The Hitchhiking Game (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

The story begins with a young couple, on the first day of their vacation, driving along the road in the young man’s sports car. Although they have been together for a year, the young woman is still shy around her boyfriend and is even embarrassed whenever she has to ask him to stop the car so she can go to the bathroom. The young man has had casual sexual relationships with many women, but likes this young woman because she seems to him to be “pure,” as compared to other women he’s encountered. The young woman wishes she were not so self-conscious about her body, and envies the kind of women who are more comfortable with their sexuality. She is especially jealous of the young man’s attentions to other women, because she feels that other women can offer him a type of seductiveness which she is incapable of. She fears that she will one day lose the young man to such a woman.

At a rest stop, she gets out of the car to go to the bathroom, and he makes a point of embarrassing her by asking where she is going. When she comes out, the young man pulls up at the side of the road to let her back in the car. Because the scenario resembles that of a stranger picking up a hitchhiker along the road, they both spontaneously pretend that this is the case. As they ride along, they continue to act out this “game” of role-playing, whereby she pretends to be the hitchhiker who has gotten into the car of a strange man in order to seduce him. By taking on this “role,” the young woman begins to behave in overtly sexual ways which are in stark contrast to her usual self-conscious, embarrassed behavior. The young man, in turn, takes on the role of the stranger who has picked up this hitchhiker with the intention of seducing her. This role is easy for him to assume, for he has in fact had many such relations with women.

While it begins lightheartedly, the “game” begins to have an affect on the reality of how the young man and the young woman feel about each other. For the young woman, it is a liberating experience that, under the cover of her “role” as seductive woman, she is able to shed her sexual inhibitions and express her sexuality more freely. She also finds that her jealousy of other women slips away, since she feels that she is finally giving her boyfriend what she had always feared he could only get from other women: “lightheartedness, shame-lessness, and dissoluteness.” The young man, on the other hand, begins to see the young woman in a different light. When he sees how naturally she seems to be able to take on this role of seductive woman, he begins to think that maybe she is not the “pure” girl he had perceived. He thus becomes jealous at the thought of her behaving seductively toward men other than himself. Furthermore, he begins to lose respect for her, as he imagines that she is just like all of the other women with whom he has had casual sexual relationships.

At a crossroads, the young man spontaneously decides to take a road in another direction than that which they had originally planned. They end up at a hotel, where they check in and have dinner. During dinner, she becomes increasingly engaged in her “role” as seductive woman, thinking that she is at last able to please him the way other women have. He, on the other hand, begins to hate her for behaving like other women, and begins to treat her with disrespect. He even goes so far as to call her a “whore.” At the same time, however, the more he finds himself repulsed by her as a person, the more he finds himself sexually attracted to her. In their hotel room that night, he treats her callously and disrespectfully, refusing to kiss her and speaking to her coldly and heartlessly. By the time she realizes that he now truly sees her, it is too late. She bursts into tears, pleading with him to see her as the same young woman he had loved and treated with respect. But, once having seen her as a sexual woman, he hates her, and dreads the next 13 days of their vacation together.