Bed Spread: The Incessant Cest

Two fully-grown, consenting adults decide to sleep with one another. They know each other from a shared social setting, regularly interact, and live in close proximity. None of this seems particularly noteworthy, let alone scandalous and certainly doesn’t warrant having their names connected on a map. Not, that is, until the social setting becomes a college, where the act is deemed ‘collegecest’.

Before I go any further, I should probably admit that I myself am no college virgin, and so perhaps am not entirely unbiased in this matter. While my experiences are far from universal, they lie firmly on the scale between a mildly entertaining but inoffensive sconce and a genuinely positive addition to my life (I’m dating one of them, so I should probably say nice things about him in print). Yet both have still been marked down on the Queencest Map (yes, think Heartbreak High). If you don’t understand the reference (I admire you) or your college hasn’t reached this particular low (lucky you!), then the Map is a chart of everyone in Queen’s who has kissed, slept with, or dated one other. There are a few mistakes, and a couple of missed connections, but mostly it is a testament to the industrial scale of gossip within the college. While I can personally attest to its actual existence, it has lately assumed a quasi-mythical status: one friend told me that the mere thought of the Map, and of having their name added to it, was enough to deter them from committing collegecest.
It is this Queencest Map, which began last year as a joke, but which has grown increasingly relevant as attempts are made to ‘close the circle’, that really made me consider our preoccupation with collegecest.

The term ‘collegecest’ is a portmanteau of ‘college’ and ‘incest’, a formula also found in expressions ranging from ‘teamcest’ to ‘flatcest’ to ‘dormcest’. This etymology, while perhaps not rocket science, may show us where the taboo lies: perpetrators are perceived as too closely connected to one another, with their association to a shared social structure determining their relationship to one another.
By placing their relationship in the context of the college, though, we seem to legitimise taking an (often absurd) interest in these people’s sex lives. Thus it becomes permissible to map the sex lives of relative strangers, because, as members of the same college—the same social space they are endangering—we have a stake in their affairs.

So it is that collegecest comes to be seen as a great drama, one that threatens to wreak havoc on the college’s delicate social ecosystem. Unlike a team or a dorm, however, it is quite possible to go days, or even degree-lengths, without interacting with certain members of your college. While there may be one or two embarrassing interactions, perhaps a few moments of tension, it is usually far from the cataclysm that people like to talk about. Despite what we might like to think, most of the time, the people involved just continue with their lives.
Admittedly, collegecest does have a tendency to take place in quite public forums; there’s nothing like the sauna of a post-Bop Plush to really get the pheromones going. Even in the ‘privacy’ of your own room, the walls are never as thick as you’d like them to be. These factors might contribute, but they would be nothing without the rumour-wheel of an Oxford college—commit collegecest in the night, and everyone knows about it by breakfast. In fact, half the college has probably already found out before you wake up with an alarmingly familiar figure beside you.

As any perpetrators of collegecest are well aware, the experience can remind you of how enclosed a college is, and how suffocating the atmosphere can sometimes be. Even your most intimate actions can swiftly become part of the social currency—something to be judged and scrutinised by others. In the case of a break-up or fall out, this claustrophobia can reach nightmare-pitch. But this culture of constant scrutiny also seems to devalue the experiences, whether they be long-term relationships or casual sex, that come with collegecest. To others, it is not an earnest sexual interaction between two people, but a joke. Not a night to treasure (or forget), but a commodity in a shared social discourse, a co-ordinate on a map.

Collegecest can get messy (did I mention we nearly closed the circle at Queen’s?) but it can also be a lot of fun. It might be the beginning of a meaningful relationship, or just the end to a good night out. Either way, it is the business of the adults involved, who have the right to behave as they see fit—and to do so with a certain expectation of privacy. So next time you start to judge, maybe stop and consider what that judgment says about you.

 

Words by Nancy Robson.

Art by Phoebe Birch.