Posted on 05/13/2003 8:19:00 AM PDT by Mister Magoo
Naked City
Covering The Bases
Some shockingly savvy private-school girls on the sexual politics of hooking up, getting and giving pleasure, and parents who are too hip.
By Amy Sohn
Nell and Cara are 14-year-old freshmen at a private Manhattan high school, and as I sit down for coffee with them, I am chagrined to find we are wearing exactly the same brands. “Is your watch Red Monkey?” asks Cara, who has a goofy smile and silky brown hair, grabbing my wrist. “So’s mine!” She raises her arm next to mine like we’re Wonder Twins. I notice that Cara’s best friend, Nell, is dressed in terry Juicy Couture sweats; my V-neck is Juicy, too.
“Are you guys into fashion?” I ask.
“Not really,” says Nell, a pixieish blonde with a round face and red cheeks. “There was this article in W about these Upper East Side girls who are horrible obnoxious adults in training and accessorize with Gucci mules. But everyone at our school wears Pumas.”
“I do have one friend who wore Christian Dior couture to a bat mitzvah,” Cara says.
We’re in a café on Lexington Avenue in the Eighties, and over hot chocolates (them) and cappuccino (me), the talk quickly moves from clothing to their other favorite topic, boys. Although they’ve both “hooked up,” they’re both virgins, and their concerns tend more toward “Why won’t my mom let me go on Acutane?” than “What if I get AIDS?” In fact, their heads are screwed on so firmly that they believe the media gives teens no credit for being intelligent, hardworking, and even ethical. If I’d known girls like this when I was in high school, I’d never have wound up a sex columnist.
“So is there any such thing as dating at your school?” I ask, because there wasn’t at the high school I went to a stone’s throw from theirs.
“That is not a word in my vocabulary,” says Cara. “We hang out in groups, and sometimes hookups happen, but you only go out one-on-one if you’re in a serious relationship.”
“What’s hooking up?”
“Anything except for actual coitus,” says Nell.
“What are the bases? I’ve heard they’ve changed.”
Cara lays it out for me. “First base is kissing, second base is up the shirt, sloppy second is mouth to boob, third is fingering or hand job, and sloppy third is oral.”
“So a home run’s still . . . ”
“Yep.” She nods. I’m happy to hear there’s no new fifth base, like “entering the dugout.” When I ask them about their own slugging percentages, they say they’ve gone to sloppy second and hooked up with only a handful of guys. I wipe my brow, relieved, until they tell me they once hooked up with the same guy, the same night, which made it sloppy-second sloppy seconds.
“And are girls who go far considered slutty?” I ask.
“That girl’s a slut!” cries Cara, pointing out the window at a prim-looking girl in a blue knee-length skirt across the street.
“She’s new this year,” Nell explains. “She moved from England. She gave a guy head in the bathroom and the library and the boiler room. Two students walked in on them.”
“We don’t have high esteem for her,” Cara says. As though reading my thoughts, she adds, “If you don’t like a girl and she happens to be promiscuous, you can use the term slut as an insult.” I nod, understanding all too well. Guys never call girls sluts; only girls do. To a boy, after all, a slut is a gift from God.
“How many of your friends have lost their virginity?” I ask.
“Only two people in our grade have had sex,” Nell says. “And they’re both boys. Our grade is extraordinarily prudish. There’s much more sex at all-guys schools. At ours, boys and girls are friends, since we’ve known each other forever.”
“Our friends hook up with kids from other schools,” Cara explains, “or in other grades. That’s because guys see us first thing in the morning, when we look like complete crap. They think girls from single-sex schools are so hot—but that’s because they only see those girls when they’re dressed up!”
Hookups usually happen at no-alcohol teen nights at Upper West Side nightclubs like Crane and Cream. “There are a lot of dirty boys there,” says Cara, “who will prey on girls.”
They also hook up in kids’ rooms when parents are there but unaware. “At our friend Maddy’s birthday, we did some crazy stuff,” Nell says. “Her mom was home, but she had no idea. We wanted ice cream, so we asked the guys to go out and get it, and they said, ‘You have to do something for us.’ They came back with whipped cream, and we turned around and put it on our nipples. They asked us to give them lap dances, but we wouldn’t. Later on, when we were dressed, Maddy’s mom came in and asked, ‘Does anyone want cookies?’ ”
Cara’s and Nell’s own parents are a little savvier about sex and drugs, because they’re honest with them.
“My mom fancies herself very hep to the jive,” Cara says. “She went to private school too, hung out at Studio 54, and told me she did drugs. I thought it was bizarre for her to tell me that and then say ‘Don’t drink. Don’t smoke pot.’ ”
Nell’s mom is up-front about sex, Nell says, but clueless as to what actually goes on. “My mom asked if I had ever given head before, and I said no. She said, ‘Well, I just want to let you know you can get aids from it. You have to use a condom.’ I said, ‘Nobody actually uses a condom for that.’ Teenagers think about the here and now.”
Of course, there’s an upside to all the parent-child communication. Two years ago, Cara’s mom bought her Deal With It, gURL.com’s growing-up guide for teen girls, and Nell and Cara learned how to masturbate. “We did our research,” says Nell.
But as for translating their self-knowledge into hookups with boys, they’re not in any rush. “I don’t feel a guy would do a very good job on me,” says Nell. “I’m much better off doing it myself. Besides, guys underestimate how horny girls are. They don’t think a girl would ever want that.”
“They just don’t admit it,” Cara says. “I feel like they’re so far behind us, not in terms of what we’re doing, but what we know.” I smile sympathetically, and for a moment I forget I’m with 14-year-olds.
The only thing which comes close is sports, but not everyone can do that - some people are simply uncoordinated - so the vocational route gives them something meaningful to do if they start an early family.
Hell, if it were up to me, they'd shut down most of the liberal arts programs at colleges, too - leaving business, math, hard science, engineering, medicine and law - all as undergraduate courses. It'll never happen that way, but it would make a ton of sense.
You have hit the nail directly on the head.
However, the trend is continuing: Drinking ages have been raised to 21. Drivers licenses are held back 'till 17. Marriage ages in many states has been pushed back. Furthermore, 14 and 15 yr olds have been handed a world of sophistication, but are expected to tread water until they reach a legal age or accomplish a certain academic level.
On another front, this man made construct is also a result of parents who are unable to let go of their "babies". The same parents that do everything but teach their children to be self capable and self responsible.
I know. I was going to go back and see if it had "Carrie Bradshaw" in the byline.
LOL...language recycling - you gotta love it. (Or else this kid is going to be playing gigs in about two years. She sounds like me!)
I just wonder if there are any perjoratives to describe the boys. ; )
But seriously, are there? (I'm not asking 'cause I want to use them. I'm just asking 'cause I can't think of one.) Most people who read this will probably think the girls are "sluts", but they'll be "concerned" about the boys, I'm guessing.
At least, not with their husbands...
Right now they crave attention so they please the boys.
Don't believe me? Reread their quotes. Whether they want affirmation or ice cream, sex is just a tool to manipulate the boys.
Bingo.
They may be what we used to call, "Technical Virgins", but they aren't virgins. Not if they get as far as third base, and there are two other bases after that.
A big mistake. If you look at our founding fathers, most of them got a classical liberal arts program. They learned a couple of foreign languages, usually from either Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and then read numerous philosophers and the Scriptures in their original languages. They also studied math, science, etc.
While technical and professional studies are important to learn how to earn a living in the world, the liberal arts teach you how to ethically apply what you've learned. The first without the second creates amoral monsters.
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