There is no sex in the stacks. Oh, there are books in the stacks. But you don’t want books. You want sex. So why are you in the stacks?

Because your local sex columnist told you there was sex there. Your college’s sex columnist makes it seem like your local college is a hotbed of experimental, hip, exotic happenings. They paint a lavish picture filled with satin and sexiles, secret forays and sensual encounters with TAs. To live in their world is to live where every conversation is a come on, where around every corner is a love nest, where every co-ed has been replaced by a secret army of frisky Jessica Alba clones.

All of it is made up.

The reason that every sex columnist sounds like every other sex columnist is because they all copy each other. It’s a big literary circle jerk of sorts. Sex columnists assume their college is as much of an orgy as the college of the next sex columnist. It’s like looking over the shoulder of a classmate during a test. A classmate who happens to be a prolific nymphomaniac. Right. So, while sex columnists find no evidence of an active sex life on their campuses, instead of reporting that nothing is going on, they choose to embellish things. It’s not yellow journalism; it’s sticky and off-white colored.

Your first tip off should have been how writers at the Citadel and Colorado School of Mines were writing the same columns about how to procure threesomes as columnists at Delaware State and Syracuse. None of these schools have this kind of action. Only in Cal State Malibu does this go down.

Cal State Malibu is actually nothing but sex — I should know, I took classes there last spring. Every sport is co-ed naked, which isn’t as much fun as it sounds. Sure wrestling is fun to watch, but it’s tough being the only co-ed naked football team in the SEC. Don’t even get me started on co-ed naked golf.

The students have difficulty studying because the light gets reflected off the platinum blondes and the chiseled chests. There is so much sex that their spring semester appears on “MTV Spring Break.” “Girls Gone Wild” is actually just a sociology lecture series gone terribly awry. Those aren’t college students vacationing, that’s higher education.

Cal State Malibu is what I would call a progressive campus, in that all classes are filmed so they can be viewed later if you were hung over or having too much sex to see the instruction. There’s a guy in a tweed jacket instructing kids about Shakespeare in the background of these videos. Shall I compare thee to a midsummer’s bong? I think “Profs Gone Wild” is filming in May, the DVD due out a week later.

But back to the topic of sex columnists lying; did you ever wonder where the e-mails come from that every week they reply to? Do people actually write in with their problems to this so called “expert”? Why does everyone adhere to the same code of anonymity based on alliterations of your location and your problem? Lonely in Lagos, Jaded in Djibouti, Urinary-Tract-Infected in Uruguay.

I think the person only asks questions they know the answers to. They frame the debate on something they can handle. If they actually knew the people who wrote in letters asking advice, the situation would be notably more awkward. “So, um, do most sex columnists have to wear a wrestler’s mask to get an erection?”

This brings up the importance of the pen-name. You don’t want people to actually know who you are. Dear Abby is the penname of some old lady, obviously. Roxy Sass is the penname of former provost Condoleeza Rice. Kind of explains a lot, doesn’t it? Even Chris Holt is a penname for who I really am, an unforgiving man who is going to beat Darren Franich like a red-headed singing orphan.

You need something that sounds vaguely sexual. Booty McSexbomb. Dirk Donkeypunch. Sassy Bernstein. You get the idea. Your real name should not be attached to your sex column or else you will actually be asked for advice. Then, the entire charade will come crashing down and no amount of smoke or mirrors can hide the fact that you, you the sex columnist, have never, ever, been to Cal State Malibu — and therefore have no idea what the hell you’re doing.

Chris used to be a sex columnist. True story. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.