When I was in kindergarten, I was the only girl allowed in the no-girls-allowed boys club. But I couldn’t wait for grade school, because all the boys were cuter there. Plus THEY didn’t play with themselves in public. And when I was in fifth grade, I had a crush on an eighth-grader because he was far taller than any of the shrimpy boys in my class — i.e. he was my height. Then I got to middle school, and all I wanted to do was get to high school so I could sit outside on the lawn smoking and I could kiss “guys” and go on dates. But not necessarily in that order (smoking breath, ew). But in high school, I discovered that “guys” got zits and the lawn was itchy.

So I couldn’t wait for college because everyone told me I would meet the man I was going to marry. I was going to fall in love.

It’s been two years, and I’m still waiting.

But in all seriousness, it seems this year I’ve considered love and sex to be separate entities. There’s been no discussion of love, no roses and romance — Yale, we’ve rounded the bases together, with not a single profession of “I love you.”

What makes sex funny and love not? Love is, to be honest, unfunny. There are no jokes about people falling in love, but there are plenty about people getting laid. Is love just too close to home? Have we indeed done the unthinkable and separated sex and love in our minds so that one is almost completely distinct from the other? Do the three rabbis in the bar only have sex? Do they never fall in love?

The people we REALLY like, we take it slow sexually — at least at the beginning. We don’t say “I love you” for ages either; we have to wait until we’re absolutely sure. Insurance companies should begin insuring love — if it doesn’t work out, you’re compensated. Get love insurance at the beginning of a relationship, when you think things might get serious. Ten bucks a month, and if you “love” him and he “loves spending time with you,” you’re insured. Your insurer will find you someone else who’ll reciprocate the deepest emotion in the human repertoire. It’s a beautiful thing, really.

Sex and love both leave us vulnerable, and there is little that is funny about vulnerability. Yet, we are vulnerable in different senses. That’s why our hearts are on the inside, and the rest is on the outside. To be physically naked and to be emotionally so are quite different things.

Nudity is inherently humorous. The body is beautiful, of course, but the things we do with our bodies in the sack are plain weird. I’ve heard of something labeled a “69” — that’s dumb. The 69 is dumb. That is a position that can probably be done without. It is the way in which you are able to see your partner at the worst possible angle in the entire world.

Furthermore, the things we say in bed are atrocious. The sounds we make. (Have you ever heard your roommate having sex? It’s embarrassing. You are embarrassed to be a human.)

The fetishes we have are ridiculous. There are magazines devoted fully to sex. How to have sex, where to have sex, with whom to have sex. Sex is full of odd details that end up being really just silly. Love, on the other hand, makes us act silly, or stupidly, but it does not make us bark like a dog or want to use whips. I mean– uh– if that’s your thing.

I don’t mean for this last column of the year to go off of the philosophical deep end, or even to ask you to question yourselves and your souls — to reach down and come up with something ingenious, to rediscover, or to reflect. I’m not asking you to go out and find that one person and reveal to her your deepest, darkest secret, that — gasp! — you are IN LOVE with her. (And this is a dark secret, trust me.)

I merely ask that every once in a while, when you are getting laid, or thinking about getting laid, or hoping to get laid, you think about love. And when you find it, you clue me in on how exactly you were able to do so. Perhaps give us all a little insight into what makes that person “the one,” or the one for right now. Also tell me how the sex is. It might be interesting to discover what happens when sex and love meet halfway.

Then again, perhaps I’m thinking too hard, because as I sit here writing this final column, Fat Joe has just come on to the radio and he’s presently asking me:

“What’s love gotta do with a little menage?”

Joe — I don’t know. What does love have to do with a little menage?

Have a good summer, Yale. I hope we can continue this long-lasting and wholly physical relationship next year. And who knows — maybe this summer I’ll fall in love.

Natalie Krinsky ’04 is in love with you.