To Hook Up, Be Hooked Up, and Hook Up With

Young folk seem to love to hook-up. They certainly use the phrase often, perhaps more often than they perform the act. Weekly? Perhaps bi-monthly. Well, it’s often enough that the term describing the act merits discussion.

Years ago, when nascent teenage breasts were the objects of my desire, hooking-up meant kissing, or an occasional booby caress. We pubescent pimple-Toms didn’t use the word “kiss” just as we couldn’t use the word “beautiful.” Too sexually squeamish to kiss beautiful women, we hooked-up with hot girls—or, so we dreamed.

Twenty-year-olds use the phrase more arrogantly. Arrogantly, because its meaning has become so vague, assuming cool and casual airs for an act which is usually anything but.

“Yeah, we hooked up,” he says, in an impressive baritone. The listener’s eyebrows rise: how and where, which base, was it a homer? But the listener keeps quiet, smiling approvingly.

We’ve moved past open use of the base system, but we still squirm at lost words like “kiss,” “romance,” and “beauty.”

That’s because romance has become linguistically and socially taboo, or, worse, ridiculous. It’s permissible to mention you hooked-up with so-and-so last night, but not that you “made love.”

Not that we’d exhibit truly bad taste when describing a sexual encounter. English has its share of vulgar verbs with the given meaning (to bone, to bang, to nail, to screw), none of which are respectful toward women. Male and female Columbians rightly avoid this crass vocabulary when recounting with whom they’ve done it. (The meaning of it is, at minimum, French kissing; holding hands didn’t make the cut in middle school.) We’ve opted instead for a flexible phrase—vague, mildly graphic, but decidedly technical. For our purposes, “hooking-up” is superior to “boning,” “banging,” and “nailing” because it objectifies both parties.

It is a triumph of gender equality. No reputable Jane would jump or bone Bradley, but any honeysuckle Henrietta would hook up with Amir.

And note the fabulously Anglo preposition.

“Oh, Catherine Earnshaw, the damsel up with whom I dreamt to hook, may our souls be bound in death, be our hooks not upped in life!” Heathcliff might have said.
The hook metaphor seems simple enough. As far back as 1893, the OED quotes, “A man trying to hook a well-off widow.” Never mind that “to hook” until recently could mean “to solicit a prostitute.” Hooking-up today is strictly upper-middle class, free, and consensual: ask first! Then ask Alice.

The preposition “up” is reminiscent of television sets more than brothels. This is the word choice of our older siblings, the Nintendo-bred, who gave us the phrase. Watch out for terminology to shift in the coming decade, as internet babies learn to link-up, connect, or get-access. Why didn’t Heathcliff burn Catherine’s coal, or imitate her penmanship?

Americans come up with labels for everything, especially in the erotic sphere. (We were “friends with benefits” ever since first “eye contact.”) Homegrown nouns for the act of sex don’t even exist in most European languages (like-minded verbs are in abundance), leading many to borrow the English. In French, Russian, and Modern Greek, there’s no equivalent for “hooking-up,” though the behavior exists overseas. The Brits have a roughly equivalent term in “to pull,” which tends to imply a club scene.

Colonials are more flexible. “Hooking-up” can happen anywhere anonymously enough to ensure affected randomness, be it a bar, club, or party. The accomplice may indeed be randomly selected, but the hook-up itself (partner TBD) has usually been the objective since the first downed shot. Never mind that you’re treating what’s-his-or-her-name as an object. The objectification is mutual, thus unquestionably okay.

Parenthetically, to hook-up can also mean “to handcuff.”

So are we the hooks, or are our body parts? Well, better to avoid the old body-versus-soul territory. Introspection doesn’t seem to suit us. Hooking-up does, however, along with the term’s versatility: hook-up culture, hook-up strategy, hook-up Facebook quest.

At best, the action, along with its name, is straightforward and practical. Some would say honest and free. At worst, it’s ... not Heathcliff. Nor Catherine, for that matter.
“Heathcliff, how dare you attempt stealing third on a catcher like me?”

Soon she’ll die of a broken heart, while Heathcliff buys yet another low-grade feminist a drink.

Bedroom fun may not have changed much since the rise of the verb “to hook-up,” but the parastructure surrounding it has. Contempt of poetry is the tyranny of the day, though, as “to hook-up” proves, metaphors have survived.

Fishing rods in arms, aspiring hookers-up lay their lines in the sexual sea—usually 1020. Once the trout’s been hooked, expect all the gasping slime of a fishy demise. They say that orgasm is a mini-death, but anyone who’s seen a fish choke knows that mini-deaths don’t happen, even to lowly salamanders.

Sex is procreation, making love is communication. What’s hooking-up?

Alexi Shaw is a Columbia College senior majoring in Russian literature. Wordpecking runs alternate Thursdays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com">Opinion@columbiaspectator.com