Skip the dating. Go right to mating.

Yesterday morning I heard an NPR report on “the hookup,” a typical sexual encounter among 20-somethings today. These kids are more comfortable with banging than bonding, in fact they tend to avoid real intimacy. Sure, there’s been the “one night stand” forever, but this social swing is without negative connotations of the past. Hook up with it.

As I listened, the stereotype in me thought, “I was born in the wrong generation,” but immediately I realized and accepted that I’m the outdated spinster with hang ups about sex. My Über self jumped into the passenger side to channel Freud and we played “In Treatment” for the ride to work.

• Me: “Well, growing up, my single mom played dad. I had no sisters and when I was in grade school, neither did my close friends. I didn’t learn what girls were about.
• Dr. Freud: “Go on.”
• Me: “Then there was the time some neighborhood girl chased me during a squirt gun fight. I slipped on the plastic of a broken weapon and sliced my eyebrow wide open on the top of a chain link gate. I was a bloody mess. That was traumatic.”
• Dr. Freud: “I see.”
• Me: “Anyway, I didn’t have a real girlfriend until I was a high school sophomore, and she claimed to have done some spell to get me, so I’m not sure what effect that’s had.”
• Freud: “Tell me more.”
• Me: “She was a ‘good Catholic girl’ and we dated for the rest of high school. Mostly I remember her saying ‘I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.’ It was kinda like that ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ Meatloaf song, except ‘STOP RIGHT THERE’ always had me out between third and home.”
• Freud: “Meatloaf?”
• Me: “It’s not important. The point is it got cemented into my head that sex was something forbidden and something girls didn’t want.”
• Dr. No Help: “Continue.”
• Me: “Then I got to college.”
• (At this point the doc shifted in his chair and leaned in as if to say, “finally this dolt is gonna get laid.”)
• Me: “During ‘Rush Week’ a Junior co-ed from the town next to my hometown pounced on me and for the next year or so treated me like an animal in ‘La Fiesta De Los Vaqueros.’”
• Dr. Schlomo: “I don’t speak Spanish.”
• Me: “It’s a rodeo, Doc.”
• Freud: “Ah. That was a joke.”
• Me: “So, listen, Doctor… It’s now years later and I still think of sex as the forbidden fruit. Why can’t I just discard all this baggage and… you know… Get busy.”
• My Ex-Therapist: “Oh, look at the time. We’ll have to pick this up next week.”