"Salut."
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.
Where's the "man's" pride? If I was 38 and at my parent's house(unless I was a caretaker), I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror.
Eventually, I decided to pack it in so I could head to another bar to meet some girls, and he asked if he could tag along. I was OK with that, and on the way, he starts this sobbing jag about how his wife left him and took the kids, how he lived with his parents and how his father hated him and didn't understand him, and how he needed to go back to rehab. The guy was in his early 50s! I tried to drop him at a rehab center, but they wouldn't take him because of his history of bad checks to them (which was how he paid for his rounds at the bar), so I found whatever street I thought he mumbled he lived on, and kicked him out of the car.
And to think, all he had to do to meet some sweet young things was to hold it together for a few hours.
BTW - Did I mention that he didn't even have a motorcycle, much less a scooter?
Like I said - I just wanted to hit somebody, him or his mommy.
I agree with you about the value of a liberal arts education. Before the engineers start woofing about the humanities and boasting about the narrowness of their training, however, we should acknowledge the current problem in the liberal arts. As we all know, the universities have largely abandoned the canon and allowed liberal arts degrees to collapse into mush. This is pushed along by politicized faculty peddling various toxic agendas. I suppose it is still possible at most decent universities for a careful and disciplined student to get a solid liberal arts education, but the institution won't help much. Caveat emptor.
Most I think have succeeded in convincing themselves it's "temporary", only until they save more money, get a better job, pay off some debt, get married etc.
Plus, it's easier to drive a cool car and hang out at the club if you don't have to pay rent. You get to keep more of your Gas n' Sip paycheck.
Like you, I can't imagine a better way to wake up every morning feeling like a "looser" [FR Spellomatic /ON/] than to live with your parents after high schoo/college/trade skool whatever.
"Salut."
I agree. It's really pretty hard to blame the boys for any of this kind of thing. ;-)
I see your point. They're just "adapted."
I remember a young man walking me home from the tastee freeze, one summer night in my senior year of high school. We had been on several dates before that, and I know that he really liked me. He made his best move, I politely refused, but he didn't just move on to some other girl.
The following morning he was at my parents home bright eyed and bushy tailed asking me if I wanted a ride to Church. He cared for me. And I don't think the situation I just described was all that unusual. A lot of guys who I grew up with were made of that kind of stuff.
But I don't think that's a common ocurrence today. I hope I'm wrong, I just don't think I am.
I was 14 during the first Reagan Administration. The only difference is that there were fewer virgins in my class.
It's not possible that someone as delightful as you could be rude. Your father's heart must be swelled with pride knowing he has raised such a fine young person.
I am 47 years old and have never been married, and sometimes I feel like I've missed a lot in not having children of my own. Especially when I encounter a child or young adult such as yourself.
You have convinced me that I'm wrong in my speculation concerning your generation, and I'm very happy to be wrong about that.
Thank you so much for taking the time to communicate with me, and don't forget to give your father a great, big hug because he seems like a really good Dad.
All the best to you and your family,
AlbionGirl
Impossible, really. : )
Yes, this is one of those areas where science and religion both lead to the same inescapable conclusion. It's simply a case of choice/free will (for the girls) versus the "biological imperative" (for the boys).
So, of course, these adolescent boys are like sitting ducks.
I'm going to be spending some time today with some guys who, like me, went through all this. Maybe I can get some of them to at least try to talk about some of it. Pretty painful stuff, you know. ;-)
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