THE ART OF HANGING OUT

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If there is one social activity that characterizes Generation Y, it must be 'hanging out'. Gatherings of friends occur - in cafe's, in bars, in dirty apartments - to partake in this 'hanging out' business. The term is thrown about more loosely than a gymnast on a twitchy horse. It usually involves discussing other friends, pretentious literature and/or films, sport (I guess), and sex, of course. All this is done with a coffee or whisky in hand, and a general feeling of recklessness and eternal youth. There are no rules and very little social etiquette is displayed. But what happens when hanging out with friends turns into hanging out with just one other person with whom you share a mutual attraction? The question 'do you want to hang out sometime?' is one riddled with murky undertones and vague hopes of some kind of romantic connection. Will it end up.....

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?

In my humble view, asking someone of the opposite sex to 'hang out' generally means one of three things:

(a) Do you want to get to know each other while we talk about our mutual friends, throw the occasional flirtatious glance at each other, and maintain a pressure cooker like sexual tension that simmers away and keeps us both amused? (Rare. I think this only happens in American teen dramas)

(b) Go on dates at places like Mamasita and Izakaya Den, slowly imagining what our house in Fitzroy will look like when I ask you to move in? (Unicorn status rare)

(c) Do the horizontal boogie at sporadic intervals and only speak when we hang out with a bunch of mutual friends? (occurs often, leads nowhere except momentary thrill and then confusion)

It's all very nice to be asked to 'hang out' with someone else. It surely means that you get along and both have an interest in getting to know each other better (in one way or another). But it can be mighty confusing too. Just as hanging out with your friends holds no particular rules or stipulations (except maybe that you treat 'em nice - and hey, sometimes they don't even adhere to that), 'hanging out' with your tall drink of water leaves a multitude of gaping holes of doubt over the nature of the relationship. We're all bumbling through our twenties, wondering how to navigate through a maze of hipster hotties and sweet geeks, who seem nice at first but then you find out they're ditching you for Jessica Hart. It's damned gap-toothed victory, and you're left in the cold depths of an empty bed reading Sartre. 

There need to be ground rules, at least. 'Are you exclusive' being the most important one to cover. But then there's the wondering if he/she will contact you, or should you contact them? The frequency of the hang outs, the nature of them, and will you indulge in romantic activity like holding hands? Obviously it's all circumstantial, but without a little structure, your casual 'hang out' buddy will fall away like tender meat off the bone. And it'll feel just about as painful as that sounds too.

I'm not a big believer in romantically 'hanging out'. In my experience it never works. It takes a special kind of person to be able to live totally in the moment and float on top of time rather than IN it. The chance of two of those types of people coming together in some kind of cosmic collision is very slim. By nature, we're all going forward, moving onwards, looking for the next thrill. Hang out with your friends, and leave romance for something more real than coffee and small talk. 

Right?