Davidson And The Fragile Nature Of Sexual Momentum


Let's role-play for a moment. Imagine that you're a male college student out at a party one night. Doesn't matter where. Now, let's say you've had enough drinks to consider yourself good and drunk. Not about-to-pass-out shitfaced, but pretty drunk and quite pleased about it.

You run into a girl at the party. Attractive. Clean. Awesomely tight v-neck sweater. You've seen her around a few times, maybe even had the same class together. She's as drunk as you are, and uncommonly friendly tonight. You two suddenly develop a drunken rapport you didn't expect. She's laughing at your jokes, playfully hitting you, etc. Most important of all, she is completely focused on you. Yes, you! She's not talking to anyone else at all! Even with a couple friends right nearby! Fucking nice.


Later on, deeper into the conversation, and secure together in the little, drunken world you two have established for yourselves, you kiss. A little tongue. Not much. But enough to let you know there's more in store. She indicates she wants to go somewhere more private, and says to you:

"Let's go back to my room."


I have good news and I have bad news for you. The good news is that you, my friend, have acquired what I'll call Sexual Momentum. You have a clear path to a hook-up for the evening, and that is fucking huge. This is the moment in the night where you drop any other plans you may have had, or any other friends you may have brought along, and put all your eggs in one pussybasket. You're all-in. Determined, at all costs, to see your sexual momentum through to its logical end: sloppy oral sex on a secondhand plaid couch covered in cat hair. The possibility is now REAL. You can almost taste it! Mmmmmm!

You may not get sex. You may only get dry humping. Hell, you might only receive a mild tit-grazing. But that hardly matters. What matters is that you potentially have a warm female body to rub against, which is all any man ever wants. A night out, for men, is graded Pass-Fail. Did you not hook up? You failed. Better luck next time. Did you hook up? You passed. Your night was fucking awesome. And now that you have this precious Sexual Momentum, a passing grade is in the offing.

Women aren't nearly this shallow about how they grade an evening, and that's to be commended. But, if you're a guy, and you're 20 years old, the whole reason you went out this night, the whole reason you motivated to leave your room after pre-gaming with that case of Busch and bottle of Captain's, instead of staying home and jerking it to whatever Asia Carrera DVD is on top of the pile (there's no way you ever bothered to put those discs back into their respective cases), was to get to this point.

You went through a whole lot to get yourself in this position. You had to put on pants. Comb your hair. Apply Gold Bond to your taint. Maintain a casual conversation with an attractive girl for more than five minutes without making a complete fuckhead of yourself. Not an easy thing to do.

And here you are. She wants you to go back to her room. You can barely contain your good fortune. I know when I hooked up in college (all 3.5 times!), it was always akin to stumbling upon the combination to some awesome Fatality in Mortal Kombat that I didn't know how to repeat. "Holy shit! How'd I do THAT?!" It seemed so EASY when it happened. Yet there was no guarantee I could repeat the feat, and it never happened as often as I would have liked. So unfair.

Anyway, the good news is you've gotten yourself in position to bring it home. But now you have to actually pull it off. It sounds so simple. The girl wants to hook up. YOU want to hook up. All you need to do is escort her back to her room. If there were a closer, still-private place to do this, you'd employ it. Hell, if she wanted to fuck on the floor in front of the Boat Race table, you'd be naked already.

But taking her back to her room is the only option you have. Because that's what she wants. And you have to concede any request to her if it involves tail at the tail end. Because you NEED that hookup. Her? Eh, it's not the end of the world. She's not as resolute about finishing this off as you are. And that puts you in an incredibly vulnerable situation.

Because what lies before you now is a fucking MINEFIELD of potential saboteurs.

Does she have to say goodbye to her friends before she leaves the party? Oh, FUCK. That could royally fuck you over. You can hear her best friend now. "What? You're going? But we were all gonna head to The Spotted Dog! (When choosing between drinking for a free at a party and going to bar and paying for drinks, 99 percent of women choose the bar.) Who's that guy? YOU CAN'T GO!"

But that's not even the least of your worries. You may have to make sure she gets her coat. You may have to be able to get a ride back to wherever her room is. You may have to make sure you don't pass out and/or vomit from being so drunk. You may have to make sure SHE isn't in the same position. You may have to sure she isn't distracted by some cute puppy nearby, for women are at their most easily distracted at this particular moment. Which is annoying to you, since your focus is downright fucking Jordan-like right now.

You may need rubbers (I often didn't bring rubbers with me for a night out because I thought they jinxed me, though my general appearance jinxed me regardless). You may have to take a piss. Ever go to piss and the girl just fucking disappears? Does she have to go to bathroom as well? She could slip and fall! Even die! Then you'd have to chat up an entirely NEW chick!

Any of these things could easily trip up your endgame. In my lifetime, I've been cockblocked by friends, romantic rivals, a lack of available taxis, expired condoms, whiskeydick, the presence of roommates, untimely phone calls, blackouts, my vomit, her vomit (though I was willing to overlook the vomit, it still ended the night anyway), injurious falls, the realization on the girl's part that I'm me, card key failure at a security gate, God, and more.

I was in position to make it happen, but I was in that delicate situation where I had to shepherd the hook-up through and failed to make adequate consideration of just how easily it could all go to shit, particularly in my hands. I had to keep the girl engaged, and maintain the all-important Sexual Momentum of the evening. If anything interfered with that, it was pretty much the same as a spell being unbroken.

Which brings us to Davidson.

By the time the second half rolled around on Sunday, it was clear that Davidson was in a position to pull that shit off. They never took a commanding lead. But they took and HELD enough leads to make you think they could see it all the way through. With 10:30 remaining on the clock, they took a 46-45 lead over Kansas, a lead they kept for another four minutes of game play. I'm aroused just thinking about it.

They were in position. They had momentum, not in the traditional sense of going on a run, but in the sense that they had a chance to win, to get to that moment at the end of the game that they had fantasized about for so long. With the jumping, and the cheering, and the post-game orgies and what not. The tantalizing possibility remained real. Within reach. To the team. To the coaches. To fans. To casual dipshits like me, who had just waltzed into the room. The fantasy practically became contagious at that point. All Davidson had to do was hang on.

Then Kansas remembered they had players in their frontcourt who were quite a bit taller than the players in Davidson's front court, and they built up that brutal 59-53 lead with 1:15 to go. And it seemed, there and then, that the night was about to fall apart. Of course, Davidson managed to pull back within two. Then Curry couldn't shake the double team, Jason Richards couldn't hit the three, and the clock ran out.

And thus, an entire sporting nation was cockblocked.

The real buzzkill about Davidson's loss is that all we're left with is the fantasy. And the fact that Davidson got so close doesn't make it any more fully realized. Shit, you could have had the same fantasy about that upset if they had lost by 60. You fill out a bracket at the start of tournament fantasizing about a dozen MORE upsets that don't even come close to happening. And neither did Davidson over Kansas. That potential upset ends up just as not real, only more annoying because the tangible possibility of it disappeared right in front of your very eyes.

Stephen Curry is going to spend a lot of time replaying in his head what happened at the end of that game. But he's going to spend even more time, probably the rest of his life, replaying in his head his fantasy of winning that fucking game. And it's the same feeling as any botched hook-up in my history or yours. "I could have hooked up with that girl! FUCK!"

But you don't. She bumps into a high school friend of hers at the party, who she hasn't seen in YEARS, and who is there by sheer goddamn coincidence. And this, of course, is her only chance to see her before she leaves in the morning. Of course. The Sexual Momentum is gone. All you're left with is your dick in your hand and a helpful imagination.