Cuffed!

Ah, autumn. Nothing like a season of nature dedicated to representing how I, as a student, am deteriorating over the course of the year. Every dying leaf is a dying shred of hope with an inevitable downfall resulting in a crisp reminiscence of “what could have been,” eventually being buried under the slush blankets of cruel winter. With a season like this, why would you ever want to FALL in the embrace of love?

Do you smell that? Alright, you’re a Halloween heathen, the kind of rebel hated by the majority if you hate the intermingling scents of pumpkin spice and the stress sweat that comes when report cards are coming in sooner than college early action deadlines, but that’s not what I’m referring to. No, it’s that scent of honeyed sentimentality. The sound of skipping heartbeats. The sight of plundered hoodies, cuddled bodies, latte dates, and umbrella-sharing in the frigid downpours. Cuffing season.

But who the heck thought it’d be a good idea to take a Senior Spirit Day and make Cuffing Season the theme? Walking into school one Friday morning meant seeing couples sharing pairs of handcuffs. I almost thought that I wasn’t even in a school and had somehow landed in some open BDSM event straight out of a feature on “Time Out New York,” but then I remembered that no such event would ever feature people sprawled out against study guides, index cards, and other academic materials.

It was strange to find some students handcuffed to themselves. “It’s called ‘emotional unavailability,’” responded one student, after I asked her about the phenomenon. What was more peculiar, but was somewhat expected of a Stuyvesant student, was that others were chained to their academics, with their cuffs linked to the binders or notebook pages of their weakest subjects.

Of course, there were students without a set of cuffs. Some sobbed in the Hudson Stairwell after discovering that their crush of two years was cuffed to three other students. Others claimed that their relationship was deemed too non-traditional to abide by the terms of “cuffing.” Then there were the scholars who wanted to attend class in peace.

It could be said that this Spirit Day was the most successful of them all for it had underestimated how many non-senior-senior couples existed within Stuy and how many underclassmen wanted to join in on the festivity. Consequently, many keys to the cuffs were lost, and the school administration had to cancel classes for the day so that the cuffs could be opened. I was able to leave early, so I went home and reflected on my one who got away.