Maybe it was a homoerotic slowburn with your tutorial study partner or a wild weekend with the only other person in residence who didn’t go home for Thanksgiving. Maybe you truly believed you had found love or maybe it was a shameful, drunken mistake. Either way: congratulations! You’ve committed the cardinal sin of King’s campus: Kingcest.
Perhaps you’re thinking, don’t people hook up with each other at every university? How could this be any worse? Trust us. This is a whole lot worse. Remember that friend group from your high school that only dated each other? Ever heard that rumour that all lesbians can be connected through their exes? Kingcest is worse than both of those. Everyone here goes to their classes together, eats their meals together, lives together and spends all their free time together. At some point, everyone dates their roommate’s best friend, kisses their friend’s ex or hooks up with their own best friend.
Kingcest isn’t going anywhere. But luckily, we’ve come up with a guide to help you survive the tangled mess of love, lust and shame that is inextricable from King’s culture.
Don’t try to deny it
It’s no use. Everyone already knows you got caught passing notes during tutorial, making eyes at each other across Prince Hall or dedicating Sappho poems to each other while sharing a cigarette at Plato’s. And nothing spreads faster at King’s than rumour of a budding romance or whispers of a sex scandal. But while it’s easy to see the King’s rumour mill as your worst enemy, you can also use it to your advantage: bury the story of your own sexual mishap with a more shocking rumour about which FYP tutors you saw out at dinner last week.
Change up your routine
There’s a reason Prince Hall dinner starts at 4:30 p.m. — sometimes you need to eat without fear of running into your old flame. You can’t run from your mistakes — but you can certainly hide. Avoid the library and start studying in empty classrooms in the NAB. Be late to every FYP lecture so you can scope out their position and sit as far away from them as possible. Start smoking on the corner of Coburg instead of at Plato’s. Sometimes sacrifice is necessary.
Make a drastic identity change
If hiding doesn’t cut it, it’s time to try camouflage. Dye your hair, shave your head, get that piercing or tattoo your grandparents will gasp at during Christmas dinner. Don a trench coat, thrifted sweater and Doc Martens to become a chameleon and blend into the crowd. And if they compliment your new look, don’t let the new you fall in love with them all over again.
Distract yourself
Throw yourself into philosophy and become a disciple of Descartes. Go on a chapel hike and commit to religion. Teach yourself to play the guitar and perform mediocre renditions of Fleetwood Mac in the Middle Bay common room.
If all else fails, get sucked back into King’s tangled web of romance and fall in love with someone else — maybe it will be different this time!
