Or Maybe It Doesn't Mean Anything

The behavior known as The Hook Up has been around for so long now that the only time we lift an eyebrow, or bother to give it any thought at all, is when it happens with someone unexpected. Did you go home with someone of the same sex? Did you go home with someone of the opposite sex? Did you go home with your nemesis/ someone ugly/ someone else's boyfriend?
Most of the time, the fact that the person you went home with was - more often than not - a complete stranger doesn't even factor into the conversation. We all roll our eyes at our friends and say the perfunctory things: you better have used protection, was your wallet still there in the morning, just how shameful was your walk out of her building this morning, wait - how many times did you puke last night? And we don't really care what the answers are (except for that first one): mostly we want to know because no matter what you say, we are pretty sure it will be hilarious. This is a safe assumption when The Hook Up is the bang with which a night ends.

But the reason we really keep talking about it as, like, a social movement is because we've been circling around the point - what does it all mean? - like water around a drain in the shower, for about forty years now and still nobody has managed to figure it out. Maybe it's because the point keeps changing. Does it have to do with women's liberation? What about our so-called sexual revolution? Are you really getting back at your dad for not coming to your softball games?
Sometimes I wonder. Most of the people I know are either staunchly single or safely paired up: I haven't seen a real Hook Up in the flesh in almost three years. This is what happens when your people are nerds. Complete, unapologetic, chaste little nerds. Regardless, it seems to me that whatever the person's gender identification, they're going home with strangers because they've vetted them to be sane enough, hot enough, and willing enough to fuck without consequence. It's the not knowing them first that interests me. Granted, this is a small subset of the Hook Up spectrum (the other subsets include - but are not limited to - all the times you've gone home with an ex, a friend you've had a crush on forever, someone you actually kind of hate, and so on and so forth), but when did we start thinking THAT was a good idea? All the other kinds of people we have ill-advised sex with seem like pretty straight-forward choices: they're hot, we're hot, why not? But strangers. Why don't we all get robbed more often? My theory is that at our age, everyone is more or less in the same poverty bracket and there's nothing really worth taking in the morning when the wrong end is throbbing and all you want to do is find solace in the most womb-like structure available. I mean, is jacking a full screen version of The Chronicles of Riddick really worth it? No. Go home and have a Gatorade.

Why strangers? Is it just another group of people you fuck because you want to fly and they just happen to willing to shop at your Duty Free? Personally I'd be too psyched out by all the idiosyncracies of just having met someone new - it's why I haven't made a lot of spontaneous friends in the last ten years: I'm too shy and weird and shamelessly abstruse (to the point that I will consciously make references in casual conversation to things only I could possibly know) to get along in a meaningful way with someone I've met without context. And I'm juuuust crazy enough to want to make it all meaningful: the one time I went home with someone and never saw them again was - and still is - one of the strangest nights of my life. I felt like a grown up when it was all going down; the polite "How long are you in town? I'll call you (I have no intention of doing this)/ Oh yeah, you have my number (no, you don't, but I don't want to see you again anyway)?" the carefully close-mouthed kiss when he dropped me off...it was all very textbook. But later...I have to admit I felt kind of cheap about it for a while.
And now I've come full circle to being cynically amused by it, but with an added shade of "why do people think that could possibly be a satisfying experience?" One would think that we're steering clear of the emotional danger inherent in repeated sexy encounters at the risk of a reduced quality of said encounters, but is emotional connection such a bad thing? Who taught us that being sincere necessarily means getting hurt?

And here is where I think we end up: my generation justifies fucking strangers because we're afraid of being uncool. We deny outright that it has much to do with the biology of spreading our genes around or wanting to scratch the primal itch, and instead have constructed a reality wherein caring about anything is ridiculous. We geeks are familiar with the feeling: you admit that you think something is worth your enthusiasm, and the next thing you know, you're being publicly humiliated because people actually think The Borg isn't that interesting a concept (even if you know it IS). In the sexual world, even the private dismay of being unable to provide an orgasm can cut as deep as the first time someone asks you, "you thought we were friends?" Thus, we never take the chance to find out it was faked, all the while trying to forget that it's all fake when you can't remember what happened the next day. To that end, what do a few notches, or signatures, or Polaroids actually prove? They hold value only for a short while, at which point the pursuit of a new batch begins...or so I can only assume; I am not cool. I never have been. Maybe that's why I am so fascinated by the behaviors of those who deal in this "currency of cool" (if you will) with any degree of authority. Sometimes I want to be one of that number - I've yearned for the right hair, the right skin, the right whatever for so long that I can hardly remember when I first became conscious of it - but mostly I just want to be my silly, geeky self: I want to fuck the ones who can actually understand what I'm talking about...and fuck being cool.

Gleeful

EVERY PART OF THIS IS SO FUCKING SWEET I CANNOT ARTICULATE IT IN A WAY THAT WOULD MAKE ANY SENSE TO YOU ZOMG ZOMG TUBULAR.

BUT: I can tell you that it is a sneak-peek type of thing for the new episode of Glee that's coming out...whenever that's happening. In the fall, I think. Anyway, it's going to be fucking amazing. Enjoy!



AM I RIGHT!? Yeah, I'm right. I'm hells of right.

Oldie but a Terrifyingie

Enjoy your nightmares.

me: this video is going to give me night terrors

john: i know!

me: no i'm going to wake up screaming tonight

john: and that guy will be there

me: staring at me

john: will the bi-hawk

me: WITH THAT HAIR
hahahaha yeah
that is easily the creepiest thing about him

john: yeah
and he'll just stare
and stare
and stare
and he'll say
"I made'jee breakfast, love"
and he'll be a lovely man

me: hahahahahahahahaa
right before he skins me and makes a lamp out of me

john: hahaha
I'M THE BREAKFAST MAKAH

me: AND TEH LAMPSHADE MAKAH

john: GONNA MAKE YOU INTO A LAMPSHADAH

me: hahaahaha

john: YESSSSSSSS

me: ahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
JOHN
i am THRILLED with how that just went

john: haha

me: really. i just couldn't be happier

john: write a blog entry
and link the video
and it'll haunt EVERYONE
FOREVER

me: yeah i did already
i did that like five minutes ago

john: hahaha
amazing

me: and i'm editing this conversation and putting it in too

HOW ABOUT THAT.

Big Promises

Hey, hey, yeah, I know I talked a lot of smack about actual writing before. Hookups, and all, remember? But never you mind that. I thought about everything and my brain is broken from last week so fuck it. I'll get around to it sometime but not now.
Kids, that's what happens when you turn 23, have a crisis of personality, and drink yourself stupid for five days in a row. It breaks your brain and everyone thinks you're a failure. Don't do it.

My convalescence will bring substance back to Fairly Alarmed, dear readers. I swear it. In the meantime, here's something pretty for you to ponder while I lie here quietly with a cool compress over my eyes.

Fuck-All

WHOA YOU GUYS I have been super lazy over the last...er...month. Lazy about writing here, I mean, not lazy in general - that is something I've been my whole life. Sorry I've been treating this as my own personal Remember To Watch This Again Later Clipboard. I'll be back soon with something pithy, I SWEAR. I'm working on something about guys, sort of. Guys. Boys, really. Men, I wish. Oooh, emasculating. But no, seriously, this is something I've been thinking about for a long time and it's going to be gender-respectful if somewhat rambling and confused (not unlike this sentence). I'm not doing it consciously, but you can bet all the references will be sort of mysterious and sort of obvious. So you can look forward to that, if the haphazard dismantling of a halfway grasped and yet completely tired social construct (the hookup) might be something you might be into. If not, I have some videos you might like, or I may just cut and paste a funny conversation I had with a friend. If not that either, go fuck yourself.

In the meantime, however, it's four fucking fifteen in the morning and despite my three hour nap this afternoon - purely accidental, I tell you - I'm beginning to fray at the edges. So I'm going to put a nice little dot at the end of this sentence here and go to bed.

These things happen.

Gee, Mister. That sure is a generous type of discount.

Congratulations?

Priya
hey, i googled you today

Devon
whatd you find?

Priya
a bunch of urban dictionary entries for different ways to say "drunk"

[via Facebook]

I was tagged in a note on Facebook today. As I'm sure you already know, I don't do notes, but I often cut and paste them here.

"List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it.

Tag 15 friends (and while it is easy to tag more, part of the challenge is to think about which 15 friends would have the weirdest or most interesting book list), including me. If you don't want to play, no sweat. Feel free to go about your business."

But wait. First I want to show you what my friend chose as his 15 unforgettable books. Behold...REASON #129384 THIS GUY AND I WILL NEVER BE THAT CLOSE:

Saint Genet -- Sartre
Blood Meridian--Cormac McCarthy
The Crossing--Cormac McCarthy
On Suicide--Jean Amery
On Aging--Jean Amery
At the Mind's Limits--Jean Amery
Les Fleurs du Mal--Charles Baudelaire
The Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena--Longchen Rabjam
The Way of the Bodhisattva--Shantideva
Inner Experience--Georges Bataille
Phenomenology of Spirit--Hegel
Confederacy of Dunces--Toole
Visions of Cody--Kerouac
Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding--Longchen Rabjam
Wild Ways: Poems of Ikkyu--Ikkyu

What, Tuesdays With Morrie didn't make the list? Oh well, congratulations on being literate, anyway (even if it did make you a philosophy dick)! And now, in no particular order, my 15. Or potentially, if we're being realistic: Reason #928573 YOU AND I WILL NEVER BE THAT CLOSE. Alternate title: When I Write It Out Like This, It Appears My Tastes Are Somewhat Pedestrian

1. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
2. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
3. James Joyce - The Dubliners
4. Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
5. Bram Stoker - Dracula
6. David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day
7. John Irving - The World According to Garp
8. Nick Hornby - High Fidelity
9. Chuck Klosterman - Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
10. Marc Spitz - How Soon is Never?
11. Michael Chrichton - Jurassic Park
12. JRR Tolkien - The Hobbit
13. Tom Wolfe - The Bonfire of the Vanities
14. Chuck Palahniuk - Survivor
15. Jay McInerney - Bright Lights, Big City

Fucking Summer.

You guys, when I finished all my finals at the end of the spring semester, Marion and I had a brief conversation about summer. I asserted that I loved summer, and that I wanted to take it slow, because I was pretty sure summer was the one for me. Marion rejoined with the idea that summer was "too beautiful to fuck." I laughed, because it was funny, because it was true.

But I just took the last of my Summer I finals today, and I'm beginning to rethink my stance on this whole thing. I think I'm gonna take summer down. I'm gonna take summer down hard. Right after I finish my Summer II class (in 5 weeks).

Kellie
over achiever

Priya
omg you're calling ME an over achiever?
pot/kettle, etc

Kellie
i know - i just broke my glass house.

Priya
also i think it's obvs from my performance in astronomy that i'm barely achieving at all, let alone OVER achieving

Kellie
i think your performance in astronomy was nothing less than "stellar"

Priya
OMG