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Reviewing Unhooked, Laura Sessions Stepp's new anti-hookup polemic for Slate, editor and poetess Meghan O'Rourke takes issue with the author's assertion that young women are being damaged by college one-night stands and should stick to baking. Fair enough! But was it really necessary for O'Rourke to bolster her argument by airing her own dirty college laundry?

I went to college in the early days of the "hookup" culture, as it is now called, and my recollection, through the haze of years, was that the whole point of hookups was that they were pleasurable—a little embarrassing, sometimes, but mostly, well, fun.

We couldn't help but wonder whether Meghan had memorialized any of these hazily-remembered hookups in verse. Luckily, at just that very moment, the UPS man arrived at our office with a big cardboard box marked "Meghan O'Rourke's juvenilia"! In it, we found this poem:

Guy from Suffering in 18th Century Literature Seminar,
come creeping into my pizzabox-scented dormroom,
past books and desks and blueberryimac,
past pockets emptied and coins picked from the floor;
come sweeping with the rainclouds down the river
through the brokenblack windows of my residence hall
and do me.
Later, I'll take out my whitepaper
and bluepen
And make up some compound words about your
veinyweiner.


Is There A Sex Crisis On College Campuses? [Slate]

Sleep [Poetry Magazine]