The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

Pearls of Wisdom

Dear Lila Pearl,

My girlfriend, after much ballyhoo, convinced me to have a threesome with her and another guy. Then she broke up with me and started dating him! Isn’t that totally fucked?

Bitterly,

Plotting Revenge

Dear Bitterly,

Let us to turn to Barthes for solace: “A Mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. ‘I shall be yours,’ she told him, ‘when you have spent 100 nights waiting for me, sitting on the stool, in my garden, beneath my window.’ But on the 99th night, the Mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away.” In every relationship, in every moment of being, there is the condition of betrayal: on your part, and on the part of the other. Revenge is useless: it will alleviate nothing, relieve nothing, never cause the other to love you back. Lila Pearl thinks (given the limited information she has about your relationship with the woman in question): rather know sooner than later that your lady is conniving and flaky. Let her go with good riddance.

Professionally,

Lila Pearl

Dear Lila Pearl,

You are totally hot. Is there any advice you’d give for wooing yourself?

Enamored

P.S. How do you feel about kissing blond Polish boys?

Dear Enamored,

Don’t woo Lila Pearl, let her woo you. But first, consider briefly the paradox of wooing: Like post-modernism, one sets up a system of rules for what will have been. And what is structuralism but a staircase to nowhere? To really bring these issues into focus, let us examine for a moment longer the “will have been.” Like the time during sophomore year of high school when LP’s stupid pothead boyfriend cheated on her and she went home, wrote four songs about him (featuring the lines “We both like you and maybe that’s all that we need” and “You’re stupid! And you know it!”), recorded herself singing them, and sent him the tape. Lila Pearl likes to burn her bridges quickly.

Here is a quote from somewhere, roughly paraphrased: “Never worry about what you’re escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.” What might you be escaping to with Lila Pearl? Here are two post-coital moments to consider:

Lover rolls over and stares vacantly into the darkness. Says: “That was nice. Pleasurable, even.” And years afterwards, with someone else: the day after Lila Pearl and boy first sleep together he leaves her room, then comes back later and says, “Wrote a few songs today.”

LP: “Eh?”

Boy: “One’s called: ‘My Mother is the Only Woman for Me.'”

Is there a difference between seduction and the truth?

Finally, if we must touch on the concept of taste and personal preference, let this be said: sexual ambiguity? No thanks. It may be endearing for a brief moment, but like everyone else, Lila Pearl is just looking for a nice young man to slap her around for a few hours and then fuck her in the ass.

Personally,

Lila Pearl

Dear Lila Pearl,

I’ve been with my boyfriend for about a year and a half, and everything is wonderful. He’s everything I could want, I’m completely happy with our relationship, and he seems to be as well. However, recently I’ve been having extremely vivid dreams of a, er, more exotic nature, involving men who are certainly not my boyfriend. I almost never have these kinds of dreams, but in the past week I’ve had three, each with one or more different gentlemen with whom I am at least somewhat acquainted. What can this mean? I’m far from having any complaints about my experiences in bed before I fall asleep…why are they being supplemented so violently after I do? It’s making me feel a little guilty, and more than a little confused.

Overstatedly,

Dreaming or Just Dreaming?

Dear Just,

Explore your sexuality, baby. For suggestions, see above.

Unconstrainedly,

Lila Pearl

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