Hoe is an anonymous Drake student and can be contacted at [email protected]

I can’t remember what, exactly, motivated me to pitch the idea of a sex column to The Times-Delphic in the first place. It may have been boredom, or maybe it was a realization that I had no clips…or a not-so-secret desire to be the Carrie Bradshaw of Dogtown (which, as it turns out, is exactly as unglamorous as it sounds). As I sit here writing under this puny pen name yet again, the whole concept seems far more ridiculous now than it did at the time.

With the D-Spot, the boundaries of normal writing (outside of basic grammatical rules and the obvious necessary factual ones) took the nearest exit and left me with the freedom to write however I saw fit. Anonymity left me with the freedom to pick and choose which questions I wanted to answer and what angle I wanted to take. It was journalism, except with a side of lingerie.

Yeah, being a sex columnist is fun. Being a secret sex columnist, however, is a whole other story.

You know the really awkward kids who seem to creep into every class? The kind of kid whose names you know usually by accident, or from when you denied their Facebook friend requests a few weeks ago? You never sit next to them. You avoid eye contact with them. You may or may not occasionally write down in your planner the ridiculous things they say in class. You’d fake the flu, an allergy or pretend to be mute just to get out of doing a group project with them.

Now imagine knowing that the one who smells and never brushes his unnecessarily long hair also wants to know whether or not his girlfriend’s excessive masturbating will put a strain on their relationship. Or that the most beautiful girl in class wants to know where she can find a list of sex positions for men who have had knee replacements. Um…eww.

That was certainly the most awkward part of the job. It amazed me the questions that people would send on a daily basis…and from their Drake email addresses. Apparently their anonymity was far less important to them than mine was to me.

The most fulfilling part of the job (if you can call anything relating to Jane Hoe or the D-Spot fulfilling) was overhearing comments about the D-Spot as I walked to and from class or waited for a lecture to start. I got a kick out of people being excited about a topic that I had chosen to write about (and just excited about a column in the TD, period). I found it especially entertaining when a few of my best friends, who were not fortunate enough to be in on the secret, would read the articles out loud in Olmsted. And laugh. A lot. Let’s just say that affirmation of that sort never, ever gets old.

The highlight of my D-Spot career came when we had to make a website in one of my favorite journalism classes. The website had to have our clips on it.

My only clips were the D-Spot.

I was an anonymous columnist who really wanted to stay anonymous for at least the rest of my life and then some. But when push came to shove, it was fail the course or reveal my identity to my intimate class of 13 students.

I chose to fail.

Just kidding. I posted my site, D-Spot and all, and luckily happened to be gone during the class in which we presented our sites to the class. You can decide whether or not that stomach flu was a coincidence.

Over time, more and more people have come to know about my stint as Jane Hoe, and I’ve been asked to write similar stories for other publications. As ridiculous as the entire experience was, I wouldn’t take any of it back. I’ll never forget staying up till 2 a.m. researching “alternative types of pornography” with a deadline at the crack of dawn, or the person who wanted to know if I’d meet them “on Friday in Cowles Library at 8:45 in the last study room on the left…”

Unfortunately, this is the last time this Jane Hoe will be gracing the pages of The Times-Delphic. So the question is… who’s next?