Starting up again...

Grad school, with all of the dense readings, the lectures on little known subjects, the lunches with friends sharing unbelievable stories, has been an enlightening experience. Yet, all the above mentioned factors aside, the most enlightening aspect has been the interaction with my male peers.

My undergrad experience was far from the see a cute guy in the halls, smile, know you will probably run into him later at whatever solo cup rager was going on that weekend, look as cute as possible on that night, and then who knows what. In my case, if I saw a cute guy in the halls, chances were I would probably never see him again. Now, here I am in a full on campus environment, where, after one semester, I know everyone's face if not their name. It's both comforting and disquieting.

Our Dean said in his welcome speech that some of us, undoubtedly, will get married to each other. How could that possibly be the case? It already feels incestuous to view each other romantically - and oh how people would talk. And yet that doesn't stop people, attached or otherwise, from making eyes and overtures...

If It Kills Me, If It Kills Me, It Might Kill Me...

“I remember the first time I met you.” Few lines resonate in me the way this one does. He remembers. He remembers me. He remembers me before I thought twice about him.

The long distance crush. Six months later, only our second meeting. He put his hand on my lower back and it was like shouting out loud in an empty warehouse, “I like you!” The tiniest gesture that had the greatest meaning.

Three months later, a Facebook message. “I’m kinda upset we never hooked up.” Blunt, juvenile, intoxicated. And the follow up: “Hey, sorry about that drunken Facebook.” I shouldn’t have been flattered but I was. This unspoken attraction that had been going on for almost a year was now vocalized. Pinwheels spun inside my chest.

And then began the downward spiral. He sent messages every once in awhile, asking how I was and what I was doing. The next time I saw him was a year and a half after our initial meeting and his new girlfriend joined him at the New Year’s party. Despite the other woman, he sought me out to ask when I was moving to Seattle, to put his number in my phone (“for when I’m in New York next time”), to make it clear once more that he was interested. Cue pinwheels.

By the time I left Seattle, the first month of 2009, I knew this was someone who wouldn’t disappear from my life so easily. And then began the texts. Late at night, in the middle of the afternoon, first thing in the morning. To say hi, to ask about the New York weather, to tell me he was thinking about me. We started e-mailing so we could write in more detail about what we were going through in our jobs, in our families, in our lives. From physical attraction to sincere friendship. Then he planned his trip to New York and told me he couldn’t wait to see me. He started texting me every day to remind me that the day was getting closer.

He arrived in town, staying with our mutual friend. While everyone suspected she was in love with him, she denied it and denied it, over and over again. “Does it bother you that he and I keep in touch?” I asked her once. She assured me it didn’t. I was giddy to see him. I felt his eyes on me at the bar and caught his smile from across the table. Two years of waiting for this moment and it was closing in on me like a hurricane.

Friday night. At the bar. He kissed me. Finally. Two years in the making. It was perfect. He told her he wanted to leave with me, that he liked me. She started to cry. “What?” he asked. “Why?” “Because,” she answered. “I like you.”

And you know what they say about the best laid plans…

hooking up

I was going to write about my recent first experience with dating. In the formal sense - spending time one on one with a person (one you may not know very well yet), in order to size up each others' potential as a romantic partner.

I just graduated from college last year, and for me this was a Strange Thing about Being a Grown-Up. The way this experience (this brief connection with another person, who I really kinda liked) ended made me realize that I have no clue what the social conventions here are, aside from what I've distilled from romantic comedies, Cosmo, serious artistic meditations on love, etc.

While I was composing a story about this, I got sidetracked revisiting articles I'd seen in the Times about how the kids these days "hook up" (the accepted term among those who study the mating habits of adolescents), instead of the previously described dating.

I found this pretty recent column... pretty straightforward. I also came across this article from the Style section in March 2007, on a book by a Washington Post reporter about, well... the title: "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both."

By paragraph 4 I'm reading about how girls are the "victims" of this practice (which I admit I had previously perceived as a victimless crime).... and about how it's a symptom of female sexual aggressiveness.

The article is critical, but most explicitly of the author's conclusion that hooking up hurts girls, not her identification of this cultural habit as solely a consequence of changed female behavior. Also, the author's response to critics:

"I understand their anger because in this current political climate women’s choices are being threatened,” she said, “the right to choose an abortion, the right to live with a same-sex partner.”

It has led many women to be wary of any suggestion of limits on their lifestyle choices, she said.

Not that she's interested in my opinion:

Ms. Sessions Stepp said that she welcomes criticism, though not from people who have not read the book or who have never conducted research.

“This is what I love about the bloggers,” she said. “They haven’t been out there interviewing young people for 10 years. They’re talking about their own college experience. Everyone’s had some sort of sexual experience and they all think they’re experts on it.”

Still ... what I'm hearing is that boys will behave themselves exactly as much as we force them to, and if they expect to get in our pants without buying us dinner first, we have no one to blame but ourselves.