Five stages of sexile

No one expects to be sexiled. Like getting struck by lightning, mauled by a bear or biting into an oatmeal raisin cookie when you’re expecting chocolate chip, sexiling usually only exists dimly in the back of one’s mind. Somehow tied into that awareness is the idea that it happens to other people, but won’t happen to you. Indeed, the absurdity of actually being sexiled is so great that for a while I didn’t realize that it was happening to me.

Much like grief, the emotional response to being sexiled can be explained in five stages, and I will put forth my experiences in the hopes that others can be better prepared when they find themselves as roomless refugees, cast out into the impenetrable darkness of sexile.

It all started innocuously enough. I was at a film screening when a sudden buzz in the pocket of my jeans informed me of a new text message. It was my roommate, with an enigmatic request: “Can you please text me 10 minutes before you come back to the room? I’d appreciate that, dude.”

I was at first perplexed by my roommate’s request. Could he be planning a surprise party? Harboring a wanted criminal? Communing with eldritch beings? The scenarios clouding my mind were quickly dispelled three minutes later when I received another message directing me to ignore the first. Figuring that the summoning ritual must have failed, I turned my attention back to the movie and thought nothing more of the incident. Little did I know, I was in the midst of the first stage of the sexile response cycle: denial. Over the following weeks, I would receive similar texts, and, perhaps because the novelty of the first text had faded, I would respond to them mechanically, without dwelling on subtext.

Denial, as I’m sure many psychologists would agree, is fantastic, but unfortunately the human mind can only take so much of it before it becomes untenable. For me, this threshold was crossed on a Sunday like any other. Returning home early from a weekend trip, I was in my room, in the midst of changing out of my western business attire, when my roommate burst through the door with a girl in tow. In that moment, as I stood in boxers and a T-shirt, facing one of the most awkward introductions I have ever experienced, everything became clear. All of the cryptic messages, the curiosity about my whereabouts and the heavy use of Axe body spray suddenly gained meaning.

Where before I had been able to quell all speculation about the furtive goings on in my absence, in light of this new revelation I could not help myself to consider the implications. It was this consideration that led me to the second stage of the cycle: anger.

I felt as if the sacred, unspoken trust between roommates had been violated. While I was not necessarily opposed to my roommate’s newfound happiness, the secrecy of the affair was troubling. It was as if my half-sovereignty over the room had been wrested from my grasp, and, as people are wont to do in the grasp of anger, I began to seek some redress for the wrongs perpetrated against our innocent abode.

Immediately, I had the notion to make the room less conducive to intimate activities. I could casually leave vividly illustrated pamphlets about the symptoms of STDs on the floor, or better yet, prominently display a picture of my grandmother on my desk. However, while I was searching online for large posters of a judgmental looking Jesus to hang over my desk, I realized that these anger-fueled schemes would amount to nothing. So I abandoned blind outrage to focus on a more productive strategy.

If I just tried to compromise with my roommate, the situation could be resolved without fuss. I began a strategy of broadcasting the periods of time when I would be gone from the room, thinking that then at least I would be able to have some say in the way that our room was being used. I was trying to bargain with my roommate — the third stage of sexile response.

This tactic did offer a small degree of solace. I was able to hold on to a small delusion of control, which was enough to sustain me for quite some time. But alas, the solution would not be a permanent one.

After returning from Thanksgiving with my family, I was confronted with a rather disturbing scene that jolted me out of the bargaining stage altogether. After a long day of travel and a long night of doing work, I was ready to crawl into my bed and get a few precious hours of sleep. Up until this point, I had maintained some peace of mind about the actions of my roommate and his guest because of the fact that I had been forced into the top bunk, a situation that was turning out to have some definite advantages.

But when I climbed up the ladder to get into bed, I noticed something curious: Over the long weekend, my bed had been unmade, with the sheets and mattress cover pulled up and rolled into the corner of the bed. There was only one possible explanation, one so horrifying that I cannot bear to put it into words even today. I quickly abandoned my foolish attempts to bargain and hurtled headlong into a feeling of abject despair, the fourth stage of the response.

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As I struggled to remake my bed, with my roommate casually doing a math problem set at his desk, oblivious to my duress, all color seemed to drain out of the room. Nowhere was safe. My bed, my last sanctuary in a room in which any surface could be contaminated with bodily fluids, had been compromised. There was no place left to hide. There was no place to take refuge. There was no place for hope. As I lay down, unsleeping, in the bed that had once offered me protection, I sank deeper and deeper into depression as troubling and increasingly bizarre questions burned in my mind. Would I ever be able to sleep in this defiled bed again? Did my bed have chlamydia? Can you get chlamydia from a bed?

However, I returned to consciousness the following day with a new realization. I didn’t need despair or bargaining or even anger anymore. I had made it through the gauntlet and my reward was new insight into the resilience of the human spirit. I had reached stage five — more denial.

I realized my folly at the beginning in thinking that the mind could only deny the obvious for so long. I realized that humans can deny almost anything for any length of time, and I would do the same. Since that fateful night, I have steadfastly avoided any thoughts of what goes on in my room out of my mind, and in doing so have found a sort of peace. So it turns out the solution to my problem was present from the beginning. I just needed a long journey to accept it. I hope that if you ever find yourself in my situation you resort immediately to denial, hold on to it and never let it go.