Column: What lies between the hookup and the marriage?

Dating at Duke" can be filed away with "kegs on the quad" and "an F in Intro to Jazz." In other words, it just doesn't happen.

Instead, in the extreme bipolar work-hard-play-hard fashion that Duke students are famous for (but which, in truth, ended with the Class of 1997), relationships at Duke fall into two extreme categories. On the far right, we have the Pat Buchanan of relationships: The Marriage. And on the far left, we have the Tree-(i.e. People)-huggers: The Hookup.

The reason? The Good Fraternity Theory. A guy in a decent fraternity can expect to get girls (often freshmen who have yet to realize that there are those who slip through the fratty cracks and whose best friend in high school had trig function buttons) who consider hooking up with a Delta Sig--just an example, not picking on you--resume-worthy. Triple that when date functions begin to loom around the corner. Because of that, all they have to do is contribute their slush money when they throw a party and then wait for their prey.

Two very good friends sat at Saladelia enjoying an early brunch last Saturday, discussing the very topic. Dan and Sidney did this sometimes, with him giving her guy advice and her giving him girl advice--even though Dan was more intoned with the feminine than the average guy and Sidney more intoned with the masculine (hookup-wise anyway; she certainly did not enjoy sports or dirt) than the average girl. Dan was explaining that he would be going through a hooking up drought for a while, because he wanted to avoid all possible roads leading to a Marriage, which, of course, warps otherwise fun people into reclusive 50-year-old couples.

That is perhaps the most mysterious part of the whole thing; because there is no dating at Duke, The Hookup leads to The Marriage, be dammed those who say the boy won't buy the cow. Even if he won't technically purchase his milk-provider with real money, he will put it on Flex.

In the real world, there is an expectation that after the third date, you might get a hookup. At Duke, there is the expectation that after the third hookup, you might get a date. Either that or you get the talk that there will be no date. Quite awkward.

One of Dan's fraternity brothers seemed to be avoiding this situation with a girl he had hooked up with twice at the beginning of the semester. The question hung in the air without being spoken of like the kid publicly urinating around the corner. Hooking up so regularly so soon screamed that Marriage could be the consequence, and so despite the fact that Greg eye-stalked said girl at parties, he was avoiding the third hookup like the plague.

But back to brunch. "So why don't you take them on a date then?" Sidney asked. "Wine them, dine them, and well," she cocked her eyebrow; Dan was an English major who could follow a simple rhyme. "Then it's like the real world, outside of the Duke box, and maybe you could just date them."

Sidney liked to call her repeated hookups "talking," which she thought was fair because they usually did involve a phone call or two. And if they involved a date function or a morning-after brunch, she liked to call them "dating." It made her feel better. That said, she dated or talked to about a dozen people her sophomore year before she experienced the other Duke relationship--the Marriage.

After about a month of regularly hooking up with Michael, he began to call Sidney his girlfriend. This was the second time she had donned this title while at college, but the first time she accepted it (the first lasted about two months before she discovered that one of the things she and Albert had in common was dating Kappa Sigs).

The first month or so of being Michael's "girlfriend" was much like dating in the real world. He took her to dinners (usually Cracker Barrel and Waffle House, though, which Sidney was not sure she defined as dinner) and they would occasionally go out to bars together. Almost like normal.

But that phase cannot persist long at Duke, and they were quickly catapulted into Marriage. They saw each other constantly, Sidney almost entirely ceased wearing makeup around Michael (which, trust me, is huge), and Michael introduced Sidney to a range of bodily noises she never even knew (or, trust me again, wanted to know) existed.

And all the hooking up that they had gotten out of the way that first month almost seemed to evaporate, as though they had depleted the well too soon.

But they had nothing on Sophie and Peter. They had gone from two of the most fun, social people ever to Henry David Thoreaus. When other people went to Myrtle, they went on family vacations; instead of exchanging flasks and sweaters for holidays, they bought out Tiffany's and Polo; when their friends went abroad, they attended the Duke in West Village program. When people bitch about their friends being in Marriages, this is why. Maybe it's better than The Hookup, but how much is that saying?

Whitney Beckett is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every other Friday.