As the weather warms in Ithaca, students are finding themselves hornier than ever. Links are getting sneakier. Dicks are getting harder. To fill the ever-increasing desire for sex, I’ve decided to write a short, brain-rotting love story about A.D. White and Ezra Cornell. Maybe it’ll inspire you to go on the hunt for a lover this weekend.
For legal and factual reasons, the following story is fictitious. But you never know what history hides.
A Cornell Smut Story
The night was much like tonight. The year was 1869. It was a boiling, muggy early May night in Ithaca, New York. Ezra Cornell and A.D. White found themselves on a buggy ride back from an end-of-year ball, headed to Ezra’s dazzling mansion. Ezra had dressed in a glorious suit with the tallest top hat he could find. Taller than even his glorious clock tower. But this hat was not to impress his wife…
After spending countless hours, days and nights with A.D, writing curricula, building glorious academic buildings and recruiting show-stopping faculty, Ezra had slipped quietly into a deep love. The two had been intertwined in a complicated affair for weeks but kept it secret for obvious reasons.
On this warm night, with their wives in a separate carriage, Ezra said to A.D., “Thou art mad beautiful, Andrew. I can’t hold it back any longer”
Trying to hide his blush, A.D. responded “My friend, that Cornussy can’t be anything but straight fire.”
Ezra, feeling confident with Andrew’s salacious response, confessed his love for A.D.
“Andrew, my partner in crime, my academic soulmate, please, tell me you love me back,” trumpeted Ezra.
After a few earth-stopping moments of silent hesitation, the carriage interrupted the potentially world shattering moment: it lost a wheel. The horses shirked their reins, leaving the two brilliant minds stranded.
Still miles away from Ezra’s house, they decided to trek to a local inn, a quarter of a mile away from the site of the accident. The two began their short walk through the cool Ithaca night dejected from their carriage’s failure, and when they thought the conditions couldn’t possibly get any worse, the skies opened up for a downpour. This led Ezra and Andrew to strip their thick, heavy clothes to just their long johns. It was a scene of scantily clad old men with soaking wet beards.
“Ezra?” questioned Andrew on their soggy walk to the inn.
“Yes?” said Ezra quietly.
“I love thee more than my wife. More than the moon and the stars. More than the University we built together. But in these times, two men can’t be with each other,” proclaimed Andrew.
“But why not? Our love crosses all boundaries. I’d give my all to kiss your rugged lips. If two men were the problem, you would not have sent me etchings of your private parts on that cold winter night months ago,” said Ezra, in a low, raspy tone, trying to hide the subtle crack in his deep voice and the tears streaming down his face. “I love you and I want to be with you everywhere.”
The two talked and bickered for 20 minutes in the rain about their forbidden love, coming to no conclusion by the time they arrived at the inn.
“We’re here,” Andrew said while out of breath from the steep incline of their walk. The words “I need you” slipped from his lips.
Ezra said nothing.
Upon checking in, the dripping men found out there was only one room left — a single bedroom meant for only one traveler. There was only one bed they could share. Normally this would be a cause for joy for the two secret lovers, but the conversation had left them feeling put off by each other’s presence. The two didn’t know how to move forward.
The valiant and sexually confused Ezra offered to sleep on the floor, but Andrew persisted that he should sleep in the same bed as him. Despite the back and forth, Ezra laid out a bed roll on the hard pine floorboards. But around three in the morning, with Andrew sound asleep, Ezra could no longer contain his desire for the bearded academic. He lifted the covers to the bed and quietly slipped beneath them.
With each other’s slim bodies pressed against each other, Ezra started to unbutton Andrew’s long johns, sending a feeling down Andrew’s spine that he hadn’t felt in ages. Not even his wife made him feel like this. But it did not stop at unbuttoning. With each kiss they exchanged, the tension between them grew stronger. They could not contain themselves any longer.
Two hours later, covered in droplets of sweat, Ezra cried out in delirium: “when we die, I want our statues to face each other on the Arts Quad of the beautiful campus we founded. Even after death, we will have something to commemorate our secret love for each other.”
And so the statues were built. To this day, some say that on the Arts Quad at night you can hear the sounds of the sweet love they made that night at the inn. Go; Listen for yourself.
Stevie Dicks is a second-year student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. His fortnightly column Ballads of a Lonely Twink chronicles a young gay man’s search for love.
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