How to Have a Delightfully Messy (And Safe) Hometown Hookup This Holiday

Last December, while home for the holidays, I shared an incredibly romantic evening with a man in the backseat of a car, Beatles XM blasting on the stereo, and then drove back to my family home, Texas wind whipping through my hair on the highway, satisfied in the way one can only be after a successful hometown holiday hookup. It was glorious and perfect; due to the earlier events of the night, a literal boot-knocking (we were both wearing cowboy boots). 

My heart aches, knowing that the conditions of this year make it impossible to responsibly or ethically recreate this pristine vibe. I can’t think of a backseat that allows for social distancing, or of any possible justification for traveling home and going out. It’s yet another bummer in a year of bummers. But just as we’ve been flexible and made accommodations for digital family gatherings, we can do the same for the decently messy hometown hookup. With a little bit of creativity and effort put into the simulation, no one has to miss out on the joys and pitfalls of this cherished holiday tradition. 

The first major issue with scouting out a hometown hookup from afar is that everyone is scattered around. All the Hot Drews and Kendras and Alexes are probably not living in your hometown full time (though maybe some are, in which case, your journey is about to get way easier), but living in their respective adult cities, where they are hopefully staying put throughout the next several months.  

This is not a dead end. All you have to do is meet them where they’re at: Online. This is going to take some amount of getting over yourself, because, if you graduated from high school before 2012, this first step may involve sending a Facebook message (finding them on Instagram would maybe be less embarrassing; LinkedIn should be an absolute last resort). Think of this as part of the experience. Is it not also a little embarrassing to approach the former varsity point guard in the grocery store, as he’s thumbing a can of condensed milk? The venue this year is just a little different. 

Of course if all this searching reveals that—in some Hallmark movie-esque twist—several of your classmates have moved back home recently, skip all those steps and simply change your dating app locations to your hometown, and start swiping. 

Use one of the major pitfalls of the pandemic to your advantage here: Everyone is very bored and alone. Unlike reaching out to strangers to date/hook up with from a distance (which is also extremely possible right now!), messaging someone you once knew should be pretty easy, in that you have a slew of things you can reasonably ask them about to start a conversation. 

Specificity is king here. Avoid huge, vague, unanswerable (and, frankly, deeply transparent) questions like, “haha hey how you been since 2007?” There is no fun way to answer that question. Instead, send them an old photo. An embarrassing tagged photo from high school on Facebook is easiest, but since we’re working with limited supplies here, get creative. If there are no extant photos of the two of you available, any image of a shared memory, a mutual friend, an event you were both at, etc. will do.

If the photo thing will absolutely not work for you or isn’t your style, any shared memory is fine here. Is this someone you run into at the hometown bar on December 23? Bring up the weird fact that none of you will be drunkenly yelling about English class around the pool tables this year. Did they play a sport in school that you occasionally watched? Who doesn’t love to reminiscence about the ol’ glory days! It’s fine! Bring it up! What we’re looking for here is a simple conversation starter, or, more transparently, an excuse to DM slide. Plus, sharing in nostalgia is inherently intimate, which is the vibe we are headed toward. 

As Archie Bongiovanni previously wrote for VICE, once you’ve got a conversation rolling and are in a good cadence, move things to a different platform. Ideally, as Bongiovanni recommends, move things on over to Snapchat, which is “a great medium between texting and a FaceTime date.” Snapchat also allows you to start sharing more and more of your mundane (but, somehow, also very glamorous and mysterious) indoor life, and hear each other’s voices. 

As Bongiovanni also recommended in VICE, Snapchat is an incredible app for facilitating actually good games of Truth or Dare, a game that all former high schoolers will know as gamified flirting for the slightly shy and awkward. (Bongiovanni has a list of really great Truth or Dare starters here, if you need some inspiration.) Some additional, hometown hookup-inspired prompts:

• Truth: What really happened the night [insert person’s] party got busted/the night after prom/etc.?
• Dare: Send a Snap of you wearing our senior class T-shirt.
• Truth: Who did you have unrequited crushes on in school? 
• Dare: Collab with me on a Spotify playlist of perfect car makeout songs. 
• Truth: Did you ever hook up with someone on school grounds?

You get the gist! 

This inevitably involves a bit of dirty talk, which we have an extensive and great guide on. No matter how well-versed you are in sexting, here is the key thing to keep in mind: Something about messaging someone who knew you when you had braces and didn’t yet know about skincare is inherently thrilling. Seeing an old crush’s name pop up carries the same jolt now—especially in the thrilless landscape of the pandemic—as it did over AIM. Once you get into the swing of things, you’re likely to find this is less awkward than you expected, and just as fun and easy as flirting in person at the hometown bar. Have fun with it!

As Bongiovanni wrote, it’s usually easy to tell when the conversation hits the point of sexting, but if you’re unsure if it’s on the table, just ask! Remember, you aren’t going home this year, so there will be no weird encounter in the produce aisle when you bump into Carlos from AP econ, who has now rejected you not once, but two times. Not that there’s anything necessarily embarrassing about rejection; it happens to everyone, all the time. 

Since we are on Snapchat (yes?), use the app to zhujh things up a bit. Bongiovanni writes that, as a society, we’ve moved beyond blurry hole and genital close-ups. Use Snap to send short videos of your hand in motion, or send a black screen with just sound of panting and/or moaning. 

Or, if you prefer the fittingly TBT-vibe of talking on the phone, let that game of Truth or Dare or whatever dwindle into phone sex. As Penda N’diaye previously wrote for VICE, a good way to ease the transition between talking about hooking up in the school parking to actual phone sex is to ask a simple question like, “Can I tell you some hot things I’ve been thinking about and hear what you’ve been thinking about, too?” This ensures consent, and pretty neatly clears the runway for dirty talk and all that comes with it. Again, all of this and more is thoroughly detailed in this guide. 

From there… Uhh, have fun with it! A major point of joy behind the hometown hookup is the fleetingness of it. This isn’t where you live anymore, you’re only passing through, and you can pretend to be whatever glamorous and cool version of yourself you want to be. I can’t tell you how to recreate the feeling of hometown wind in your hair as you air out the Corolla on the way back to your childhood bedroom, but the rest? Is all within your socially distanced reach. 

Follow Hannah Smothers on Twitter.