Sexile Island

In a conversation with a friend, I learned a new phrase:

Her: “…. So the three guys are rooming together at the hotel, but I’m worried that two of them may end up being sexiled.”

Me: “What the hell is sexiled?”

“Sexile” is something we’ve all done, but I never knew it had a proper name. It’s when you boot your roommate from the room/dorm/apartment so you can have sex. It’s a mutually beneficial move: the “sexiled” party doesn’t have to worry about overhearing anything (“Wow, she sure cries a lot during sex. Oh wait, it’s him”) and avoids the awkward post-coital encounter (“Hey, you’re the new girl"). One can be sexiled, as when you come home to find the door locked, or self-sexiling, when you walk in, realize someone is having sex in your room and you get the hell out of there before you see something you can't wipe out of your memory even with grain alcohol.

My first self-sexiled encounter came when I first moved into East Rez at University of Guelph. I walked into my room and my roommate and his girl were in bed. I immediately apologized, but then he says “Oh no dude, it’s all right, come on in.”

Um, no.

I crashed on the couch in the lounge after that. The lounge was shared between 10 other co-ed roommates, and most of my friendships with the other dorm-mates came from conversations that went: “You’re roommate’s a freak, let’s go to the Trash* and drink.”

* The Trasheteria in Guelph, where I learned to drink watered down Rye & Cokes for $2.50 while dancing to 90s alternative music. Good times.

There’s an episode of Judd Apatow’s TV series “Undeclared” that perfectly illustrates the “sexile” phenomenon. “Sick In The Head”, written by Seth Rogan (Knocked Up), finds the main character sexiled from his dorm room, and finding all the other sexiled roommates forming a support group in the rec room.

Self-sexiling is a "taking one for the team" move, and should be recognized as such. You may have to smooth over relations with the roommate (as the sexiled party) who was expecting to come home and chill, and now finds themselves kicked out of their own room. Maybe keep a stash of movie passes or coffee cards handy in the common area.

Being sexiled is more likely to happen when you’re sharing a room in a dorm or a hotel. The most common indication that you may be sexiled is a locked door and a tie/nylons/Native American headdress on the doorknob. Then you have no choice but to kill time at a coffee shop or the movies, or devising ways to pay back your roommate by, let’s say, sending religious brotherhoods to the door or hanging a “Mission-ary Accomplished” banner in the hallway. In the case of a hotel sexiling, you can order inappropriate room service to be sent up ("Sir, we've brought your dozen cucumbers, 2 jars of strawberry jam, a bag of adult diapers, and litre of baby oil"). That will likely serve as a lesson to sort out the sexile protocol before you head out on the town.