Hooking Up by Kat Bannister

As you can tell from the references (Reality Shows, Snoop Dogg, hey, wait a sec...) this was one of the first pieces on The Brothel. In fact, "Hooking Up" always attracted a steady number of visitors. Most of this traffic was from guys searching "hooking up." But it's still a good read. -KV

HOOKING UP
Kat Bannister

The clock strikes 2 as I stumble into my apartment from a night out with my girlfriends. I throw off my dancing shoes, fling my clothes onto the easy chair next to my bed and pull on some sweats. I turn on my computer and log onto the net to check my email. Immediately, an instant message pops onto my screen. It's my friend Mike, a late-night online junkie.

"So did you hook up?" he asks, tacking on a little yellow happy face at the end of his sentence.

"No," I answered, and swiftly typed in my Hotmail password. I groaned as I viewed the slew of junk mail, all advertising porn sites, littering my in-box. Gotta check out that new inbox-protector feature.

"What do you mean you didn't hook up? That's the whole point of going out!"

I am perplexed by the attitude people have about bar-hopping, clubbing, partying, whatever. It's like an automatic brain response: PARTY ->HOOK UP-> SEX. As if hooking up and sex were necessary conditions for doing anything remotely fun.

But then again, I look at the world today and suddenly, I'm not so surprised. Ideas of sex pervades our everyday existence. We can't escape it. Turn on the TV and Temptation Island, whose sole purpose is to get couples to cheat on each other, is the highest-rated show of the week. And one thing I've always wondered-who actually wins on this show? The couple who remains monogamous, thus defeating the whole purpose of being on an island full of scantily-clad women and buff men? Or the person who hooks up with everyone else on the island and goes home without (a) girlfriend (b) boyfriend or (c) both. But with (a) disease or (b) bun in the oven (take your pick). And people wonder why I hardly watch TV.

The next morning, I'm flipping radio stations during rush hour traffic. Just when I think I've escaped the maws of Temptation Island, I find out that a segment of the morning show on KIIS has been dedicated to "Temptation Station." I turn to Power 106 and Snoop Dogg is singing (if you can call it singing) about f-cking someone in his Lincoln Continental rental car. Ditto for 100.3 The Beat. Jamie and Danny on Star are taking phone calls from women who's love interests happen to be prison inmates. Supposedly, the newlywed couple can request permission from the warden to visit the prison's "Honeymoon Trailer" after the nuptials. Disgusted with the variety of topics being discussed on my palette of morning radio stations, I switch to my CD's for the rest of the drive into work.

But just as I pull around the corner and approach the parking garage, a billboard image hurls itself at my car windshield. Angelina Jolie and some other actor I don't know are posed with provocative looks in their eyes. "Original Sin" is the title. Just great. I'll pass and maybe watch my Disney movies instead. But then again, I've heard rumors that certain scenes in "Aladdin" contain explicit sibliminal messages-sweet nothings that you would never imagine Aladdin whispering into Jasmine's ear (Or is it him and the monkey? Hey, you never know).

One would think that their own home would be safe from the ways of the world-that is, as long as you don't turn on the TV or the radio, log onto the Internet, answer the phone, open the mail or look out the window. But at our Thanksgiving family dinner, this had to be the first question out of my aunt's mouth:

"So Kat, are you dating anyone?" She swirled a bit of cranberry sauce into her mashed potatoes with her fork.

"No."

She gave me a look. "Why not? Not interested in anyone?" Translation: "Why not? Is something wrong with you?"

I tried to explain to her that I actually preferred not to be in a relationship because I was going away to law school and I had no idea where I was going to be in the next several months. But she obviously found my reasoning to be flawed:

"Honey, no one knows where they're going to be in six months. You should just date around. For pete's sake you don't have to marry 'em."

As I gnawed on my turkey leg, my dear aunt then proceeded to lecture me on how she once had a friend who was so picky she didn't get married until she was 28.

Twenty-eight! What a shame. By 28, my life is almost over. For sure, all my eggs will have dried up by then.

Actually I was surprised that she didn't just come straight out and ask me "Are you a lesbian?" like my mom did one time at the dinner table (she justified the question by kindly pointing out that I hadn't had a boyfriend in a while-or at least not one that she knew about).

Is it our attitudes that have infused the ideas of hooking up and casual sex into every aspect of our lives? Or is it TV, radio, movies, and other elements of pop culture that have turned our society into sex-crazed lunatics? Perhaps we will never know. Don't get me wrong. I think a relationships and sex are both beautiful things. In fact, I think they are among some of the best things in life. But not when it's always in your face, in the most perverted forms. Forget the idea that sex is the most intimate physical act that two people who have devoted their hearts and souls to each other can have. Our world has seemed to have retrogressed to the extent that we look at relationships as something to gratify our short-term desires. In looking at pop culture today, it seems as if we have begun to view sex the same way that animals do-as mere satisfaction of our primal, physical urges.

If you ask me, I'd take singleness anyday.

-Kat Bannister