog pile. Professor Gonzalez raised her right hand, signaling she wanted quiet. “One at a time, please.”

“I can answer those questions, if you don’t mind. No one controls me. I’ve made up my own mind.” I turned to the next girl who had spoken. “I own my sexuality more than anybody else I’ve ever met. In that it’s totally mine, and I don’t share it with anyone.” Then to the next woman. “How is celibacy not ‘sex positive’? I’m not slut-shaming or judging anyone else. This is a personal decision that I’ve come to, and I don’t understand why you don’t want anyone telling you what to do with your junk, but for some reason you think it’s okay to tell me what I should or should not do with mine. It is the worst kind of hypocrisy because it’s coming from people who should know better.”

So, that happened. I’d just confessed to my entire class that I was celibate. I probably should have kept it in the abstract, but it was something I felt strongly about, and I spoke before I thought about the consequences.

As I sometimes do when I’m passionate about something.

There was silence as everyone stared at me. Like I’d just said I had a third arm or twelve toes.

One of the Three Stooges spoke up. “This is just to get dudes to do what you want, right? A way to force us to fall in line?”

We finally had one of the guys contributing to the conversation, and that was what he decided to share? “How am I making men do anything? They’re free to date me or not date me. It’s not some reward I’m dangling above them to ensure good behavior. It’s off the table. Which is actually kind of nice, because it weeds out the losers and makes it so you really get to know someone without sex getting in the way.”

A sorority-ish girl in a sweater set leaned forward and said, “I don’t get why you would deliberately place those kinds of restrictions on yourself. Don’t you want to be free to do whatever you want?”

“I feel very free. I’ve never been worried about missing a period. I’ve never worried about contracting a sexually transmitted disease. I’ve never shared something so personal with a man and then had my heart broken when he didn’t call me again.”

She was undeterred. “But don’t you think it’s important as a woman to understand that part of yourself?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I guess I reject the notion that whether or not I do it is the most important thing about me. That my sense of self and value should be tied up solely in that one act.”

The professor finally took the pressure off me by intervening. “Cultural gendered social messages tell us that women should not only be young and sexually appealing, but also be available to men at any time, any place, for any reason. Can you see where feminists choosing to be celibate might help negate that premise?”

That led the discussion to the topics of advertising and pornography as they related to what Professor Gonzalez had just said, but I was finished speaking up for the day. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about the choice I’d made. It was that people treated me like I was some kind of alien life form to be studied. Why couldn’t it just be a valid life choice?

My phone buzzed, and I put it in my lap and turned it on. The professor had a no-phones-in-class policy, but I couldn’t help myself. Another tweet from Chase.

My heart did a funny flip when I read that. There were hundreds of replies from fans offering to help him out with his problem. He hadn’t said who he was talking about.

It couldn’t be me. Could it? Maybe it was Lexi. That made more sense. Or I was being completely presumptuous that it had anything to do with either of us. For all I knew, he was falling in love with a costar. Or his dry cleaner.

Realistically, I accepted that it couldn’t be me, which was good. It was one thing to daydream about a movie star, but it was probably totally different to actually date one. I didn’t have any desire to be famous or have my life available for public consumption. It was bad enough telling twenty people that I had chosen to be celibate. I couldn’t imagine it on a larger scale. Having it dissected by entertainment bloggers or being mocked by the public for it.

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