COLUMN: Then and now — a reflection of hookup culture


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This Saturday night, I walked home alone after midnight. When I got home, I peeled wet, sticky packing peanuts off the soles of my shoes and threw them in the garbage. I checked my phone; Ned would be there in 20 minutes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d stepped through space and time.

Perhaps it’s that I had taken six shots earlier. Mostly it was because I’d just walked out the doors of a frat party — a reminder of another time in my life — and back into my own house, where I was awaiting the 28-year-old I was seeing to come stay the night — something relatively new to me.

I’m not part of greek life. However, I went to a lot of parties on the Row my freshman and first half of my sophomore year. Enough that when I returned this weekend, as a senior standing on a platform in a back room, I felt an instant comparison between then and now.

Springfest had fallen apart, and my friends’ friends were attempting to revive the night. We were too drunk and bummed to hop in an Uber to Santa Monica, so that’s how I arrived on the dance floor of an unknown fraternity. I badly wanted to enjoy it  because at 21 I feel weirdly wizened and because my freshman year I never really got to play the part. So I wordlessly grasped the other girls’ hands as a guy led us to the room full of packing peanuts.

I danced and occasionally glanced at my phone. I couldn’t lose myself to the moment, though. Even though all of my visual surroundings brought me back to 2013, I knew I wanted to touch down to 2017 for the end of the night. Bobby, who I’ve been on two dates with, was trying to booty call me out to North Hollywood. He said he’d pay for my Uber and get me breakfast. He wanted to display the true marks of 21st-century chivalry, I guess.

Instead, I lead the conversation with Ned, whom I’d seen a couple nights in a row, to suggest hanging out again. I knew he’d say yes. Buzzed and surrounded by the haze of Daisy Dukes and beer-stained floors, I walked home instead of calling a ride.

All of the imagery of the night — the lights, the colors, the smells, even the outfits — were identical to my memories of freshman year. But none of the details were the same.

My freshman year, all I wanted romantically was a guy who would hook up with me twice. Instead, I had a series of 11 one-time encounters (from kissing to sex) over the course of my first semester. Only one didn’t start at a party.

The sensation of being pulled across a dance floor, knowing all eyes were on you and hoping your complete dedication to the performance of enjoying the beat would entice a guy to approach you — that is the sensation I associate with much of my freshman year sex and romantic life. Each one-time encounter gave me a momentary thrill. I only fully regret one of those hookups. I hadn’t even had an orgasm yet (and none of these boys gave me one), but there was something both exhilarating and comforting about the vodka-induced haze and a first kiss with a stranger.

I am not nostalgic for it, but it’s something quite interesting to look back on. Then and now, I’ve experienced the typical aspects of college, and early-20s, hookup culture. Before it was laying in a twin bed, texting roommates to leave and walking home with smeared mascara at 5 a.m. Before I would scan the crowd for an acknowledging glance and walk up to almost anyone. Once I even kissed a boy without saying anything first.

Now I go on two to four dates before getting intimate with a guy. And although I have my exceptions, I usually don’t like to have sex drunk anymore. Instead of a dance floor, it’s dating apps, and our first glances aren’t usually marked with the lust I used to experience early in college.

We’re more trepidatious when we meet offline. We mark each other in a different way. Sometimes there’s still the haze of the bar light to keep things mysterious, but I like getting to know people in the daylight a bit more now.

Neither early-college nor early-20s hookup culture is ideal. But as my black shoes hit the sticky blue floor on Saturday night, I honestly did laugh to myself a bit. I felt like I’d seen it all.

Emma Andrews is a senior majoring in international relations. Her column, “Before & After,” runs Fridays.