More on Casual Dating

April 3, 2005
Casual Relationships, Yes. Casual Sex, Not Really.
By ALEX WILLIAMS

FOR the young and the single in New York dating has always been a numbers game, whether it is tabulating the guy-to-girl ratio at a bar or guessing at the bank balance of the quarry across the dance floor. Still, it is not every night that a group of unattached young women in low-slung jeans sit around pondering questions that might stump a mathematician at Caltech, questions like can one plus nine ever equal just nine?

"I know a lot of people who will go home with the same guy they have before just because it's not going to raise their number," explained Jennifer Babbit, 26, a publicist.

"A lot of my friends will say: 'I started having sex with this guy, but it only lasted a minute. I don't know if it counted,' " offered Beth Whiffen, a former associate editor at Cosmopolitan.

The number in question is the total number of men that a woman has slept with, and the question is on their minds because they were among two dozen or so young Manhattanites who dropped by One Little West 12, a restaurant and club in the meatpacking district of Manhattan, on Tuesday to discuss "The Hookup Handbook: A Single Girl's Guide to Living It Up" by Andrea Lavinthal and Jessica Rozler, published last month (Simon Spotlight Entertainment).

The book's title and many of its guidelines ("Getting a room isn't just polite, it's a necessity") suggest that a new sexual revolution is afoot among a fast-and-loose generation nurtured on the wisdom of "Sex and the City," who see boyfriends as passé, dating as dated and the idea of commitment laughable. But an evening spent in the company of Ms. Lavinthal, Ms. Rozler and their friends suggests that mating rituals of the much-celebrated hookup culture, at least as practiced by young professional women, seems to owe as much to Doris Day as to Samantha Jones.

Yes, they take pride in having thrown off the shackles of earlier generations of single women. They are not waiting on Friday night hoping "he" will call. They make the first move. They happily see two or three guys simultaneously. Spontaneity is crucial, but even more is a good clean exit strategy from any guy who turns out to be Mr. Not Exactly.

"It's not that people aren't dating," explained Ms. Rozler, an editorial assistant at Allworth Press when she is not practicing nightclub anthropology. "It's that there's this weird gray area. People still want to be in relationships, but they don't want to be settling."

But even as they raise pink drinks in the air and roll their eyes at the absurdity of commitment, these are not women embracing sexual abandon. The courtship rites of this generation of urban singles seem to borrow from the mores of their grandmothers in the 1950's (date lots of boys; smooch, spoon, nuzzle or neck to your heart's content, but hold out for that pledge pin from Mr. Right) as much as from those of their mothers' love-the-one-you're-with 70's.

"Most girls don't have one-night stands," Ms. Whiffen said. "They might have one or two in their life."

Take the number discussion, for example. Yes, there are conquests, but there should not be too many of them. So among this group of women with three-inch heels tipping out of their $200 jeans what is the right number, that is, the last number before you hit the wrong one? Few women would want to go over 20, or even 15, Ms. Babbit said, because they would "think of themselves as big sluts."

"Ten at the most," Caroline Homlish, 24, summarized in a tone that brooked no dissent.

"A lot of girls are not having casual sex," explained Ms. Lavinthal, an editor at Cosmopolitan, even as she conceded that the title of her book had racy overtones.

It might come as a surprise that anyone under the age of 29 would need a definition for a term that has grown as ubiquitous in youth culture as customized ring tones. Still, the back cover of "The Hook-up Handbook" makes a stab at it: a hookup is "anything from making out to doing the nasty, generally with no commitment or plans for said commitment." But as Ms. Lavinthal and Ms. Rozler explain it, a hookup has less to do with what happens between people than with the surrounding circumstances: specifically, that the meeting is unplanned and even unexpected. "Nobody's waiting by the phone," Ms. Lavinthal said. "For one thing, you can take the phone with you."

Most women at the club expounded happily on what a hookup meant for them. "Late-night grinding on the dance floor, maybe a little groping" was one version, said Kate Kilgore, who is in public relations at Victoria's Secret Beauty. The few men who spoke up seemed to find the elastic nature of the term somewhat tiresome. "There are so many definitions," said Corey Zolcinski, a commercial real estate representative and disc jockey. "Some people think that it means meeting for a drink."

The age of the hookup certainly does not seem to mean a new era of free love. "I wish it were because my sex life would be much better," said Greg Kiely, 26, a former investment banker who is now applying to business graduate schools.

While men are obviously central to the "The Hookup Handbook" ethos (do you want to hook up with a Metroman or a Himbo tonight?), boyfriends are most definitely not. "A relationship isn't the easiest thing to maintain, but swearing off boys isn't a viable option either," the chapter on "Defensive Non-Dating" states. "The result of this epiphany: You refuse to put yourself out there. Instead, you just put out." As for the crowd assembled at One, where a party for Stolichnaya thundered in the background, the prospect of a serious relationship before the age of 25 seemed to hold all the appeal of a promotional party with a cash bar.

"It's not about courtship and the chase," Ms. Kilgore said. "It's not that it's a free-for-all like the 60's, but it's about independent women staking their claim, making their mark and doing what they want."

Ms. Kilgore estimated that out of a random group of 10 women her age, only two or three will have a steady boyfriend, and the pressure that existed even a decade ago to be seen having a boyfriend had lessened. That, she said, is liberating. "I'll go through phases where I'm hooking up or making out with a guy a week," she said matter-of-factly, "but then go a month" without.

She guessed that on average she probably hooks up 10 or 12 times a year, something that can mean "lots of vodka, feeling the connection," but not always sex.

"It's all about fun," Ms. Lavinthal added of her approach to dating. "It's not the death of romance. It's like relationship light. No one's going to say no to making out with a cute guy on a Saturday night."

But while the language of the hook-up culture sounds debauched ("Drink Till He's Cute" is one chapter heading), most of the women who will plunk down $14.95 for the book are children of the 80's. These girls grew up just wanting to have fun but knew not to have too much.

"We've had so much sex ed," Ms. Lavinthal said. "With strangers, we are really cautious of the disease thing."

And merely willing that age-old standards no longer apply does not make it so. "Girls are becoming more like guys, but there is still a double standard," Ms. Homlish argued. "You are told you can do everything, but you can't. If a girl is dating three guys at the same time, she's looked down upon."

Dig deeper and it turns out that most of the hookup aficionados assembled that night do not see hooking up as a seemly way to approach their 30's.

While most women agreed that serious dating is being delayed at least a bit these days, they also said they don't plan on living a "Sex and the City" life when they are anywhere near as old as the women on that series.

Ms. Whiffen said she has seen many examples of women who insist they are going to keep hooking up with no thought of having a serious boyfriend until they are at least 25. "But the second 'he' comes along," she said knowingly, "it's done."

And while "The Hookup Handbook" explicitly forbids its readers to mistake a hookup for a potential boyfriend, not everyone thought that was realistic. "People who are hooking up are trying to get into a serious relationship," insisted Caitlin Gaffey, 24, a beauty assistant at the magazine Shop Etc. "On the girls' side, that's almost always true."

"You can't just hook up with anyone," added Ms. Gaffey, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You have to learn a lot about him before you hook up. Guys are not picky. We're the ones who are picky. It's kind of like shopping."

Even Ms. Lavinthal said she is "more of a boyfriend girl than a hookup girl, to be perfectly honest." As she sees it, hooking up is more what you do between boyfriends, and it is often the only option for busy young women trying to juggle career, friends and romance. "It's almost like attention-deficit disorder," she said. "There are just too many things going on."

For Helen Gurley Brown, for 31 years the editor of Cosmopolitan and the author of perhaps the original dating manual, "Sex and the Single Girl," which was published in 1962, the lives and concerns of Ms. Lavinthal and her friends show that not much has changed in 30 years, except perhaps the verbs.

"I think it was sort of established in 1962 that you didn't have to be married to have a good life," she said. "I think these young women are probably a living example of what was said at that time."