You know that oft-cited statistic that men think about sex every seven seconds? That’s 514 times an hour, 7,200 times each waking day. I once found those numbers hard to believe. Who has time to think about sex that often? If we do think about sex that often, it’s no wonder the rate of American GDP growth has stagnated. Factory workers in the Guangdong province aren’t thinking about sex that often; they’re producing the world’s electronics. All we’re thinking about is sex, while China is plotting to bring the U.S. economy to its knees. So basically, we are both literally and figuratively screwed because all that interests us is screwing.

This past Tues. Feb. 10, however, I decided this isn’t the end of the world. My decision coincided with the arrival of the pre-order in my iTunes library: the Fifty Shades of Grey film soundtrack, which is an appropriately sexy accompaniment to the raunchiest love story ever told featuring the likes of Ellie Goulding, Sia, and Beyoncé. Forecasters predict it could debut as the top album on next week’s Billboard 200 chart, with over 180,000 copies sold. Although I haven’t read the bestselling trilogy by E.L. James, I still recommend the album as ambient music for realizing your sexual fantasies without leaving your bed this V-day.

In the interest of writing this review, I have listened to the soundtrack almost constantly since it dropped. On my way to class. In the shower. On the treadmill. In the library. While eating an avocado. In very un-sexy places. Yet, it had staying sexiness. I went a step further for context—I started reading the novel on Wednesday night before I went to bed (because at that point, I was still quite wary of being seen in public with erotica). I even pre-ordered tickets to the Valentine’s Day release of the movie on Fandango for my aggressively single girlfriends (and me, because I am also single, which is a not-so- subtle open invitation).

I have been listening, reading, living(?) Fifty Shades of Grey—in the interest of opinion journalism, of course. Sometimes, I thought, “This is really wrong.” But then I thought, “Also, maybe hot?” Perhaps it’s because I’ve encountered more references to spanking in the last week than I ever have in my life, but suddenly, the world looks decidedly…kinkier. And I am not mad about it.

If I started smiling as you walked by my treadmill in Payne Whitney, I might have been thinking about what Anastasia Steele, the virgin-turned-sex-slave narrator, calls “chocolate hot fudge brownie sex…with a cherry on top.” Maybe with you. But don’t get ahead of yourself. The slow-building, gyrating beat of The Weeknd’s “Earned It” pulsing through my earbuds could arouse such fantasies. The music video’s dominatrix-inspired, practically nonexistent outfits surpass such fantasies. “Earned It” is easily the high point of the album with the singer crooning, “I see nobody, nobody but you, you, you.” Ditto, dude.

If I gave you a lingering stare as we crossed paths on the sidewalk, it was no accident. As Anastasia would say, “my inner goddess was doing the merengue with some salsa moves” to little-known British band Vault’s “One Last Night.” And my inner goddess probably wouldn’t mind doing the merengue with you. If you didn’t return my stare, “my inner goddess looks like someone snatched her ice cream.” But at least I have the ambient electronic tones of “One Last Night” to soothe me.

In Intro to Art History, we were studying Mannerist paintings, including Gianlorenzo Bernini’s 1652 “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.” Teresa attributed her pain to an angel who shot her with an arrow of divine love.

When my professor said, “Bernini portrays pain and pleasure as twins,” I audibly gasped, remembering the languishing ballad of Sia’s “Salted Wound” and Christian Grey’s secret chamber of sexual torture instruments. If we brought Saint Teresa back from the dead, she would dig S&M.

I encountered the album’s distinctly anti-sexy moment on my walk to Walgreens—Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do.” As per usual, Goulding sounds like a high-pitched, small nymph against a backdrop of ethereal synth. As a stand-alone single, it is successful. As much as I generally enjoy her small-nymph vocals, she is no panty-dropper. Future romantic prospects, take note.

Evidently, sex has never been far from my mind since the album dropped Tuesday. I don’t feel the worse for it, and I am not the only one. Think about it: why did Fifty Shades of Grey sell more than 100 million copies, putting it in the league of Harry Potter and the Twilight series and the Nancy Drew books? It was a chance to indulge desires for sexual exploration in a sort of socially acceptable way. It wasn’t one of those “magazines.” It made erotica mainstream.

Maybe Freud was right—sexual repression is the root of all of our psychoses and neuroses. Based on psychoanalysis, my unconscious should be thanking me for indulging in all things Grey. With the Fifty Shades album as theme music, I could slip into something clingy and black. Any scene could be my scene. I could Tinder!!!

But I draw the line at swiping right on Christian Grey.