Op-Ed: Stext and the City: Stacks Are Not-So-Secret Haven for Desperate Undergrads 

Books are teachers, and very patient ones, for that matter. The lesson that all the books in the Regenstein bookstacks collectively taught me is that sometimes I should trust the posts on UChicago Secrets. 

Teaching this unlikely truth certainly requires patience, but bear with me. Before arriving on campus, I was prone to brush off all the ‘sex in the stacks is great’ discourse on Secrets as another local meme. After all, who actually has sex in a library? It’s dusty, the aisles are narrow, and the odds to be heard or seen are just too high.

Placed into a dorm room with another straight girl, I did not have too many carnal hopes for this academic year. That is, until I saw them. They were humongous, filled with soothing ventilator white noise, and seething with hidden corners. Do you think anyone actually went into the ‘lame old folios’ sections (fC – F ‘Oversized’, F69 — 169, etc.) at any time during the last ten years? The stacks clearly call for some marvelous stex. I encourage my readers to make the most of university facilities and try it, because you can never expect a platonic all-nighter in the stacks. There is no such thing as a platonic all-nighter.

Stex is an aesthetic. As time progresses, you explore the body of literature and find what you enjoy most. A cunning lioness, you start to hunt down your next stexual interest right in the book jungle. A tall, dark-haired artsy poser comparing his and his friends’ Moby Dick editions; a frat bro who got lost in the comp lit (c-lit) section three years ago and still lives there, now a voracious reader who subsists exclusively on food for thought; a sturdy computer science major who can keep going all night during finals season — bookworms are the new rabbits, the juiciest prey. The stacks’ air is poisoned with the Kama Sutra — its library code is (312)-687-7139, check it out. Oh, and if you’re coy, you can start with stexting (sexting in the stacks). It’s not half as good, obviously, but it is the first page. 

If you think this stext is insane, this is your repressed stexual desire speaking. And remember: a great books education should always leave you with both new, pleasurable experiences and a slight fatigue when it ends.

Editor’s Note: The Chicago Shady Dealer does not condone sex. The views expressed above are entirely those of the writer. We strongly advise readers to proceed with caution amid the continued outbreak of the Delta variant.