Hey Kids, Have Lots of Sex -- It's What Your Parents Did at Your Age

By Jeff Schult, AlterNet
Posted on June 13, 2009, Printed on December 19, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140598/

Yesterday, NPR sounded the alarm that "hooking up" is replacing "dating" for college students and twentysomethings and that this is very bad.

What is this "dating culture" of which they speak, that some long for, even in college? We didn't have it in the '70s, not really. Yo, NPR, I was there.

Then, as now, college was an environment where you were surrounded by peers, single, all coming of age, reaching or reaching for adulthood, exploring their sexuality.

Kids today -- meaning precocious high-schoolers, college students and twentysomethings -- hang out, go to dance parties, clubs and bars … drink, dance, try to meet people to whom they're sexually interested, and hook up, which might include fucking.

We -- meaning old people who went to high school and college in the 1970s -- hung out, went to mixers, clubs and bars … drank, tried to meet people to whom we were sexually attracted in order to make out, and sometimes fuck. You see the difference? Not a lot, huh? "Hook up" equals "make out." "Party" equals "mixer." Except that mixers had some sort of official sanction. So did drinking. But we also went to clubs with live bands, or DJs, in groups.

So we're the same, other than that, we had no Internet, no cell phones. Creepy, huh?

On average, young people today have sex for the first time at about the same age as we older folk did … at 17 or so. They have sex about as often as we did. This dating of which NPR speaks -- it was not necessarily a prelude to sex or even making out, but more practice in being a grownup. You can do it any time. I dated in high school mostly because I didn't really have a social circle to hang with, so I'd ask a girl out. It was odd, even then. Dating took place mostly for artificial social events. Think prom. Think homecoming.

I remember dates in high school. Mary Lynne -- do you remember my mom drove us to see Jesus Christ Superstar? We were 14. I helped you baby-sit. We taught each other to kiss and hung out by the pool all summer before starting high school.  Leslie, we saw Loggins and Messina from the third row. We also went to homecoming. By Christmas, you dumped me for an older guy with no warning. Thirty-five years later, on Facebook, we do not speak about this. Marla, we went to the Don McLean concert. I didn't think you liked me "that way." What did I know at 17? Bye, bye … and 30 years later, we're best of friends.

Gwen, we saw Elton John, circa Yellow Brick Road, and were blown away by Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. Lorna … where did I take you, Lorna, on a Friday night in our senior year … Lorna whom I'd had a paralyzing crush on since we were lab partners in chemistry as sophomores? I don't remember where we went. I remember my pride in having the nerve to ask you out. I remember my astonishment that you said yes. I did not feel compelled to ask you out again. One date expunged two years of teenage angst.

Who did I take to see Springsteen? I don't recall. Betsy -- I know we saw No, No, Nanette; a classy evening. Pam … ahhh, Pam. We smooched a little in the car on the way back from drinking in West Virginia. I wasn't your type, but I was smitten anyway. We were on a triple date, in a car that Detroit has not manufactured since our youth -- the huge family station wagon, the precursor of the minivan. Flora … where did we go, Flora? Did we go to the Springsteen show? I don't think so. That, too, might have been Gwen. Here I am 52 years old, and I am worried that somewhere, someone would be mad at me for not remembering she was there as my date that night in Pittsburgh in 1973 at the Syria Mosque, months before Born to Run made Bruce famous.

Melanie, my dear: You asked me to the Sadie Hawkins Dance, and I went even though I was pretty sure that you were in love with Roger, who had dumped you. You kissed me ... as though I was Roger, perhaps, and I kissed you back. Terese -- we went to the prom. It was not my idea, or yours. We were set up. But we went. Thank you.

My first weekend of college, I had a date. I hitchhiked to Long Island from Bethlehem, Pa., and met Deborah at Roosevelt Raceway. We camped out in line overnight with 80,000 people, and in the morning they let all of us in. Jesse Colin Young, the Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell and Crosby Stills Nash & Young played for us. Deborah left me during Joni's set for a guy who had pot. If you're reading this, it's OK, Deb. Debbie. Deborah. Whatever. I kept your letters in a shoebox for years, though, along with all the ones from Melanie, Joyce and that friend of Philip's from Delaware. Correspondence, handwritten, was precious back then.

Despite all this dating, I did not technically lose my virginity until what would have been my junior year in college, had I not decided to drop out and go to Africa. I was 20, a little late to fucking. Life was not the same afterward. Back in school again … mysteriously, I had become fuckable, which was part of feeling young, beautiful and immortal. Dating? That was so … high school.

Sex was OK. Drinking was OK. Drugs were OK. It was the '70s. We did not date. We had serial relationships, punctuated by single debaucheries and sleeping around, or being lonely and celibate, when we were "in between."

We made out, hooked up. Once, I woke up in a college dorm coatroom with my jeans around my ankles, wearing, painfully, a used condom. I had a hangover and only vaguely recalled the events of the night before, past a certain point. It was not my college. It had not even been my condom. I pulled up my jeans and left the scene, hitchhiked home, without speaking to a soul. That girl … well, we can guess what became of her, right? If you are young, you might think she was "a slut." Or you might think she was disgusted with me. I'm older, and I think she got over it. I think she probably had a lot of sex, a nice career and got married. I think she might be your mom. Don't hit me. We used a condom.

There is plenty of time for dating, after college.

There will be Internet dating, dating for sex, dating for relationships, dating for marriage. Don't be so eager. Take your time, relax and have sex. Regardless of what they told you, that's what most of your parents -- and your parents' parents -- were doing before they got married.

And look how well we all turned out!

Jeff Schult is a journalist and author living in Haydenville, Mass. Into Temptation: The Armies of the New Sexual Revolution, is his next book. The blog for the book is at www.intotemptation.net.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140598/