A Gentleman's Guide to Hooking Up

r u l e # 9

Rule #9 Be proud of your choices 

Being an adult is about being brave and being responsible for your behavior. It doesn't matter if you're a virgin or a sexpert. It's okay to wait, but it's perfectly okay to experience too.

It's not lame to want a serious relationship that leads to marriage and kids. It doesn't make you morally challenged if you want to keep it casual. It's great if you're a hopeless romantic who starts making up baby names after the first date, but if you want to stay unattached your whole life, that's cool too.

The most important thing is to be honest, be comfortable with who you are, and have fun!

......

As summer crossed the midpoint and started nearing the end, Jake went to Germany with Sean and Dylan. He had been looking forward to this trip for an entire year, and he was especially glad that for once they were all single. He was counting on his friends to be his wingmen and they could all bond over the marvelous wonder of casual sex.

Hooking up with fellow travelers was the best kind. It was hit and run, with no possibility of a future together.

What he didn't expect was that his buddies were both embarrassingly hung up on their exes. When they weren't writing sappy postcards or making daily calls, they were contented with hanging out in the hostel bar, chatting up people with the sole intention of making conversations. At the moment they were sitting across two other guys from Hong Kong, playing cards and laughing, and they sure didn't look like they were hitting on them.

Jake had to set out alone for the sacred mission of planting his seeds across the European soil. Dylan looked up at him from a distance and smirked, as if saying he wanted to live vicariously through him.

While Sean was getting dumped, Jake was getting laid. While Dylan was getting slapped around by his crazy ex, Jake was getting laid. Now that they were getting slayed over bridge, Jake still planned on getting laid.

His friends thought he'd got game and he wanted them to believe that. They didn't know Jessica rejected him again and he was secretly pissed off about it.

He hadn't seen her ever since she left his house that day. She called him before his departure and wished him a pleasant journey, in that obligated way he absolutely hated, like she thought it was the nice thing to do even though she didn't give a rat's ass about his trip. He asked her if she wanted anything from Germany but had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

She could get anything she wanted. She didn't need him.

What would Dylan do? He wouldn't back off, of course. He would keep pestering the girl until he got himself a restraining order. Sean would respect the girl's wishes and never bother her again, and frankly, he was more likely to be the one to say, "I'm sorry, I can't do this" instead of the other way around.

Jake was lost, confused, and this was unfamiliar territory. He didn't like to force people, but he wasn't one to let go, either, therefore he had to deal with it with the only way he knew how—

Distraction.

The first girl he picked couldn't speak English. He felt wrong to make out with her, so he ended up showing her all the pictures he had on his camera. The second girl was a knockout with that classic East-Central European look he found very attractive, but he decided against it at the last minute, simply because he forgot where she was from.

Was it Slovakia? Slovenia? It seemed very unethical to keep going when he couldn't remember such a basic detail.

He asked her if she wanted to hang out at the supermarket instead. He was malfunctioning. It was as if he was deliberately finding excuses not to have sex.