The Reality Method 2.0

Sh*tting where you Sleep (Or, Sleeping with your Housemates)

You’ve heard the expression: “Don’t shit where you sleep.”

A variant of the similarly venerable “Don’t shit where you eat,” the expression means, roughly translated, “Don’t have sex with your work mates.”

The idea is that having sex with people you live with can cause all sorts of drama and trouble; as such, it’s not so much a rule as an admonition to good social behavior that won’t rock the boat.

Now at this point I could roll off with some evolutionary psychology and adaptive biology in an explanation of how maintaining a strict sexual status quo in a tribal peer group was highly adaptive for our ancestors on the African savanna, but it’s 3:30 AM and I’m sitting in a coffee shop that suddenly got unbearably loud because about 10 drunk people waiting for sandwiches have launched into a sing-along of themes from “Saved by the Bell” and “Family Ties”.

So I think I’ll tell a short personal story instead.

Short Personal Story
When I was much younger I moved into a house with 3 women and 1 gay guy (well, he was straight, and then he turned gay).

Shortly after I moved into the house, one of the women started hitting on me….for instance, she’d see me in my room and ask me to come out into the living room and screw in a lightbulb that she “couldn’t reach”, or something equally silly, just to get me around her.

As the months went by, we went out to nightclubs and parties together, and had long, intense discussions into the hours of the night. One night, after we had all come home from the clubs and everyone else was drunk and asleep, I followed her downstairs to her basement room to help her “fix” her computer. It was just the two of us, all alone, down in her room, and it was so early it was starting to get light outside.

Of course I didn’t close it. Although part of it was my knowledge of the prohibition against fucking your housemates, I also happened to be so inexperienced I didn’t know my ass from my elbow.

Just ‘Cause It’s Easy Don’t Make it Right
The point still stands that, once you live with a girl in a shared-group setting, the “rapport” part of the attraction equation is already there; all you need to do is add the “attraction” part in proper measure, stir vigorously, and you’ve got sex. Shared living situations are “automatic rapport fixers” in that way.

This is not to say that the prohibition “Don’t shit where you sleep” doesn’t carry some weight, of course. Although it might be mightily tempting to sleep with a housemate, not least because of the “convenience” factor (which very nearly drove me to sleep with my R.A. and across-the-hall neighbor my freshman year of college), these sorts of decisions should be made on criteria a bit more complex than convenience, says I.

It is true sleeping with housemates or flat mates can really start some drama, if you get caught. In all fairness I wouldn’t advise the attempt for anyone but experienced seducers, those who have a great relationship with their landlord, and/or a back-up place to crash in case shit really pops off and gets them kicked out.

How Not to Get Caught
In terms of successfully concealing a household affair, you’ve got the deck stacked against you, since women by nature love to gossip, and people in general have enormous difficulty keeping secrets (especially such juicy secrets as I’M BOFFING OUR FLATMATE!).

As well, it can be enormously hard to hide or mask all the subcommunications we give off that give the game away when we are in mixed company, especially if the affair is particularly passionate and your chemistry is strong. Your housemates would have to be pretty damn clueless and/or socially inept to miss the subtle changes in speech and behavior that are leak out in spite (and because) of your most fervent desire for secrecy.

If you must sleep with your housemate, however, in spite of all the exhortations against it, here is my best piece of advice for not getting caught: sit down with your girl and have a very serious heart-to-heart about how very important it is that nobody ever find out about your liaison.

If you are at all in doubt that she got the message, resort to the power of sex, working the secrecy aspect of the affair into her fantasies and linking it to her pleasure and enjoyment of the sex.

And, if you do get found out, the preferred alternative to moving out would be the total acceptance of your affair by all your other housemates (especially if they are women, and especially if they want to join in); so a first course of action is to go to them with your co-conspirator and explain that it “just happened” and you are “couldn’t help it” and ask for their blessing. You just might pull it off, provided the Green Monster doesn’t raise its ugly head.

…

Hell, now that I think about it, that 10-person sing-along was a perfect example of being open and socializing and merging sets.

[Added]: Shortly after the rowdy singers left, a set of two girls — a HB8 and a B4 — walk in, asking where they can buy wine, and promptly get hit on by the two guys in front of them buying coffee. The guys are running all sorts of lame interview-style shit on them: “What’s your name” and “Where do you work” and “What are you doing tonight”, but the better-looking guy actually had his body language and tonality sort of on point, despite pulling some lame moves like holding the HB8’s hand and kissing it repeatedly (which the less-attractive guy mimicked of course). And, both of the guys were completely ignoring the 4 in favor of the 8 — it was like she didn’t exist — I’m always surprised how I feel about this when I see it being done improperly, no wonder those poor ugly girls get so jealous and cockblock.

The girls, for their part, were completely unresponsive, polite and conversational, but in the bored formal manner so common with women in this city — not attracted in the least.

…

Go out at night, guys — this stuff is everywhere. Even if you try to avoid nightclubs and bars, as I am doing now, you’ll still see social dynamics, seduction and pickups in progress.

And thus ends an interesting night of inadvertently live-blogging the local coffee house while trying to write about seduction.