Hometown hookups

Hellooooooooooo Brunonia, and Happy Thanksgiving! While the upcoming holiday of food worship comes with a lot of good things, it might also come with a side of weirdness. As an upperclassman, I’ve been doing some reflecting on my breaks over the years, most of which have been spent at home in American suburbia. I realized that one aspect of breaks in particular can be pretty odd: hometown hookups.With the threat of oh-my-god-if-I-ask-them-to-the-movies-and-they-say-no-I’ll-have-to-stare-at-the-back-of-their-head-in-chem-for-the-rest-of-my-life pretty much gone, and with a general boost in maturity (or confidence or whatever), you may find that certain opportunities arise over break. Plus, the fishbowl that was high school isn’t really a thing anymore.Oh, and one last thing: even with all of that, if your hometown is anything like mine, you and your friends may find yourselves with a serious lack of hook-up options. Your perspectives may shift, and your standards may drop. Suddenly Gary-who-you-wouldn’t-even-go-to-prom-with seems like pretty stellar material. This isn’t so much an issue over Thanksgiving break (it’s only five days—calm down, people), but there’s no doubt that winter break can feel a little long. Alternatively, it’s you have someone specific in mind, and you’re pretty ready to make it happen. Or something might surprise you, in which case it’s a good idea to have a game plan. Consider this post some vacation-themed preparation. If there’s someone you’re eyeing back home, here’s a three-part guide to hometown hookups.NOTE: A lot of this may be specific to life in the suburbs and fail to reflect the experiences of many Brown students. This just happens to be the result of my personal background, and I'd like to apologize for any perspectives it fails to encompass.Part 1: Deciding whether you should hook up with Person of Interest (POI)Before you drink do anything, it’s good to think about whether it’s really a good idea to hook up with POI. Obviously, we can’t all have the best judgment all of the time. Decision-making is hard. With that in mind, here are some signs which might point to whether POI is a good idea or not.Red Flags (POI might be a bad idea…)

1. Back in high school, POI hit on you pretty heavily—while you were still dating your boyfriend (whom POI was supposedly friends with). Considering this little tidbit of information, POI may not be the most savory character.
2. POI invites you over to play Settlers of Catan. This is not the red flag. The red flag is that it turns out they do not even own the game (OR, while playing Settlers of Catan, POI always refuses to trade you brick even though YOU KNOW THEY NEED THE GODDAMN ORE).
3. POI is your best friend OR the romantic interest of your best friend. Even though you may think you can escape any awkwardness by going back to Brown, this is definitely not worth it. Things will get messy. Zombie-apocalypse-level messy.
4. You’ve been seeing someone at Brown and you really think it might be going somewhere (you just graduated from Ratty Date to Blue Room Date, and next week you might even hit up Thayer!). Hooking up with POI is going to make things infinitely more complicated.
5. POI seems to have gotten a bit of an ego since starting college. Don’t feed the monster.

Green Flags

1. None of the Red Flags have been exhibited.
2. You’ve seen at least one red flag, but to be honest, you don’t really care. In that case, more power to you. (Except for number 4. Seriously, that’s a bad idea.) But remember, it is only Thanksgiving—you’ll be back at Brown in, like, three days.
3. POI is semi-attractive and it’s been a while since you indulged.
4. POI always gives you a fair trade in Settlers of Catan.

Part 2: Making it happenNow comes the tricky part: there’s a pretty low chance you’re just going to run into POI over break given that A, you’re no longer on a college campus and B, you spend most of your time sitting at home in your PJs watching every Shonda Rhimes show ever made. Here are some helpful ways to capture POI:

1. Host a party or plan an outing. If you’re lucky, POI is already in your social circle. Maybe they’re in your hometown GroupMe, or you have a mutual friend. Either way, do some maneuvering: plan a party at your house or some other shenanigan, and invite a decent-sized group of people that happens to include POI.
2. Go on Tinder. Chances are, there aren’t a whole lot of people to sift through on suburban Tinder. A friend of mine once matched with this guy she’d had a huge crush-from-afar on in high school. They actually went on a date and hooked up afterwards.
3. Facebook message? If you know POI at all, you could always just shoot them a message. Bring up that time when your mutual friend did that hilarious thing. See where the conversation goes.

WARNING: It’s possible that if you do match with/hook up with crush-from-afar you may suffer serious disillusionment. Maybe crush-from-afar is a really bad kisser, or maybe the reason he never said anything in high school wasn’t because he was deep and brooding but because he actually didn’t have anything interesting to say.SECOND WARNING: Brace yourself to come across high school teachers/other people you really don’t want to see on Tinder while you’re frantically swiping to find POI. On that note, be very careful with your age preferences.Part 3: LogisticsOkay, so you’ve decided POI is a good idea. You’ve also both made it clear that it’s on. Just one last problem: you’re home. You don’t have the freedom of college, and even if you did, it’s possible you never took down the Avril Lavigne posters from your bedroom wall (oops) and you’d rather not have sex with Avril staring at you. It’s also possible that you have a ton of extended family visiting, and so you’ve been banished from your room and are currently sleeping on the kitchen floor. Given this lack privacy, you might need to get creative. If neither of your bedrooms are going to work, where do you hook up?

1. A classic: your car. Human beings invented the automobile for one reason, and it wasn’t to get from Point A to Point B more efficiently. Instead, it was for sexually-frustrated teenagers to be able to escape from their houses at night, drive to the nearest park, make out for a few minutes until some small-town police officer walked up to the window to tell them that it’s after sunset, so they can’t be there. If you decide to brave the high school related déjà vu, it’s best to select the most spacious vehicle. If you have a minivan, consider putting the seats down in the back and foregoing the front seat—it’s more spacious, and you’re less likely to inadvertently honk the car horn.
2. An unusual part of your own house. Do you have a garden shed, a garage, or a gross, musty basement that no one ever goes to? These may not be the most romantic options, but it’s also pretty unlikely you’ll be walked in on. And if you have one of those outside cellar doors, you can even sneak POI in and out of the house really easily! If hooking up in a garden shed, which may be the most optimal of the three (the basement really does not appeal, TBH), make sure all windows are covered! It’s also best to do this at a weird time of day or night, on the off-chance that a family member might be bustling around.
3. Your family friend’s house, for whom you are pet-sitting. Your family friend is away for the holiday, and has asked you to look after their cat. As you are refilling the feline’s food dish, you realize that this house is completely quiet. If you just texted POI…actually, please don’t do this. You’ll probably never be able to look at your family friend or their cat with a straight face again.

And with that, I send you forth into the world. Good luck over this and future breaks, readers!Images via, via, and via.