unhooked: how young women pursue sex, delay love, and lose at both

This book by Laura Sessions Stepp really made me think about why people go through ‘hook ups’.  I liked some of the things written in here, so I’ll jot them down. 

*”Saying ‘I hooked up last night with this guy whose name I don’t remember’ is a lot easier than saying ‘I gave this guy who name I don’t remember a blow job last night.'” You’ve got to give them credit; they’ve come up with a vocabulary that gives them maximum freedom.  The distance between what one says and what one means has never been greater.  (pg. 28)

*teabagged: took his testicles in her mouth 

*had a roast beef sandwich: the guy going down on a girl

*shack pack: toothbrushes, toothpaste, and other supplies given to pledges by sororities

*horority, sorostitutes: sorority

*Love, to them, seemed an awful lot like marriage: sometimes risky, frequently boring and potentially very hurtful.  Their confusion was understandable.  Unlike other nationalities, Americans use the word ‘love’ for some any things–new friends, comfy old bathrobes, the coffee shop down the street–that it has become virtually meaningless. (pg. 48)

*If you don’t hook up, or only hook up once, that’s considered weird. (pg. 84)

*Hooking up is also very selfish. It’s all about what you want, not what the other person wants. (pg. 137)

*My generation–actually our society–is into taking shortcuts…Get rich faster. Skip this step. Win instant approval. Hookups are like the shortcut to intimacy, while dating is the long way around, the scenic route.  We want to get there, wherever “there” is, as quickly as possible, and I think we’ve lost the ability to enjoy the journey.  Sometimes we forget that how much the “end” means depends on the “means” you took to get there.  Sometimes patience is a virtue.  I think some people are starting to realize that the intimacy learned from a hookup is no match for the intimacy from a relationship.  However, they aren’t quite sure what the difference is. They don’t recognize that the process of dating/getting to know someone/caring for someone is very important in creating the depth of feeling you will have for them.  Or that you don’t have to marry someone in order to learn from spending time with them.  There are some realtionships that aren’t going anywhere, but you can still learn about yourself, even if it’s only to stand up and tell the guy he’s not what you need. (Pg. 253)

*Right now in college, love is seen as a game of luck. We wander around meeting tons of people, each with our own personal arsenal of huge life plans, and we make new friends and hook up with people and collide in many different ways. It is just luck if you happen upon that guy whom you happen to click with. Perhaps an idea is to turn this game of luck into a game of skill…the skill of developing meaningful relationships. (pg. 254)

*If the [hooking up] culture is going to change, it will take both to change it.  That won’t happen, however, until they have opportunities to think about it smartly and ask each other questions such as: What about hooking up do they want preserve? What do they want to toss? Are there characteristics of old-fashioned dating that they would like to restore?  What would a new model of relating look like? (pg. 256)

*A letter to mothers and daughters
~A guy can make you feel valuable, but it’s not the guy who makes you valuable.~ 

You are the subject of your life, not someone else’s life: not your parents’, your friends’ or your partner’s. On the outside you may look like you could take on the world. But you and I know that on many days you feel pretty ordinary, and that’s when you’re vulnerable to doing things that whittle away at your self-confidence. The more confident you become, independent of love, the more confident you will be in love. (pg. 261)

~Don’t let them have what you’ve got until you, and they, know who you are.~

Your body is not an introductory offer. It’s a return receipt.  Your partner gives you love or at least respect and affection, and in return you give him part of you–and you decide which part. (pg. 262)

~Explore your feminine side beyond the black lace bra.~

Neither of you should get hung up on gender stereotypes when it comes to making the other feel special. (pg. 263)

~Love won’t change you; it will just make you more of who you are.~

~Lust is not love, although it can feel like it.~

~The past is prologue.~

~Breaking up is hart to do–and instructive.~

~Even with a good guy, you’ll still need friends.~

~Think erotic, not pornographic.~

~Sex always has meaning, even when it is ‘meaningless’.~

~Plan your dive and dive your plan.~ 

~The personal is the political.~

“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do.  Accept the past as past, without denying it, or discarding it.  Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.” (18)

“Dying is only one thing to be sad over.  Living unhappily is something else.  So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy.” “I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls.  How many people can say that?” (36)

“Have I told you about the tensions of opposites?  Life is a series of pulls back and forth.  You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.  Something hurt you, yet you know it shouldn’t.  You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.” (40)

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.  Let it come in.  We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft.  But a wise man named Levine said it right.  He said, ‘Love is the only rational act’.” (52)

“And slowly a discussion begins–as Morrie has wanted all along–about the effect of silence on human relations.  Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise? I am not bothered by silence.  For all the noise I make with my friends, I am still not comfortable talking about my feelings in front of others–especially not classmates.  I could sit in the quiet hours if that is what the class demanded.” (54) 

“What if today were my last day on earth?” (64)

“Koppel imagined the two men together one day, one unable to speak, the other unable to hear.  What would that be like? We will both hold hands, Morrie said.  And there’ll be a lot of love passing between us.  We’ve had thirty-five years of friendship.  You don’t need speech or hearing to feel that.” (71)

“Am I being the person I want to be?” (81)

“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” ( 82)

“Say I was divorced, or living alone, or had no children.  This disease–what I’m going through–would be so much harder.  I’m not sure I could do it.  Sure, people would come visit, friends, associates, but it’s not the same as having someone who will not leave.  It’s not the same as having someone whom you know has an eye on you, is watching you the whole time.” (92)

“Do not stop your lives.  Otherwise, this disease will have ruined three of us instead of one.” (93)

“Learn to detach.  Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent.  Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you.  On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully.  That’s how you are able to leave it.” (103)

“If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid.  You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief.  You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.” (104)

“I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life.  How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry.  Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship. 

Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite.  Turn on the faucet.  Wash yourself with the emotion.  It won’t hurt you.  It will only help.  If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, ‘All right, it’s just fear.  I don’t have to let it control me.  I see if for what it is’. 

Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely–but eventually be able to say, “All right, that was my moment with loneliness.  I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well….Detach..” (105)

“Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.” (133)

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” (174)

Man, I just spent 2 days reading this book and it is was a fun read.  I had to note down some stuff cuz this author puts some scenes into such a great language…it’s like… wow…. he says it so great….and damn its snowin’ hardcore outside! Ok, so that was irrelevant but here it goes:

“I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.” –Charles Baudelaire–

“I’m moderately fucked.  I’m immoderately–fantastically–fucked.  I’m so fucked I can’t even bring myself to talk about the cause of my extravagant fuckage.  It’s too awful.” (4)

“Don’t get like this.” “Like what?” “Nothing.” “No, really.  Like what?  Upset that you’re trying to screw your way through all of 212 while I sit around pining for you like some kind of neglected, sexless governess out of a Bronte novel?  Like that, you mean?” (8)

“Church and State.  I just feel like our friends should be…mmm….separate but equal.”  (59)

“New York City is like fucking Sex Disney.” (77)

“The bushido of shitbag” “Am I crazy or just lonely?” (87)

“Why do you drink so much? I’m bleaching my intestines.” (134)

“You know, every book is a love letter.  Even if it’s not a romance book.  A book is just taking three hundred pages to say ‘I love you.’  No on’es out there helping these young, anonymous writers along.  No one’s dangling the big bucks in front of them.  These people are out there working night jobs as waiters and bartenders and security guards at warehouses, without health insurance or respect from their peers, trying to write these novels because they have to, because they are compelled by love to do it.  Even with the slushies who can’t spell their own names, you can feel it in their sentences, like you can feel the nervous energy of a first date with someone you really like but don’t know how to express it and so you end up saying all the wrong things.  They’ve got it, they’re feeling it, and they want us to feel it too.  That’s something noble.  That’s something about love.  And I just think that maybe you could be a little scornful to do it.  You used to write nice little notes under the form rejection letter, you know.  I don’t know why you stopped doing that.  It wouldn’t kill you, and it would make the slushies feel very good.  What happened to you?” (154)

“He was staring at you like filet mignon.” (159)

“…Because I didn’t have actual blue toilet cleaner…I dumped a packet of blueberry Kool-Aid in it.  Stylish and seductive, no?” (164)

“We once we made up a language all our own, using food terminology.  It was really quite en eloquent little language.  All concession items were pronouns.  All adjectives were Chinese food.  All vegetables were verbs.  The present tense was the vegetable itself; the past tense was the vegetable preceded by “rotten”; the future tense was that vegetable proceeded by “fresh.”  If a word had no food language equivalent, this was the beautiful part–then you can use the corresponding native language’s word.  For example, “She is going to drive Frank to work because his bus is late again” would be “Cheeseburger fresh avocado Frank to meat loaf pork rinds hamburger bus potato no chopsticks again.

Verbs:

• To Be: potato (most common vegetable, therefore most common verb)
• To Have: rice (similar logic)
• To make love: jalapeno pepper (self-explanatory)
• To like: green pepper
• To dislike: red pepper
• To drive: avocado (from a burning sensations song: “The girls turn the color of an avocado/when he drives down the street in his El dorado)
• to kiss: pea (for the shape the mouth assumes when accepting a pea)

Nouns:

• Work: meat loaf
• boyfriend: chocolate
• girfriend: peanut butter
• father: steak
• mother: little steak
• brother: fried steak
• sister: broiled steak

Adjectives:

• Bad: no soy sauce
• good: soy sauce
• great: extra soy sauce
• fat: extra MSG
• skinny: no MSG
• smart: fried rice
• dumb: no fried rice

Miscellanous:

• Because: pork rinds
• good morning: coffee
• good night: milk
• Hi: lemonade
• Bye: lemons

(169-170)

“Carpe Drinkum!, my friends in college used to say” (172)

“Lies abuse their victims but they corrupt their speakers.” (189)

“My brother has this theory about grief: you have to put it somewhere.  Put it in a bottle, put it in a novel, put it in the ear of your good friend, it doesn’t matter.  Well, it might matter a little.  He clearly chose to put his grief into a bottle and then into a needle, and that didn’t get him too far, but the point is you have to put it somewhere.  If you don’t you’ll explode like an unforked baked potato.” (212)

“P.U.R.E. (Previously Unrecognized Recruiting Error.” (230)

“Question: What’s worse than the woman you love more than anything on earth leaving you? Answer: The woman you love more than anythin on earth leaving you for the man who is the instantiation of everything in the world you hate most.” (242)

“The real cliche is being so afraid of love that you lose it.” (258)

“Sitting around the house talking dirty to an MTV chick does not constitute a sex life.” (266)

“Congratufuckinglations!” (277)

“I discover the cruelty of New York geography: everything is everywhere.  The city is a collage of warring histories and hurtful memories.  My famorite places have become places to avoid at all costs.  One night when a date wants to go to the Blue & Gold it feels like a plagiarism.  A novel impulse for honesty makes me want to say to this woman that this whole drinks scene is unethical, that I am trying to pass this off as fresh material.  “this work has already been done by another girl,” I want to tell her…”(294)

“Register Guy: Hey, don’t you want a mixer?  Me: What do you mean? RG: You can’t drink grain alcohol without a mixer.  It can kill you.  Me: I have one.  RG: You do, huh?  What do you have?  Me: saliva…” (313)

“INTUSSUSCEPTION: the drawing in of something from without, the assimilation of new material.” (320)

So yeah, you obviously can’t get the sarcasm if you don’t read the book…but it was hella funny for me.  I also liked how this person explained the book:

It’s a coming of age book. Yet it’s also a book about not writing a book—until the end. It’s a love story about someone who can’t love. It’s a non cliche about a cliche. It’s a story of redemption and metamorphosis. It’s a comedy about a tragedy.

so yeah, I wanted to place these quotes somewhere and what better place to put it?  If you wanna ask me ’bout the book ask…if not…well… that’s your call.

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