In the spring of my junior year of college, I felt a sudden, abrupt (but not wholly unwanted) urge to start hooking up again. Keep in mind, at this point, my only experience with a “hookup” was a poorly-executed car sex incident in the parking lot of my dorm with a classmate the night before a biopsychology exam. It was awkward, and the memory of it often makes me cringe. And looking back, it might have been a cause for my 3 years of celibacy.
But I wanted that experience again. A sexual encounter with someone, preferably someone I knew very little about.
Luckily for me, the sudden resurgence of my sex drive coincided with a week in which I planned to do quite a bit of socializing: my 21st birthday.
The night before I turned 21, I went out just before midnight with two of my friends. We stopped for a little pre-birthday dessert, and I had my “first sip of alcohol” at the stroke of midnight. We moved on to a carnival-themed bar, and the first thing I saw when I walked in (carnival items aside), was an excruciatingly familiar face. He was seated in a booth with a group of friends, and we made instant eye contact. I went through my mental list of men I knew from my classes: “*Not Nick from personality theory… definitely not Jack from jazz band..*.”