(This article was originally published in On Dit Issue 80.9)

So apparently in my last ‘Sex and the Uni’ column I managed to offend a bunch of vocal geology students. Who knew you could offend people by publically guesstimating how prolific their sex lives are? Now, even though I realise that they probably just need to vent a little sexual frustration, for some reason they’ve gone and made me out to be some sort of anti-geological cult figure. Like it’s my fault they can’t throng a woman! Come on… this column is about me trying to help my fellow students! I only wrote that article to help steer kids into the more romantic courses on offer – like horticulture – and to help keep them away from dry, infertile subjects – like geo…metry.

Normally I would let this issue die down over time, but I hear that geology students have a good supply of throwing rocks (or “minerals” as I’m pretty sure they like to call them). So, instead of continuing to arrive on campus dressed as a construction worker for that new building, I’m just going to give them what they want and write, as best I can, why geology is the sexiest subject since pornography (which I think was removed from the university curriculum in 1972). I think they’ll know the truth in their hearts (and loins), but hopefully this gets me off the hook with them. Here goes:

First, virtually everything in geology is a double entendre. Given that I knew absolutely nothing about geology I did a quick skim of the Wikipedia page and (aside from learning a 3-year degree in 5 minutes) found these little “gems” (which are shiny rocks – it’s a geology term): cinder cone, mud log, “seafloor spreading” of a “hydrothermal vent”, erosional angular unconformity, dike swarms, and “igneous intrusions” which “push upwards and crystallise when they intrude”. Also you also can say that you’re going to “get your rocks off” which is hilarious and I’m sure a common expression on geology field trips when they go looking for rocks.

Another point is that the whole subject of geology revolves around friction. There’s always some shit rubbing against some other shit and there’s a whole lot of heat building up under the crust and then inevitably you get some massive, throbbing, erosional angular unconformity. Or else you get a cheeky bit of seafloor spreading which usually prompts some geologist to come along and shove his massive drill in it to check the “lithology” of what’s going on underneath. Quite frankly I’m getting turned on just thinking about it.

What’s more, geologists constantly study what has been recognised as one of society’s biggest sexual metaphors: the volcano! It’s glorious isn’t it? It all starts with the igneous activity going on downstairs. It continues like this for an eternity until it can hold it no more. Time stops as molten magma shoots up the cinder cone and gushes out the top with such ferocity that it can sometimes shoot thousands of feet into the air. Put it this way: if you put a working model volcano in a room with two marginally attractive people then there will be two eruptions happening on “Year 2 Science Day”.

Finally, geologists are basically programmed to get in a girl’s pants. All through history geologists have been asking themselves “I wonder what’s underneath that?”. They got through the crust but still weren’t satisfied. Then they took off Gaia’s mantle and got to touch her outer core and they still wanted more! They wanted to go even deeper: the fabled “inner core”. It gives me shivers. But they saw it. And then they documented it. Reading a geology textbook is filthier than 50 Shades of Grey if you know how to interpret it.

And that’s why geologists, on closer inspection actually get to have heaps of sex, heaps frequently and should cease their man-hunt for me immediately. We cool?