It was no shock when students cringed upon being asked about their worst hook- up experience. No one really wanted to answer the question or really get into detail about their personal experiences.
Many questions were answered with a lot of hesitation, uncomfortable laughter, awkward silences or just bluntly not answered at all.
The few students who were willing to share their hook-up horror story answered with little enthusiasm and the thought of remembering bad make-outs seemed to cause them literal pain.
“Oh God, do I have to talk about this?” Kevin Blake said. “I was at Notre Dame with my friend one weekend to watch one of the football games. This girl next to me, who I just kinda met, we kind of hooked up.”
Random hookups are not uncommon in the college campus. To be fair, isn’t college a time for “experimenting” like all the clichés told us? Young students should not be judged on their sexual actions, but praised for their trial and error engage- ments.
As a common theme, students’ worst hook-ups occurred off campus with someone they barely knew, just met or didn’t know at all.
“I went to Temple and I couldn’t find the person I was talking to so I went up to someone else instead,” Becca Waxman said. “The guy came up to me and thought I was just going around talking to other guys. It was just awkward I don’t know.”
“I didn’t really even know her,” Blake said.
Maybe the reason these hookups tend to be so uncomfortable because there was no connection between the two people.
People are often made fun of or mocked because of their random experience with someone else. The term “slut-shaming” was born so that people could label girls who perform promiscuous behaviors, even though they are commonly practiced.
“Slut-shaming is the expression of being labeled a sexually out-of-control girl or woman (a “slut” or “ho”) and then being punished socially for possessing this identity,” Leora Tanenbaum, writer for the Huffington Post, blogged.
But do “official titles” in relationships stand in the way of what is considered acceptable or unacceptable to do when hooking up? Do people really need the “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” label to get with other people without being looked down upon by their peers?
“I think it’s acceptable (for people who aren’t in relationships to hookup); I think it’s how some relationships start,” Blake said. “I just think that’s often what happens in relationships— besides, friends with benefits is something else.”
Becca Waxman agrees when asked the same question.
“It all depends where you stand with that person,” Waxman said.
So it can be said that it depends on the two people in the relationship. If they don’t want titles, they don’t need them. Also, people who do have intimate rela- tionships shouldn’t be shamed because they hookup without these titles.
As far as the worst hookup stories go, everyone is going to have them. Some people were lucky enough to forget them and move on, but for others, it is something that could haunt them.
