the problem with drunken hookups

My department went on that retreat I mentioned a while back, and that girl was my roommate. She wasn't a bad roommate; she's very courteous and such. I did find out why I landed up on her hierarchy of roommates: her boyfriend was to be out of town and thus would not attend, and she had a major falling out with her actual roommate whom she no longer talks to.

So that was gossip-worthy, but I didn't want to pry too much, so I refrained from asking too many questions. What was more gossip-worthy was what I did during the retreat, and let's see, it involved a guy and some alcohol.

The couple of weeks leading up to the retreat, I was in lab very late at night almost every night. There's a guy down the hall who tends to, in general, keep some mighty shifted hours in lab. As in he gets in around 11pm/noon and goes home around 1/2am. So staying late, I ran into him a lot, and we started talking a lot. He is a year above me, in my department, and was actually my TA for a class first year.

At some point after all this talking, I wondered to myself if he was perhaps interested. What really set me off was our conversation online after both of us got home from a St. Patrick's Day party where we ran into each other. He was talking about how his roommates were continuing the party by all hanging out, and they were making fun of him for not joining in and instead, typing at his computer. I thought, "interesting ... he's on his computer to talk to me instead of hanging more with his roommates. I wonder if ..."

I didn't think much of it, and kinda decided that the late night conversations in lab were probably just innocent flirting on both of our parts. I wasn't seriously interested, and some point last week, I actually decided that I don't really want anything with him, so I started to keep my distance so as to not send him leading signals and end up in an awkward situation if he were actually interested.

During the retreat, there are talks and presentations during the day, but at night all of the grad students congregate in each others' rooms to hang out, drink, and have a jolly good time. The first night, I sent no signals to him what-so-ever. In fact, I felt like I was sending him un-signals, if there were such a thing. The second night, I think I had a bit more to drink, as did he, which lowered both of our inhibitions, and upped his assertiveness.

To make a long story short, his roommate left for someone else's room, and I ended up spending the night in the TA's bed. This is problematic on many fronts. 1) Our department is small, and gossip travels fast, and my roommate knew I did not come back to my room that night. 2) I sent him signals of interest that I probably should not have because I had already decided I did not want anything with him. 3) I just had a drunken hookup. Me of all people. I never ever would have imagined myself doing anything of that nature.

I pretended like I was okay with everything, that it was no big deal, but I essentially bolted out of his room the next morning, being careful to plan the exit to coincide with a presentation so I can slip back to my room unnoticed by everyone else on the retreat.

The rest of the day, I started thinking hard. I remembered bits and pieces of our drunken conversation, and remembered him asking me if I were interested in him and telling me that he was in me and that he thought I was cute back when he was my TA. I didn't know what he wanted out of this and was a bit alarmed that he may try to pursue this. I wanted both of us to sorta forget about it, but knew that probably wasn't entirely possible, not to mention the awkwardness of his being in the lab two doors down from mine. Then I felt stupid for having done this in the first place, so the headache just blew up in my head.

In the end, by the time I went to bed last night, I decided that I do like him, and I was obviously interested enough to flirt back and to respond to his advances, even though the latter was when we were both pretty drunk. So, if he were to pursue something, I decided that I would give things a shot.

And pursue, he did. Or at least I thought (think). He IMed me after we got back from the retreat; he IMed me during the day today. He showed affection in front of other people, tried to spend time with me. So I thought he was trying to pursue something, or at least not in the camp to just ignore it and pretend it never happened. Or maybe he was just trying to be "not that asshole guy".

Tonight, we went to grab some food (late at night), and he asked me if I wanted to come over to his place to watch a movie. We watched something with his roommates, who one-by-one went to bed during the course of the movie. They're early-to-bed types, and the movie wasn't particularly interesting. After the movie, he hinted for me to stay and I purposefully didn't take the hint. Then I told him I should actually probably go home. He said "oh, okay." I then qualified the statement with "I'm pretty uneasy about everything that's happened, and I just want to take things slow." He said "yeah, that's totally fine." And then added, "Do you want me to give you a ride home? Actually, I should give you a ride home." And he drove me home.

On the drive back, he said "so I take it you're probably not one to usually have a drunken hookup?" I laughed and said no. He then said that he's not usually, but recently has had uh ... and ended with "well, I don't normally, but I'm not new to it." He still kissed me when I got out of the car, perhaps out of courtesy.

Ha, funny. So now I feel like the idiot, having over-analyzed his intentions to death. And upon deciding that okay, I can give this a shot if he pursues it, I find out that I think I was just another drunken hookup. I asked him if the drunken hookups are always with girls he knows previously, and he said "yeah, it's always one of those things where you go back and forth on maybe thinking the other person's interested, and then once alcohol is involving, it just helps to take care of that whole woo-ing process."

During the car ride, he also asked me when my last serious relationship was, and I told him that we broke up in Jan/Feb, to which he seemed very surprised and commented that "wow, that's really recent." His last serious relationship was 3.5 years ago, when he was still in college. However, his last relationship was early February, which is also recent. He followed up that conversation with the comment that there's generally been a mis-match of seriousness in his relationships since college, as in surprisingly, he's the serious one.

Anyway, now I have no idea what to make of this. This is the problem with drunken hookups. It's too fast with too many awkward moments afterwards and unclear boundaries. But most of all, I just feel so, so stupid for having let this happen.