Here’s a hypothetical situation for you: you’re at a party. Film party, theater party, it doesn’t matter. A party is a party. You’ve pregamed this party. Heavily. Perhaps you’re six, seven shots into the night. A member of the opposite sex approaches you. They have no missing appendages, no significant-other in immediate sight and no noticeable baldness. Do you:
a. Engage them in conversation.
b. Engage them in a political debate.
c. Engage them in a rousing game of tonsil hockey.
If you answered C, then you, my friend, are a serial kisser. Alcohol is not a known libido-booster, but it does lower inhibitions to a level that is somewhat inappropriate in most situations. Hooking up at parties is (almost) inevitable for the regular drinker. Sometimes it’s funny, most of the time it’s awkward, and it almost never blossoms into a meaningful relationship.
But that’s the first step of enjoying a drunken hookup: recognizing it for what it really is. It’s mostly meaningless sex as the result of shared horniness. It only gets messy when one attaches meaning to something the other person may or may not even remember the next day. As one who falls in and out of crove (more than a crush, less than a love = crove) daily, I have fallen into that trap many a time in my serial kisser career. It sounds very Pretty Woman — but seriously, don’t get attached. At the very least, get attached, but be able to let go when it crosses over from serious hook-up realm into hilarious story realm.
That is not to say that serial kissers are prostitutes. On the contrary: Hooking up at parties does not a skank-whore make. What you do when you’re drunk is pretty much a magnification of what you think about doing when you’re sober. Therefore, when you do the drunk make-out thing, it’s just because you want to make out when you’re sober. In other words, being drunk is not an excuse, it’s a tool.
You are still accountable for what you do drunk, but there is no reason to be embarrassed by it. So you made out with an amputee. So what? You made that guy/girl’s day. A drunken hook-up should be respected as a badge of honor, not reviled as a bag of garbage. Anyone who gives you shit for drunken hook-ups is probably just mad that you have more skillz drunk than they have sober.
Thus, I am suggesting a revolution. Hook up with people when you’re drunk. Who cares? Maybe avoid doing anything more than make out until you have your bearings about you. As much as I advocate the drunken hook-up, you have to remember that you will not be drunk when you wake up in the morning. And if there is a stranger next to you when that happens, there is a high probability for awkward conversation and a lack of eye contact. But as long as you’re herpes-free, there’s hardly any harm in swapping a little spit here and there.
You can even make a game out of it if you really want to. One of my personal favorite party games is creating a relationship for one night. Get a friend that you’re comfortable making out with, then go to the party and make out with them everywhere. When asked, answer that yes, yes they are your significant other and yes, you are very happy together. This is fun too because when someone else catches your fancy, you can stage a messy break-up and then retire into the arms of that cute amputee in the corner. Or, the arm of that cute amputee in the corner.