Out of touch, I guess...
I work with a lot of new, young librarians. Three of them are in their middle to late 20's. Josh is happily married to a woman, Kate is a lesbian in a serious relationship. Barb is very single and very straight. All of these young people are nice and not really bohemian types. Josh is a Roman Catholic. At the annual national conference where the librarians in our field gather, it is customary for collegues to room together to save money. The three of them shared a room. Is this wierd or just an outgrowth of living in an era of co-ed dorms, etc., etc? I have no reason to believe that any extracurricular sexual activity took place (in fact I'm certain it didn't). Still,I mean what's the deal here?
posted by unca | 6:37 PM
5 Comments:
Josh to wife: “Honey I will be out of town next week. Here’s the number to the hotel. I will be sharing a room with Barb but you don’t have to worry because Kate will be sharing the room with me too”.
To answer your question yes in my opinion that’s a little strange.
I am sure they all slept head to toe, but if Josh were my husband... hmmmm... I'd be calling him in the middle of the night. "No funny stuff!"
not in my twenties anymore (sigh), but do travel with co-workers a fair amount. we're not expected to share rooms (at least not now -- who knows when it comes to possible, future budget constraints?). i find this setup very weird and wouldn't like to be put in this situation.
and i'm sure blogball's re-creation of josh's conversation was exactly what transpired! :)
I also find that a little strange in a professional situation, but I think nowadays a desire for personal privacy is likely to be at least as big a concern to people as hanky-panky or "appearance of impropriety".
Over-simplified, I think the thinking is kind of like this:
Any two (or more) people who want to have sex with each other can now do so without fear of serious social consequences. So now it's more a personal choice -- whether we do/don't is entirely up to us, not up to convention or circumstance. IOW, if we wanted to be having sex, we already could/would be -- sharing a hotel room makes no difference.
Note that I'm not saying the above is logical. Opportunity is a strong influence -- if nothing else, a shared room situation allows us to get much further down the road to intimacy without having to commit or put our egos on the line -- so I think in practice sharing a room is a bad idea for someone who wants to be in an exclusive relationship.
All I'm saying is that I surmise the thinking is something along those lines. Plus I think most ppl are still a little timid for opportunity-based group sex (or sex in front of a stranger), so the 3-some situation you described may have seemed less threatening/uncomfortable than some others...
lxtmpHow strict is the rule at the university on sharing rooms? Could it possibly be that they thought it was expected? I worked at a company with a similar rule, and was shocked when the younger people thought they would get fired or never promoted if they didn't share a room, even though everyone hated the policy. When I went on my first trip, sure enough, I went with a very nice lesbian who smoked. I offered to pay my way for my own room; (I said I couldn't do smoke) the company then said they would pay for separate rooms. But yes, I think your situation is even more strange, but my point is sometimes these younger people are very afraid of management. Are they shy? Apparently not too, or they wouldn't be sleeping together. haha.
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