There’s something uniquely unholy about a student flat – a place where personal growth, emotional regression, and sexual chaos all happen in the same 10-square-metre living room. You move in thinking you're just renting a room but, really, you’re signing up for a year-long social experiment in intimacy, self-discovery, and boundary erosion.
Maybe it’s the black mould loosening our moral compasses. Maybe it’s the cold mornings that make skin-on-skin feel like survival. Maybe it’s just the reality of living within inches of people who moan, cry, or whisper “don’t tell the others” through paper-thin walls.
Somewhere between splitting utilities and spreading legs, the flat becomes less a home and more a hormonal pressure cooker. Cheap rent and shared bathrooms lead to a sexual ecosystem with no predator or prey – just desperate, chaotic mating rituals fuelled by beer, unresolved trauma, and expired Durex.
We’re three girls coexisting in this mess. One lesbian with a god complex, one terminally online Tinder tragic, and one hopeless romantic who keeps mistaking vodka for compatibility. Together, we’re a catalogue of bad decisions and surprisingly hot encounters.
Here are our sins.
1. I’m the Law Student (Gay, Mean & In Your Head)
I study law the same way people play chess: two moves ahead, with no real regard for how anyone else feels. I didn’t set out to become the kind of lesbian who walks around the flat half-dressed and emotionally unavailable – but once I realised I was good at it, it felt cruel to stop.
I don’t do dating apps. I don’t need to. My type? Women who flinch when I look at them too long. Women with chipped black nail polish and theories about Judith Butler. Women who say things like “I don’t usually do this” while they’re taking their underwear off.
One Tuesday – mid-semester slump, hormones high, no tutorial prep done – I saw her at Zanzibar. I noticed the Doc Martens first, then her pretty earrings, then the flash of recognition when she saw me watching her. She was standing near the back table, arms crossed, eyes scanning the crowd like she’d rather be anywhere else.
This was the kind of girl who probably overuses semicolons and corrects people's spelling mistakes. I asked if she wanted a drink. She replied, “Only if you’re paying.” I told her I always pay. She smirked. Game on.
We didn’t talk much. We didn’t need to. I let my fingers brush her lower back as we squeezed through the crowd; she didn’t move away. By the time we made it home, I couldn’t wait any longer. I dragged her into my room and kicked the door shut with my heel, and then her mouth was on mine, boots off, her hand in my hair like she needed to anchor herself somewhere.
She moaned when I bit her bottom lip, tasting gin and lip balm. I like control. I like giving just enough that they think they’re making the decisions. I had her shirt off in seconds. She gasped when I kissed her collarbone and told me she wasn’t used to girls being this confident.
I asked her if she wanted me to stop. “Please don’t.”
I had her on the bed, legs trembling, breath shallow, hands clenching the sheets while I made her come with my fingers, slow and deep. She came hard. Once. Twice. Laughed the second time and whispered, “What the fuck.” I kissed her inner thigh and told her not to get too soft on me.
Afterwards, she curled up like a cat and asked if I thought power dynamics in lesbian sex were inherently erotic. I told her they were – and that I was going to fuck her again to prove it. I pulled the harness from under my bed. She watched. Quiet. Eager.
We didn’t sleep. I didn’t let her. And if the flatmates heard everything — well, I never claimed to be quiet. Just efficient. She left around 6am. I made coffee in my underwear. No one asked questions. They know better.
2. I’m the Tinder Whore (Straight, Unhinged & Honestly Over It)
I say I’m done with men at least twice a week. Usually while peeling off last night’s mascara and re-downloading Hinge for the third time that month. It’s not that I like them – I just find myself under them more often than I’d care to explain.
My Tinder bio says “6ft or don’t bother.” My Hinge prompt says, “Fold me like laundry.” I mean it. I’m not here for conversations about Marvel movies or whether he prefers sushi or steak. I want him tall, mildly aloof, and good with his hands. That’s it.
Last week, I matched with Blake. Shark tooth necklace. NFT tattoo. Described himself as “entrepreneurial”. Immediate red flag. Immediate swipe right. We went to Vault 21. He bought me a tequila shot and asked if I was “into crypto or just hot.” I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I wanted to. He kissed me like he thought he invented kissing. I didn’t stop him.
Back at the flat, we didn’t make it past the hallway. I shoved him against the wall. He grabbed my hips like it’s all he’d been thinking of doing during our date. I told him I wasn’t going to fuck him unless he proved his tongue was as good as he said. He got on his knees right there — hallway carpet, broken overhead light, one of my flatmate’s boots two feet away.
He ate me out like he was trying to win a prize. Messy, eager, slightly too much teeth but I corrected him with a yank of his hair. He got better. Fast. I pulled him up, kissed him hard, and dragged him to my room.
Clothes off. Condom on. Him on top, panting like a teenage boy. He started thrusting and I swear to God I said, “Harder,” at least five times before he got the message. At one point, he stopped to say, “Am I doing okay?” and I told him, “Shut up and just fuck me like you mean it.” He did. Kinda. I mean, he tried. That counts for something, right?
Afterwards, he said, “That was… wow.” I said, “Mmm.” Then I let him fall asleep next to me because I was too tired to fake a reason to kick him out.
In the morning, I stole his hoodie. He offered to make me eggs, but I declined. I ate a muesli bar instead and matched with someone new while brushing my teeth. “It wasn’t even good,” I told my flatmate. “But like… it scratched the itch.”
I know it’s a mess. I know none of these boys are gonna call me back. But there’s something satisfying about the predictability of it all. Like drunk pizza after town: bad for you, but comforting.
Anyway, his friend just liked my Instagram story. Wish me luck.
3. I’m the Book Girl (Crushing, Confused & Sexually Terrified)
I like to pretend I’m just like them – my flatmates, I mean. Sexually liberated. Spontaneous. Capable of making out with a stranger without spiralling about whether we’re spiritually compatible.
But I’m not like them. I read erotica with the brightness on my Kindle turned all the way down. I’ve memorised the A Little Life audiobook. I cry during sex scenes in movies, not because they’re hot, but because I’m overwhelmed. I once orgasmed while reading The Secret History and felt so guilty I lit a candle and apologised out loud.
I’m trying, though. Trying to want what I think I should want. Trying to be normal.
So when we went out the other night — a flat girls' night; vodka in coffee mugs, eyeliner sharp enough to wound, heeled boots slapping the pavement — I made a promise to myself that I’d go home with someone. I’d be reckless. I’d let go.
That someone was Levi, a Brew Bar bouncer with a jawline like a guillotine and the conversational range of a potato. But he was tall and had a neck tattoo and I thought, maybe that’s enough.
I flirted. I giggled. I touched his arm and tried not to recoil when he touched mine. I imagined him fucking me against my desk, then instantly got a stress migraine picturing the curated study set-up rattling off the sides.
He asked what I studied. When I said English lit, he replied, “Oh, like Shakespeare and shit?” I don’t know why I laughed. Maybe because I was drunk. Maybe because I was trying to drown out the very loud, very inconvenient voice in my head whispering: She would never go home with him.
‘She’, of course, being my flatmate. The law student. The one with the sharp tongue, soft hands, and the terrifying ability to read me without even looking. I’ve heard her through the walls. I’ve heard the girls she brings home, the gasps, the desperate pleas, the silence that follows. I’ve imagined being one of them. I've imagined her saying my name.
And I’ve imagined it going wrong – me freezing up, blushing, ruining everything. I have imagined her laughing. Or worse – being kind.
So when Levi leaned in and said, “Wanna come back to mine?” I smiled and said, “I’ve got an essay due.” I went home alone. I changed into my matching pj's. I heard the law student giggling in the kitchen and didn’t dare walk past.
Maybe I’ll be brave one day. Maybe I’ll tell her. Maybe I’ll take off my shirt and say “I’m scared,but I want you anyway.”
But not tonight. Tonight, I’m rereading Carmilla and pretending it’s enough.