Several weeks ago, when Lucius Flatley reported on the subject of “grinding” to the coffee shop regulars, he promised a few future thoughts on the term “hookup.” Herewith:
This new verb/noun, he said, “is a beauty.” First of all, in its current usage the word “hookup” is essentially unknown to older folks. It has been appropriated by a younger generation to give name and definition to a new set of personal relationships, few of which existed when earlier generations still had their juices. Like the term “cool,” which defines “acceptable, praiseworthy,” “hookup” serves a useful descriptive purpose for the young.
Unfortunately, even among the cognoscenti, the definition is often vague; the term has never reached a fully agreed meaning. To hormone-cursed high school boys it expresses any involvement – casual as well as intense – with the alluring and exciting world of the newly discovered opposite sex. Consequently, many middle teens are like children who hear swear words and go around repeating them without actually knowing what they mean.
To college folks however, it signifies free, easy, and completely casual sex. It is, above all, casual sex without risk of pregnancy.
In most college venues, hooking up is as casual as a handshake. In one survey at a large northeastern university, 78 percent of students had “hooked up” at least once. To many college men and women these activities are not considered to be sex. If the president of the United States didn’t consider fellatio to be sex, college students are reluctant to differ.
The phrase may be traced back to the 1960s and ’70s, when male and female students were thrown together in apartment-style dormitories. Therein, as nature took its course, any rules on “proper” activities soon dissolved. Consequently, what you see on college campuses today is young men and women with unrestricted access to each other and, with the heavy drinking that occurs, there are few inhibitions indeed. Strange as it seems, college people indulge in “hookup” intimacies while hardly knowing their partner.
There appear to be other causal factors. As the traditional gatekeepers for such goings on, girls are no longer as diligent. With 100 women on college campuses for every 79 men, women are more apt to initiate relationships and are more willing to experiment with casual relationships – even when they know such liaisons may be unsatisfactory. In other words, they have to get into the scrum.
New marriage customs also have a bearing. The age at which people marry has been steadily creeping up. As of 2005, in the United States, men married for the first time around the age of 27, and women at about 25. Hookups may happen when collegians suddenly begin to realize that the marriage bed is unacceptably distant. Also, the college hookup is sex without risk.
Still other reasons may be in play: Today’s college students are the first generation to have had their entire childhoods scheduled. After a lifetime of being driven from soccer practice to piano lessons, they no longer want to spend hours in planned activities; they opt for spontaneous action. Then there is the efficient use of resources. Obsessed with getting great grades and aiming toward eventual jobs and careers, they no longer have hours to spend wooing a lover. To them, dating is simply not a productive use of time.
Lucius concluded his comments by observing that hooking up has become every boy’s fantasy – lots and lots of sex without having to hold doors and pick up the check. And boys are not alone. Let’s face it, he said, “Most middle-aged men complain that they were born too early”.
And most old men weep silently.
Devil’s Dictionary ?Definition of the Week
Moral: In the conventional Judeo-Christian sense, anything tending to increase human misery, as in “moral conduct” or “moral standards.”
Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state, lives in Gorham. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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