I have something I need to tell you. I know we don’t know each other that well, but I feel that I have a responsibility to tell you before this goes any further. The date is dead. I think it left with the ’80s (it’s my personal philosophy that the rise of hair metal and the “Camero hook-up” is directly related to its death.) But the simple fact is that you (yes, you, college student) have never been on a date. Ok, rebuff me. But honest to God, or whatever your persuasion is, have you ever been on a right proper date?
And by date, I don’t mean that time you went out to dinner in Kenmore Square with that guy you hooked up with at the Alpha Zeta Beta black light party the previous weekend. I mean someone of the opposite sex (or the same – hey it’s Boston University) awkwardly asking for your number, calling you and asking you to. . . sorry I don’t know what people do on dates. I believe the standard (circa 1967) is to go to a movie followed by dinner. Or preceded by dinner. I wouldn’t know. I, just like you, have never been on a date.
However, my Mimi tells me that my grandfather took her to the most divine restaurant in Philadelphia on their first date. He held the doors open and stood when she went to the bathroom. It was swank. It was classy. It was everything that our present “hook-up” culture is not. I am near certain he paid the bill, and there is no doubt in my mind that the evening ended in a chaste kiss that we modern children couldn’t even imagine.
Our dating and mating cycle starts in the MicroFridge and ends somewhere in Allston’s student ghetto. Which is fine, if you’re looking for no-strings-attached-boinks this weekend and a monumental therapy bill in your 30s. Maybe we can blame our parents and their laissez-faire sexual revolution, maybe we can blame Reagan, but the truth is we are looking for love or something like it in all the wrong ways. We no longer date, we no longer make idle talk over mediocre food about our families and our goals and whatever else encompasses a date. We get drunk. We “hook-up.” We ignore their phone calls and poke them on Facebook and wait until we are drunk enough to want them again.
The whole cycle repeats itself until one person or the other gets bored or finds someone new. Very rarely, it leads to a legitimate relationship where the couple giggles nostalgically about how drunk they were when they met. I have no problem with this. I just wonder why the date died.
A date requires planning, a large chunk of time and often a considerable amount of money. But that doesn’t fit into the lifestyle of a college kid. The hook-up is simply more convenient. We live in a world where we get everything we want – immediately: We want our tan in 13 minutes, our movies on-demand and our dry cleaning done in an hour. When we’re hungry, we can’t be bothered to cook ourselves a meal, we go to McDonald’s.
And that’s exactly what the hook-up is – the fast food of dating. Readily available, low-budget and especially appealing at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night. It’s drive-thru sex and I personally see no problem with it. Sometimes a Big Mac is exactly what you need, and there’s nothing else you want to eat. However, I’ll also contend that that just binging on cheese fries too often can wreak havoc on your stomach and binging on easy lays can leave you feeling gross.
The key is moderation – don’t eat the whole pizza, don’t go all the way with everyone. Don’t eat fast food everyday and don’t pick up a new guy every weekend. Don’t beat yourself up over binging, because you’ll recover. College is the only time in your life that that you can act like a total moron and get away with it. It’s the only time that your metabolism can handle all that grease.
Someday, you’ll become a responsible adult with real responsibilities. You will stop funneling Natty Ice and going to Office Hoes and CEOs parties. You’ll stop eating fast food. You will be the kind of person that cooks. And you may find that a real home-cooked meal, albeit time-consuming, satisfying in ways that fast food is not.
That’s what I aspire to. But for now, I’ll continue to phone-in orders to La Mamma for mayonnaise-slathered sandwiches containing a day’s worth of calories.
Meredith Spencer, a junior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for the Daily Free Press. She can be reached at mspence@bu.edu
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