Keepin’ it casual

About six beers into his night, Jeff got up the courage to talk to the cute girl he’d had his eye on from across the bar. It was a busy Saturday night at LaSalles, and she was standing out on the patio with a few girlfriends. They were drinking girly-looking drinks and laughing, bouncing to the music.

“She was hot, and I thought, hey, it’s late, we’ve been drinking—maybe I have a chance,” said Jeff, a junior at Chico State. He made his way over to the girls. He offered to buy the cute girl a shot. He acted as charming as possible, and when she flirted back—and took him up on his offer—that chance turned into a true possibility.

“I don’t usually go out looking for sex, but once I’ve had a few [drinks], and when there are hot girls in short skirts all around, I kind of can’t help myself,” Jeff said. “It’s worth a shot—actually, more often than not, I’d find a girl to go home with me.”

Jeff has a girlfriend now, which is why he didn’t want his last name printed. But last fall, before he met his special lady, he was quite the stud. He estimates he had six or seven one-night stands that semester alone. While he’s seen a couple of them since, it was strictly a one-time thing.

“Girls get clingy if you make it a regular thing,” he explained.

For those who are wondering, yes, he got lucky that night.

“She was pretty wild,” he said. “She had a pool at her apartment complex, and it was like 2, a little after 2 in the morning, and she just started taking her clothes off. We ended up doing it in the pool and on the deck—I’m surprised no one called the cops!”

After getting dressed, he bade her farewell. “I got her number, but I’m a dick and never called,” he said. He feels bad about leaving girls like that after such a steamy encounter, but once the alcohol and horniness wear off, he doesn’t know what to say, so he chooses not to say anything at all.

“I figure, we both had fun, why ruin a good thing with weirdness?” he said.

Jeff’s story isn’t all that surprising. After all, he’s a guy. But one-night stands are surprisingly common, for women as well as men. In fact, LiveScience.com, in a 2008 study, found that nearly half of the people polled had had a one-night stand. What that poll also found was that men and women want something different from a one-night stand—men want sex, while women often want to feel wanted.

“Holly,” a 27-year-old office manager who moved to Chico in 2003, agrees with that finding.

“It beats the hell out of being lonely,” she said of one-night stands. “I got out of a long relationship about a year and a half ago. I’m not ready to jump into anything right now, but sometimes I need that human connection, to feel sexy and desired, but without the strings.”

Unlike Jeff, Holly rarely goes home with a complete stranger, saying that, “As a woman, you have to be careful. A guy could look like a sweetheart and turn out to be a psycho rapist.” She relies instead on mutual friends or at least meets a guy a few times before taking the plunge.

“The last one-night stand I had was with a guy I’d seen at a few parties,” she said. “We’d talked, and flirted, and finally I said, ‘Screw it,’ and went home with him.”

The sex, she said, was “totally hot. Passionate even.”

It does help, she added, that there was alcohol involved. As for the morning after, it’s nice if the guy spends the night or if he invites her to stay at his place. “That way it doesn’t feel so dirty, like you’re being used. I try to keep in mind, though, that I’m using the guy just as much as he’s using me. I have needs too, you know.

“I’m not looking for a relationship when I go home with you from the bar,” she added. “But I know that’s what guys are afraid of, so I try not to get too down on myself when a guy doesn’t call.”

When asked for advice for their fellow Chicoans when it comes to casual sex, Jeff and Holly acknowledged that there are risks involved.

“Don’t trust that a girl’s on the pill—better safe than sorry,” Jeff said.

Holly’s answer: “Scope the guy out first—what do his friends look like? Seriously, girls, have fun—but be safe. It’s much harder to say no once you’re in his apartment alone.”