I wouldn’t really say that my four roommates or I are sluts. Of course we’ve enjoyed just as many rounds of tonsil hockey as the next group of hormonally-charged college girls, but we are each sexually selective in our own right. Each one of us has a unique set of qualities we find attractive, ranging from preppy-metro guys with Zach Efron haircuts to furry little Jewish boys with really big … cars. Having been rather proud of our individual choosiness, I was shocked when I learned that, between the five of us, in our just two years at Cornell, we’d collectively hooked up with 60 different people.

Without even having considered the actual number, for the ladies of my apartment, it was that time of the month again: time for the next installment of the HPV vaccine. As we read through the rather alarming list of places we could have acquired the dreaded human papillomavirus, we couldn’t help but reminisce about the various tongues we’d had down our own throats. So, being the type-A personality Cornellians we are, we decided to make a list.

But what began as a fun activity inspiring uncontrollable giggling and blushing cheeks, soon seemed less like a list of fond memories as it did a lengthy, embarrassing clothes line airing out all of our dirty laundry from the past two years. Our list contained the names of 60 different Cornell students and alums, each of whom had made out with one of us, but had turned out, in some way or another, to be a disappointment.

Of course, with some of them, it really shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. There were a few people on that list with whom it should have been obvious right from the start that it wasn’t going to work out. There were five Cornell athletes, who, while equipped with fresh-outta-practice bodies, seemed to have been hit one too many times over the head with a hockey stick. There were guys with too little experience with the opposite sex and, of course, a few guys with far too much. There were three gay guys, who, to be fair, seemed just as unaware of their homosexuality as we had been, despite their impeccable fashion senses and suspicious lack of ex-girlfriends. And, due to a couple of nights in which we may or may not have been sporting tequila-goggles and an infamous Spring Break spent in Acapulco, the list even contained two girls.

Perhaps even more shameful than the number of people is the fact that the list also featured one guy who had managed to hook up with four out of the five of us. This guy had somehow satisfied each one of our sets of criteria, and, even more miraculously, remained friends — or at least friendly — with all of us. He was like our apartment chameleon, changing at any given moment with the scenery so as to fit each of our various guyteria.

But what was more disheartening than anything else about the whole list experience was not remembering the guys with whom it obviously wasn’t going to work out, but seeing just how many guys there were on that list who were truly nice. There were guys on that list who had taken us out to dinner-and-a-movies, guys who called us the day after, and there was even a guy on that list who came over with Kleenex and DayQuil for me when I was sick, four months after I stopped returning his calls. In fact, we were looking at a whopping 40 out of 60 guys who weren’t jerks, but were perfectly cute, perfectly smart and perfectly nice. These guys were checklist guys, definitely suitable for parental presentation. So why was it that, with all of these Mr. Perfects, none had been Mr. Rights?

I called the only person I could think of who might be able to shed some light on why we never seemed to know when the “right guys” were right in front of us.

Unfortunately, Mr. Chameleon didn’t seem to know any better than we did. When I asked him why it hadn’t worked out with him and any of my roommates, he couldn’t really pinpoint any one reason. There was no one quality that we had all lacked or any one mistake that we had all made. Basically, he wasn’t sure either way about any of us in the beginning, and that had never really changed.

But this isn’t what girls believe. Girls think guys always know whether they like us or not. We may not be sure whether we like a guy, but we expect him to know whether or not he should make the first move, call us after that first date or lean in at the end of the night for a goodnight kiss. Regardless of how unsure we are, he is always expected to know enough to make the choice.

The thing is that no one really ever knows. There’s no one quality that makes someone right or wrong, and there’s never really any way to tell who is going to be right for whom. That’s the whole reason we keep trying. Because there’s always that off-chance that maybe, just maybe, this one might actually work out. So, even though here at Cornell we always like to know the answer to every question, sometimes the best answer is like a chameleon. It’s different for everyone.

Nikki Nussbaum is a junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at nnussbaum@cornellsun.com. Cornell Unzipped appears alternate Mondays.