There’s a new President-Elect! Awesome. But if you’re anything like me (bless your heart), you’re a little tired of the election babble. So let’s talk about what’s really important:

My boyfriend won’t fuck my armpit.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: This kid says he LOVES me, and he won’t perform this one little experiment of inserting his penis into a heretofore unexplored area of my body?! I’m as stunned as you are. But before we do anything rash, here’s a little background.

I haven’t shaved my pits in months. It’s been long enough to transform my once reasonably maintained underarms into some serious homage to the 1960s. I’m all HAIR: The Musical every time I lift my arms in a tank top. Thanks to my wonderfully hairy Italian ancestors, who I’m pretty sure might actually be the Missing Links on the evolutionary chain, I get a five o’clock shadow on all shaven parts at around, oh, noon. So when I put down the razor for a while, I wind up with Fraggles in headlocks.

As much as I’d like to say so, I haven’t been doing this to push myself beyond the limits of conventional femininity and acceptable hair in acceptable places. Rather, this coming weekend I’m involved in a show performing as a male-bodied transvestite who shaves his legs, but for some reason, not his armpits (Rocky Horror, if you must know). For the sake of accuracy, I decided to let my pit hair run wild. And of course I figured, while I have the luscious locks, I might as well see if I’d be keen on a pit-wanking.

It’s called “axillism,” as it turns out, and it is an honest-to-goodness fetish where orgasm is achieved by essentially masturbating one’s penis in the armpit of a partner. As far as I can tell, there is no lady-on-lady equivalent, and no name for the desire to be the receiving partner. Which would have been me. If Boyf would have just shut up and done it.

I first found out about axilism right here in The Sun, when my dear friend Ariela Rutkin-Becker printed an article in defense of the armpit called “Pity for the Pits.” In it, Ariela praises the pit and mentions the radical love some have for it with a caveat: “You should keep those personal details to yourself. The world just might not be ready for that quite yet.” Well here we go, world, ready or not.

I should mention that personally, pre-pit hair, I had no desire whatsoever to have someone get off via my armpit. I still don’t, even with these Treasure Trolls. But folks, this intrepid reporter is willing to go there — for you. Or at least I would have been. If I didn’t have such a close-minded prude for a boyfriend.

I guess the first step on the road to sexual exploration is getting down and dirty with yourself, right? So I lit some candles, spread some rose petals, got comfortable, and touched my armpit. OK so maybe I don’t romance myself that much — although now that I think about it, shouldn’t we all be pampering ourselves a little now and again? But I did try and get as close to my pits as possible for a little axillary masturbation.

I set my limits before I began. Stroking, petting, and other sorts of touching with the hands were all OK. Pulling the hair was a “maybe,” and only if I was really into it—and I had to stop once I said the safeword (“bagpipe,” if you’re interested). Smelling of the armpits came close to a hard limit, and licking was definitely not going to happen.

I started with a little touching. Nothing. A little stroking. Still nothing. I talked a little dirty to my pits in the hopes of arousing their inner beasts. Hell, I damn near tried to contort myself so I could see if maybe they just needed insertion from different angles. Nothing! Call me a quitter, but after twenty minutes of trying to woo my tufts into magical sensations, I gave up. I guess a pit-job really is for the benefit of the penis-bearer. But not my penis-bearing boyfriend. Gosh.

Well what’s a girl got when she can’t dig on some action in her pits? Honey, there’s something for everyone. From enjoying scratching and being scratched to getting hot and bothered by a pair of heels, straight on to and beyond clowns and fish and cigarettes. If you can do it or even think of it, there’s a Latin name and a web site devoted to it.

The obvious truth, however, is that just as much as there are people who want to go nuts covered in peanut butter, there are others who just aren’t interested. So Boyf had a point when he looked at me and said, respectfully, “Nah baby, I’m gonna pass on putting my junk in your armpit for now.”

I gotta hand it to him — he really seemed to weigh his options. I think the thoughts in his head went something like, “What does it mean for me to stick my penis in an armpit?” and the conflict in his eyes was just too much. To each their own, as they say. My foray into axilism wasn’t that exciting, but I won’t let it deter me from delving deeper into the ever-stranger world of bangin’, where all holes are created equal.

Liana Mancini is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. Contact her at lmancini@cornellsun.com. The Shocker runs alternate Thursdays.