Missing an Old Hookup? Give Yourself the Ick.
A few weeks ago, I watched a friend scroll Instagram until she settled on a low-gradient image. She stared intently at the photo, eyes wide, one hand over her mouth. “What is it?!” I asked. She passed me the phone. My hand, too, went immediately to my mouth.
The image was her ex at a family island reunion. Each person is swaddled in blindingly neon Lilly Pulitzer. One wears a Bumpit. All of their smiles show both the dental work and smugness of WASPy Connecticut finance folk. To top it off, the ex in question made the caption a joke about speaking to a server in the wrong language.
“Oh thank God,” my friend said with relief. “I’ve given myself The Ick.”
I only found out about The Ick terminology last summer, during an all-consuming Love Island binge where I became obsessed with British slang. Contestants would find themselves completely turned off by partners with whom they’d been happily coupled up. It always seemed sudden, this ultimate cringe feeling. As Leanne said in the villa: “I don’t want him to touch me, I don’t want him to kiss me, I just don’t want to be around the boy.” That’s The Ick.
While the phrase was new to me, the phenomenon certainly was not. I caught The Ick after a fling told me to “name five songs” if I REALLY liked Sylvan Esso. I caught it when a date told me his…