But there’s an awful lot that’s suspicious about Our First Time, too. Why would these kids go through with their first, perhaps clumsy, no doubt anxiety-ridden sexual encounter on the Internet, of all places — their embraces captured by Webcams and streamed to hundreds of thousands of lascivious spectators?

The site’s HTML code includes search keywords like “voyeur, forbidden, tasteless, gross, naked” that aren’t exactly going to draw an audience seeking educational fare. The photos currently displayed on the site aren’t pornographic, but they are somewhat cheesy in a pin-up kind of way — and black bars cover the faces of “Mike” and “Diane,” as in an old-fashioned pulp. And then there’s the matter of an e-mail spam of suspicious origin “protesting” the site; it hailed from a spoofed Juno.com address and was supposedly signed by the Christian Coalition, but that organization has disavowed any involvement. So has Our First Time.

Are “Mike” and “Diane” sex-ed crusaders? Virginal exhibitionists? Performance artists? Or is this some new permutation of “barely legal” porn?

On the one hand, no one has before proposed to lose their virginity online in a tastefully shot way –”This won’t be shot any different than on ‘NYPD Blue,’ except they don’t have a script and are going to be nervous as hell,” Wells says.

On the other hand, video feeds of people having sex aren’t exactly scarce in the Web’s red-light districts.

Wells says that the idea for Our First Time arose in a chat-room discussion with Diane in the wake of the live Internet birth of baby “Sean” on June 16. Wells recalls trying to access the site during that media event — and being turned away because of the site-traffic overload. “It referred me to an area about family planning,” he said, “and there were people bitching and moaning about this event, but there was one woman who was the voice of reason, and she was Diane. She said it was educational and beautiful and it pissed her off that if this could be shown live and considered beautiful, then why not Step One of the conception process? And why are people so spastic about it?”

“Then she said, ‘If I could, I would lose my virginity on the Internet,’ and I, being a programmer, contacted her,” he said.

- – - – - – - – - – - -–>

Wells says that Diane and her boyfriend, Mike, who apparently agreed to go along with Diane and Wells’ proposal, are both virgins who finished high school last May “and plan to get married after college in four years.”

On the big night, scheduled for Aug. 4, Wells will give the Southern California couple “their honeymoon,” albeit one in front of nearly 200,000 onlookers (the number of viewers Wells says he hopes for, and the maximum capacity of his site’s servers).

Along the way, he promises, site visitors can read about the pair’s first AIDS test, follow their trip to purchase condoms, discuss the ethics of the act in bulletin boards and vote in polls. The bulletin boards and polls are on the site already, although the journals kept by the pair won’t be made available until Saturday, says Wells.

So much secrecy surrounds Our First Time that it’s impossible to take it at face value. Who are these kids? Are those pictures really them? Are they really virgins? Is it really going to be Webcast free? And why are they waiting for 18 days from the Saturday opening until Aug. 4? To chronicle their sexual journey — or to let the media build up their hype? And why is “ourfirsttime.com” registered with Internic under Wells’ production company, “First Time Productions”?

Wells says he’s received death threats from “religious nuts” who have forced him to exercise extreme secrecy about the location of Mike’s and Diane’s act, and about the technologies that will be deployed to broadcast it. And both he and his site host say the site is under constant attack from hackers. That might explain why the site was unreachable all day Wednesday — or maybe its servers were simply overloaded in the wake of widespread media coverage.

About the production company, Wells says, “My attorney said, ‘You’ve got to do something to protect yourself personally.’ And I’m hoping that A&E or someone might be interested in this project later.” Wells says his personal interest in Diane and Mike, beyond altruistic reasons, is self-promotion for his Web design skills.

The pair’s identities, Wells says, will be revealed Aug. 4. “I just hope they don’t start following me to find Diane and Mike … We’ve gotten e-mail that says, ‘You are Satan’s spawn and it is my duty to make sure you don’t spawn yourselves.’ On the 18th day, everything will be open. [Diane and Mike] just want to get there.” He also says that because of the hostile reactions, he is giving the pair until Friday night to decide whether they really want to go ahead.

But Wells would not show us that e-mail, nor allow us to interview Diane or Mike before the site’s opening, nor see any other sites he has designed. His secrecy could be justified — or it could conceivably be the cover for a scam. He takes such skepticism in stride, saying, “As for legitimacy, I don’t know how to prove this any more than to just do it.”

Wells says he’s trying to keep a low profile — but he and his attorney have already talked to Salon, Wired News and Reuters. The first mention of his site in mainstream media came last Friday, when Conan O’Brian made a joke about how the first event would be followed shortly by the first live Netcast of a murder — by the girl’s father. That night, Wells said, hackers exploited a security loophole left by a “hit counter” on the site’s front page — and deleted the entire site. It’s been under attack ever since, he said.

Wells’ Web host is The Entangled Web, a one-person hosting service with experience in running pornographic live video feeds. Wells explained that other service providers rejected him, forcing him to work with someone unfazed by the nature of the content. The Entangled Web’s owner, who asked not to be named, confirms Wells’ story: “I want to support him, and get this thing up and running. To me, this is no different than the feed I run from Amsterdam.”

About the hacking, he adds, “We learned last Friday not to put up any [Microsoft] FrontPage extensions. I can’t believe someone managed to pop the counter.” He said on Tuesday the site was under continuous threat from “SYN flooding” — a technical attack to overwhelm the site’s server and make it inaccessible. At the time, the site was functioning normally, but by Wednesday morning, its servers were not responding. The webmaster said he’s currently reading three books on network security, and is prepared to delay the unveiling should hackers interfere.

That is, if there are hackers. The obsessive need for security that Wells and his Webmaster invoke for everything from the kids’ identities to the technical methods of streaming video and sound to a target of 200,000 people makes large chunks of their stories unconfirmable. As a result, healthy skepticism is the order of the day. Visitors to the site are leaving cynical predictions on its bulletin board, like “come back in two weeks and this will be a pay site.”

If they are to overcome the swirl of doubts that surround Our First Time, it looks like Mike and Diane and their impresario, Wells, will simply have to “just do it” — and prove that their motives are as unmercenary as they claim. At this point, the most far-fetched scenario is that everyone involved is telling the truth. But stranger things have happened on the Net.

I don’t think that’s good news myself. I’m probably one of a handful of
Americans willing to say in public that I think sexual exploration and
intimacy between young people has the possibility of being beneficial, not
just traumatic. Why is it so frightening to admit what so many of us know
from experience? The idea that sex, by definition, is psychologically
harmful to teenagers is repugnant to me.

In my rant two weeks ago, however, I got a couple of major facts completely
wrong, and I’d like to correct and apologize for those now. I said that
Oregon endorses a sexual education program for young people called S.T.A.R.S. (Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex). That’s true, it is a state program,
but it is not mandatory in every Oregon school, and in fact, the
Springfield schools don’t use it.

After my story was published, I got an e-mail from Kathy Dimond, a founding
board member of the S.T.A.R.S. foundation in Oregon. She explained to me that
S.T.A.R.S. “does not preach against masturbation. We refuse the demands of
some conservative parents who want us to tell their kids to wait until
marriage to have sex. We won’t. We tell SIXTH graders it’s better to wait.
Not how long, or until what age, but we hope until they can make a better
decision about their bodies … What S.T.A.R.S. really teaches is refusal
skills.”

I also found some material on the Web that I erroneously believed to be
S.T.A.R.S. curriculum on the subject of masturbation, but I was wrong. As Dimond
corrected me, “The word (masturbation) never appears in S.T.A.R.S. curriculum.
If kids ask about it, the student mentors say, ‘Stick around after class
and talk to whoever the health department sends along as the adult
facilitator.’”

Why isn’t S.T.A.R.S. being used in Springfield if so many Oregonians think it’s
great? I have called several junior high school principals in Springfield
to ask what kind of sex education program they use, but despite my most
respectful requests, I have yet to get an answer. Dimond speculated that,
“the reason that S.T.A.R.S. is not in all classrooms is that some communities
feel we are too liberal.”

My encounters with these how-to-say-no programs made me think even more
closely about my own public school memories. I first learned about the
evils of marijuana in seventh grade, where we viewed a whiz-bang of a movie
about a clean-cut boy who goes from smoking one joint to a heroin stupor in
a matter of hours. It would have scared me good if it hadn’t been for my
friend Michelle, who walked with me over the railroad tracks to the
satellite campus where we took home economics class. She lit up a joint en
route and balanced on the railroad ties like a pro. An hour later, her
buttermilk biscuits were as good, if not better, than anyone else’s. The
news that my school was dishing out drug propaganda only confirmed my
cynicism about the status quo.

That year, I had no interest in real boys, although I was aware that others
did. I was passionately in love with my girlfriends and would write them
14-page letters about how screwed up the world and our families were. I was
so immersed in the schoolgirl equivalent of hard-core pornography –
romance novels — that I thought an orgasm was a sign from God that Prince
Charming had just whisked you off your feet. If I could change anything
about the sex education I got in school, I’d have had someone
mentor me about the absurd conflation of sex and love in young women’s
minds.

I would say most young women I meet these days on high school and college
campuses are struggling to liberate themselves from the pitfalls of sexual
passivity and Prince Charming fantasies. They know how to say “no”
repetitively, but they’re utterly at a loss as to what to say “yes” to, or
what form their own sexual initiative might take. Consequently, their
refusals often wilt into guilty compromises and resentful ambivalence.

Nothing much has changed in how Rules Girls are made, I’m afraid. I was
entertaining a group of first-grade girls last week, and they asked me to
play a fortune telling game. I had to write predictions on little slips of
paper for them to pick at random. I asked them what kind of predictions
they liked– “Scary ones? Funny ones? Ones about love?”

“LOVE!” they cried. One little girl got so excited she began dictating to
me. “Say something like: ‘A boy will kiss you!’” she urged. The others all
jumped with delight. “Really?” I replied, nonplused. “What if I put,
”‘You will kiss a boy’?”

“NO! EWW! NO!” They found my suggestion appalling.

Boys, I believe, are getting a different message than they did when I was
prepubescent. Part of the old-style double standard was that young men
weren’t given a great deal of grief about masturbation or their sexual
appetite. They were expected to have sexual desires and to cope with them
the best they could. No one was pushing the “hair will grown on your palms”
line in the ’60s — except to the kids suffering in parochial schools.

Today’s conservative abstinence movement, while it still places the greater
emphasis on girls keeping their legs crossed, is devoted to convincing boys
that their sexual desires can lead to an addiction, a scary loss of
normality. That bogeyman, the Sex Crazed Male, keeps cropping up — like
the recent, horrified speculation that a U.S. president might be a “sex
addict.”

One of the agonies of adolescence is the fear that we might be weird or
abnormal, and that no one will ever be attracted to us. Our bodies go
through a hideous revolt against all aesthetics. When the grown-up world
says that thinking about sex “too much” or masturbating every day is a
danger sign, it feeds right into that anxiety.

The tone of the abstinence movement today, which is felt in public
education more than anywhere else, seems to be that if we can bottle up
these nasty boys by spooking them into believing they are deviant, we can
restore the sexual mores of the 1950s — or at least the 1950s as the
fundamentalists fantasize they were.

I’ll never forget the time I was on some inane talk show and the host
suddenly demanded to know what age I was when I first “had sex.” “Sixteen,”
I answered, and he blurted back, “Wouldn’t you say that was child abuse?”

No I wouldn’t, Mr. Donahue. Actually, it was one of the best days of my
whole life. I wouldn’t trade the maturity, joy and insight I gained from my
teenage experiences of sexuality, love and affection for anything in the
world. And with a little candor and courage, I think a lot of other
post-teenagers would agree with me.

To anyone over 19, kids’ books about sex will seem uniformly boring. Except for
the chapters on sexually transmitted diseases, most of the books are
little different from the ones my friends and I did our health ed
homework from 20 years ago in Ms. Condon‘s class. (Tired of
stressing the n, I suppose, she went back to her maiden
name the next year.) There are the same mysterious cross sections of
the male and female pelvis, looking like a bus map of Rome, only
harder to follow. There are the same cartoons of grinning sperm
elbowing their way to the coy, well-coiffed egg. There are the same
exhortations to bathe frequently, refuse spiked punch, refrain from
popping those zits and learn to be a good listener. Even the
cautionary tales of Tanya, who gave in when her boyfriend said
“please” and is now faced with a Difficult Choice, or Josh, who
didn’t wear a rubber and now has a Terrible Disease, seem bleached of emotion, as if such things could never happen to a living teenager.

Do the authors hope that if they make their books dull enough,
kids will be too bored to have sex? It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. More likely, though, the dullness is meant to reassure. Red jelly may be pouring out between your legs, pimples may be sprouting from your forehead like crocuses, your voice may be channel-surfing up and down the octaves, but don’t worry. It’s all perfectly normal — “It’s Perfectly Normal” is even the title of one of the better books. (Of course, what with hormones and the novelty of the subject, children won’t find these books half as dull as adults do.)

Perhaps the most important unspoken function of boring sex books may
be to reassure not kids but parents. And after all, as some of the
authors point out, children aren’t the only nervous ones. In “What’s
the Big Secret?” a picture book for young children, a little boy
asks the classic question. “Umm. Uh, well, you see … I want to tell you, except …” stutters dad. Excuses rim the margin (“You won’t understand. It might frighten you. Mom will know what to say. My throat hurts. There must be a book about it”), while the center of the page tells the short version of the old story.

Although the books generally stress the importance of talking to your kids (or parents) about sex, grown-ups sometimes use them as a substitute for conversation, not just a supplement. So the books have a tough job. They have to appeal to parents whose sexual attitudes range from those of
hippies to Shakers. They have to instruct kids about the
life-threatening dangers of sex without giving them lifelong hang-ups.
They have to include sections on how to say no without coming across
as hopelessly prudish. They have to draw readers in without spoiling
their credibility by obvious preaching or dated slang. No wonder they take refuge in lengthy discussions of the shape and function of the epididymis.

Enlightened, chatty, liberated, open-minded parents
may be thinking: Forget it. Why should I waste my money? I’m not one
of those irresponsible adults who expects a book to do my job for me.
My children already know the facts of life; if they need any
additional information, they can ask me.

But they may not want
to. If adolescence is a time to slam doors, risk punishment by
staying out past curfew and show off one’s independence, it may not
be such a great time to let one’s parents see one’s ignorance of a
subject that defines adulthood. And kids have a natural reluctance to
think about their parents’ sex lives. Any question you answer will
probably conjure up images of you nude and passionate — yuck.
Furthermore, however studly you might be, your view of sexuality
could be narrower than you think. For the sake of your children’s
privacy, of providing them with a variety of points of view and of
giving them access to Latin names for body parts, it’s a good idea to
leave a few sex books in discreet, accessible places.

Make sure
you read them yourself first. While these books are careful to debunk many
harmful old myths about sex — that you can’t get pregnant if you
have intercourse standing up, that masturbation will make you sterile
– most of them can’t resist adding a few of their own.
Some imply that sex is only pleasurable when it’s between two people
who know each other well and love each other; some say penis size
makes no difference; some insist that even if you daydream about
members of the same sex, you shouldn’t worry, you’re not gay. Parents
and authors might have good reasons for wanting their children to
believe these things, but that doesn’t make them always true. It
should be possible for authors — and parents — to say honestly,
“Sex with strangers may be exciting, but don’t do it: It’s too
dangerous,” or, “Different people have different preferences.”

“Changing Bodies, Changing Lives” is a comfortingly honest book. The
authors, who also wrote “Our Bodies, Our Selves,” talked to a raft of
teens and include their voices in a nonjudgmental, respectful way.
Although it’s due for another update — the most recent edition is
from 1987 — it’s probably still the best of the bunch for older
children and teens, assuming they can get past a fairly high dork
factor (lots of braces, terrible poetry and people “digging” things). Each section has a bibliography — kids may find it a revelation to learn that more information is available. However, since the information on AIDS is more than 10 years old (as are the hairdos), it’s a good idea to supplement the book with more recent material.

Books for younger kids may mention problems such as AIDS, rape,
incest and unwanted pregnancy, but they don’t go into much detail. Ones
for teens try to strike a balance between terrifying their readers
with grisly details and leaving out things that readers may urgently
need to know. With all their reassurance about how normal adolescence
is, these books may not be as useful for kids with uncommon
experiences or problems. That’s one reason books with good
bibliographies, like “Changing Bodies, Changing Lives,” are so
important. Many recommend places to call for help — rape hotlines,
Planned Parenthood — and sometimes even include phone numbers.

For less life-threatening questions (Why is there hair on my ears?
Where can I go that’s really private? What’s that funny smell? What
do I do when men make rude comments about my body? How come my
menstrual blood is sometimes red and sometimes brown?), books with
Q&As can give readers a sense that they’re not alone. “Girltalk,” by
Girls’ Life columnist Carol Weston, has easy-to-identify-with “Dear
Carol” letters and passages from the author’s high school diary. “I
came close to having sex,” writes one girl. “We were in a camper. He
tried to get it in, but it wouldn’t go in. Is that normal, and am I
still a virgin?” Carol answers: “A girl is a virgin until she has
penis-inside-vagina intercourse. It is normal for penetration to be
difficult in the beginning. Some girls have trouble because their
hymen is still intact. Others have trouble because the couple is in a
hurry and the girl’s body does not have time to respond sexually.
Lubricated condoms can help. Better still, put on the brakes until
you are really ready, physically and emotionally.” “Can a
gynecologist tell if one has masturbated?” asks another. “Nope.”

“What Kids Really Want to Know About Sex,” from Britain, answers many touching letters about love, body hair, ill-timed erections,
masturbation fears, strict parents and other woes. For example: “When do you get milk in your breasts? We are three worried 11-year-old girls who are scared that when we have a baby, we might not have any milk to feed them.” Or: “I’m a boy of 13 and I’m particularly worried about a part of my body. On my penis I have two veins which start at the top of my penis and finish at the beginning of my testicles. These veins stick out a lot. Am I abnormal and can I do anything about it?” The author answers the questions seriously and
straightforwardly, taking care not to embarrass the questioner:
“These veins have to work very hard and need to be thick to carry the
blood swiftly round this part of your anatomy. All men have them.”
American readers, who may have little firsthand knowledge of the
subject, might find the sections about uncircumcised penises
intriguing.

The Q&A books give children a sense of the variety of
concerns other kids have about sex, hopefully making them less
embarrassed about their own questions. Particularly for younger kids,
books with lots of pictures are important to give a sense of the
variety of bodies out there. Unfortunately, illustrations tend to be
scanty; perhaps authors and publishers are afraid of making their sex books seem too sexy. “It’s Perfectly Normal” is an exception. Not only do the illustrations throughout the book show attractive,
unidealized folks of various shapes, but it even has a spread of
cheerful nudes in all colors, some with muscular thighs, some with
pot bellies, some with walleyed breasts, some with crutches.

Want
more sex advice? Here are some things I wish Ms. Condon had
told me (though would I have listened?):

Wash out blood with cold
water; hot water sets the stain. Don’t assume everyone else is having a happy, comfortable, hot sex life: They may be, but they also may not, and you won’t know that unless they tell you. Just because you like imagining a particular sex act doesn’t necessarily mean you like
to actually do it. Many people have sex with only one or two people
in their entire lives; others have dozens or even hundreds of
partners. If it hurts, stop. Just because you think something is
gross now doesn’t necessarily mean you always will. No one can know
what you’re thinking unless you tell them, even if you had a wet
dream about them or are imagining what they look like without their
clothes. Teachers who sleep with their students are pathetic losers.
You may have to use your hands to guide the penis into the vagina. If you’re inexperienced and embarrass easily, the best partner might be
someone who makes you laugh. Brush your tongue as well as your teeth.
If you’re really worried, see a doctor; if that doctor doesn’t help,
see another one. Crying can be fun. Wait until you feel comfortable
– believe it or not, you’ll always have another chance later. When
someone turns you down, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong
with you. Not everyone likes having their ears licked. The pimple on
your chin looks much bigger and redder to you than it does to anyone
else. Wait until after your best friend ends that relationship before
you have sex with their partner. No matter what you look like,
somebody out there is especially attracted to people who look like
you. You’re still the same person you were yesterday. If you don’t
ask, you won’t find out. If your partner keeps treating you badly,
break up. You’ll look better if you stand up straight. Your parents
are not always right. Your parents are sometimes right. Whatever your
problem is, there’s someone else in the world who has it too.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

B O O K color="#ffffff">+I N F O R M A T I O N:

What’s the Big Secret? Talking about Sex with Girls and Boys

By
Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown

Little, Brown

It’s Perfectly
Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health

By Robie H.
Harris, illustrated by Michael Emberley
Candlewick Press

Changing Bodies, Changing Lives

By Ruth Bell et al.

Vintage

The
Period Book: Everything You Don’t Want to Ask (But Need to Know)

By
Karen Gravelle & Jennifer Gravelle, illustrated by Debbie Palen
Walker.

Girltalk: All the Stuff Your Sister Never Told You

By
Carol Weston
HarperPerennial

What Kids Really
Want To Know About Sex

By Phillip Hodson

Robson Books

I couldn’t chalk up my dismal impression to a regional anomaly, because the school I visited was mainstream, not at all on the fringe. The students there have all grown up with the standard blizzard of “Say No” propaganda, encountered everywhere from their high school classrooms to MTV. Their older siblings and everyone they know who’s come of age since the late ’80s has had the same tutelage. Let me be the first to publicly state that this strategy of teenage libido repression has entirely backfired.

Some critics felt I was too harsh and paranoid in my assessment — or on a mindless boomer bandwagon of ’60s hedonism — but I think I’ve had my ear too close to the ground to be very far off the mark. To my surprise, I’ve heard from professors and campus administrators from other universities, telling me how they worry about the same thing and feel so unprepared to address it. “What do we say now?” they wonder: “Yeah, wear a condom, sure, but you don’t have to be so neurotic about it!” — “Why don’t you try just one week of having sex without first drinking a keg!” — “Monogamy is OK, but it might be a good idea to make out with ONE other person before you pledge eternal commitment at the age of 19″ — “Let’s haul out that old birth-control device exhibit from the ’70s!”

I imagine it’s going to be hard to retreat or change tactics from the fear-mongering and abstinence-glorifying that’s so in vogue. Knowing what it takes to make a baby or transmit the AIDS virus doesn’t give anyone an understanding of how their body responds and feels sexually. One friend of mine noted that our current sex education policies are “like teaching kids to drive by describing to them the internal combustion engine.”

A genuine sexual education would include the basics about your body’s sexual responses, what to anticipate when you’re intimate with another person and how to explore your own fantasies. We should include the notions of pleasure, creativity and communication through sex — in fact, I would put those toward the front of the syllabus. Without respecting (and esteeming) those motivations, teaching kids to say “no,” use safe-sex techniques and prevent pregnancy becomes a mechanical discipline rod that will break under the first strain of life’s contradictions. We can’t preach to young people about saving their lives if we don’t cherish their sexual potential at the same time.

To be fair, it’s not the statistical majority of teenagers that I’ve found sex-phobic — rather, it’s an influential minority, the students who set the tone on campus even if they don’t define every single person there. Of course some young people are still “doing it.” And just like me at that age, they don’t enter their sexual lives at the peak of sophistication and confidence.

But my survey of today’s students revealed a profile I had never seen so clearly before. I’d like you to see what students say in their own words and draw your own conclusions.

First, let me tell you how I learned what was on their minds. When I visit a school, I typically hand out index cards and ask the audience to answer a few quick questions. Two of them are: Do you masturbate? Do you have orgasms? I also tell them to write down a quick question for me that might be hard to ask in front of a group. The whole exercise is anonymous and only takes a couple of minutes. I also give out my e-mail address, and afterwards many people send me more lengthy letters.

In my previous campus surveys, I’ve seen about 18 to 20 percent of young women reporting that they do not masturbate. This is always a significant indicator to me of how knowledgeable these young women are about their desires and how comfortable they are with their bodies. But during this recent survey, 46 percent of the women responded that they didn’t masturbate. That’s more than twice as high as I’ve ever recorded before! I could even see in the audience, as I lectured, how many people were in nervous hysterics each time I mentioned the very word. It was way beyond the typical blush and giggle.

What was even wilder was that 9 percent of the young men said they didn’t masturbate, and 4 percent reported they didn’t have orgasms. That is incredible. I have never had even 1 percent of the men at my lectures describe themselves that way before. Could these be the same men who later asked me, “If I don’t have sex, I’ll be OK, right? You don’t have to have sex to live, right?”

Well, I’m sure the local Family Decency Association would be glad to reassure them that, yes indeed, you can live till you’re old and gray without once blemishing your life with sexual intercourse — but that’s not really the point, is it?

They cannot live their lives in total denial of their sexual feelings and yearnings, any more than they could entirely suppress their appetite or their dreams. We’ve told them that even thinking about sex can lead to dire consequences — as if eradication of sexual thoughts were some kind of reasonable request, like cutting out cheese from their diet.

We tell kids that they can drive when they’re 16, and we teach them how to do it, too. Likewise, they can vote when they’re 18 and drink when they’re 21. But, apparently, sex is so calamitous we can’t even mention an age that would be a suitable point for them to know the basics of orgasm. Gee — would graduate school be a good time to finally learn how to fuck?

The questions I received from this latest batch of undergrads overwhelmingly asked about the kinds of things one would learn during the first week of a good human sexuality course or if you even had a decent book in your house about sexual relations.

Even the sexual sophisticates and more experienced students on campus were under the thumb of the conservative, let’s-save-sex-for-later-and-be-monogamous-and-plan-our-careers crowd. The student who pointed out to me that “no one holds hands on campus” truly made the saddest observation of all. Holding hands is a sign that you might be sexual with someone, and that could cost you your reputation.

Many of the young women I heard from were obsessed about who is and who isn’t a “slut.” They are the front line of defending this distinction. Why are the girls the most vocal policers? We’ve all heard about a backlash against women’s gains in the economic sector, but things really seem to be decomposing in the sisterhood department. A “good girl,” it seems, has no erotic self-interest or solidarity with other lusty women whatsoever. In all her innocence and ignorance, she trades sex for the allegiance of the highest status mate possible. In the ’90s, women aren’t chaste for religious or moral reasons, but because they are now supposed to use their sexuality as the ultimate commodities brokerage! To the Big Sisters of New Order, a girl who has sex because it feels good is just giving away that cream for free — and depressing the market for other milk cows on the move!

I’ve been aware of the trend in anti-sex propaganda aimed at teenagers for years, and how its ante got upped by the AIDS panic. Yet the examples I saw always seemed so laughable to me — an erotic variation on “Reefer Madness” — that I couldn’t believe that many young people would fall for it. After all, they don’t believe anything people over 30 say, right?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Teenage sexuality is depicted in two ways — as that of a victim or a criminal. Other role models are loathe to step forward.

A few kids asked me if I had ever had anonymous sex — and as I replied, I began to realize that by “anonymous” they meant “sex on a first date” with somebody who you know on a first-name basis! For me, responding to their question meant I had to flip a switch in my definition. Finally, someone they could point to who would admit to acting spontaneously on their sexual attractions! Yes, I had sex, before and after AIDS — with quite a few people — and here I am, standing up, nowhere near a gutter, with no regrets. I have a family. I have a home. I masturbate and fantasize whenever I want. It all worked out.

This country has been riding high on what I call the War Against Teenagers, and it’s only getting worse. It’s so depressing! Here our new generation stands, in the physical and sexual prime of their lives, and our culture tells them that thinking about sex will only get them in trouble, and actually having it will more or less ruin their lives. Go get ‘em tigers!

I personally intend to tell every young person I can that having sex with other people, taking pleasure in their own bodies and contemplating their sexual feelings and fantasies is one of the most beautiful, provocative and creative experiences they can enjoy — not to mention one of the few things that connects them to every other person on earth. If critics say, “It doesn’t look that way to me,” they need to look at the capitalist carnage around them, instead of at their cunts and cocks, to find out the reason why.

Jukes, a sixth-grade teacher, fondly recalls that when she was in sixth
grade in 1958, she and her mother belonged to an elite organization, the “Ladies’ Business Club.” Only she and her mother were allowed in this very private club, and it was there that she learned about the mysteries and privileges of being female.

My own experience, when I was in sixth grade in 1979, was very different. Women’s lib had come and gone, and what little awareness it raised in my conservative Southern community seemed to manifest itself in bitterness more than empowerment. In that climate, growing up female was still a pretty private affair, but it didn’t seem like much of a privilege. Most
things about growing up female were presented in terms of limitations: You
couldn’t swim when you had your period, at least not until you figured out
how tampons worked — and that could easily take a whole summer, maybe two. You couldn’t eat everything you wanted to because you might get fat. You couldn’t act a certain way around boys, because they couldn’t be counted on to control their physical urges. Sure, boys had to worry about inopportune
erections, but this seemed silly compared to what girls had to go through.

Jukes’ stories about girlhood — popping the bra question, her first
near-kiss, discovering her brother’s “camel mask” (a jock-strap) — made me
marvel at the universality of the experiences that I thought were mine alone. I’m not sure how much has changed since I was in junior high, but certainly not enough to make being an adolescent girl in the ’90s easy. To find out, I talked to three 14-year-old girls from San Francisco, all of whom had read and loved “It’s a Girl Thing.”

though Caitlin, Odie and Sophie agreed that “Girl Thing” would have been
more helpful had they read it in the sixth grade (they’re starting their
freshman year of high school this fall), they each singled out different parts of it for praise. Odie liked that the stories seemed directed at her.
Sophie found Jukes’ advice about sex to be relatively free of heavy-handed
judgment. And Caitlin liked the fact that “beautiful” was understood to be
something more than “pretty.”

The first thing I wanted to find out was whether they thought it would
be easier to be a boy. They all looked at me with a big “duh” written on
their faces. “It’s always been a man’s world,” Sophie said, and Odie and
Caitlin agreed. But when I asked them if they liked being girls, they all
replied without hesitation, in unison, “Definitely.”

Some things have changed. Phrases that came up regularly in the
course of our conversation — “sexual harassment,” “emotional
responsibility” and “male sensitivity” — were definitely not part of my
14-year-old vocabulary. Still, this is progressive San Francisco, not provincial Carolina, and apart from being remarkably self-aware and mature, they spoke of several difficult coming-of-age experiences that were almost identical to
my own. The sixth grade, for instance, still sucks. (“The eighth-grade boys
– the ‘cool’ ones — harassed me and called me names,” Odie said, cringing
at the memory.) Asking your mother for a bra is still a nightmare, no
matter how open she may be about it — but once the asking is over, the
actual experience of getting a bra is one of unparalleled joy. (“I
remember having a bra, but not even wearing it,” Caitlin told me. “Even
just having it was great.”) And older boys are still there to torment you
by reminding you that you don’t have much need for that hard-earned bra.

Though more books about puberty and sexuality are available for girls today, most are still “way too technical” to be very useful. All three girls
gave Jukes bonus points for getting personal with the details. With regard
to some “stuff” (yes, “stuff” is still the all-encompassing euphemism for
anything having to do with sex), some books aren’t quite graphic enough.
“When you’re going over all the stuff, you know, the fallopian tubes or
whatever, you get lost — like, OK, now where am I?” complained Caitlin.
“A picture or something would help.” Each of the girls said they
appreciated Jukes’ endorsement of masturbation — “If I’d known about
exploring my own sexual responses, I probably would have spent much less
time lying in bed at night, staring blankly into the darkness, twirling my
hair and sucking my thumb. And my teeth would have ended up being
straighter, too” — but they all agreed that Judy Blume’s “Are You there
God It’s Me Margaret” was still a better “how-to.”

Sex education has been a regular part of these girls’ school life for almost four years. A lot of things they wanted to know about sex — and some things they didn’t — they learned as early as fifth grade, in science and health
classes. “It gets pretty factual,” complained Odie, “and then it doesn’t
really broaden what you already know. One woman came in with a model of a vagina and showed us how to use the female condom,” she said, as the others — including me — burst into a fit of giggles. But they’re tired of
the facts — they want real stories. “It would help if they talked more
about how people felt about things,” said Caitlin.

So, I asked them how they felt about things. Here’s what they had
to say:

About being a teenager:

CAITLIN: Some things are exaggerated, I think, about being a teenager
and how rough it is. Some people try to understand, but I think they
understand it too much — they think it’s this really difficult
thing. Sure, it’s harder than being in elementary school, but its also a
lot more fun.

About being a girl:

SOPHIE: I hate it when that’s an excuse — like, “Oh, it’s that time of
the month.” Why when you’re mad does that always have to be the reason?

CAITLIN: There’s so many ways you can pick on girls — but there’s no
word for “slut” for guys.

About getting your period:

CAITLIN: I remember exactly how I felt. I remember my heart went wild, and I was really excited. I wasn’t really nervous, but I was really excited — my face turned really red.

ODIE: I was excited, because I got mine after them, and I was like, “Oh
finally.” Now, I’m like, “Oh God, this is a drag.”

SOPHIE: When I got it, it was with people who I didn’t know very well in
Boston. I have really good friends there, but we don’t have the same
openness as I do with my friends here. When I got back here, it was like
taking off a really heavy coat or something, because we could tell each
other everything.

About having sex:

ODIE: I think I’m physically ready, but I’m not emotionally ready, so I
don’t even think about it. It’s hard to say. We’ve all talked about it, and
we’re all pretty sure we’re not ready — we’re all virgins. Most
descriptions about sex, it’s like you’re on some schedule. It tells you how
it’s going to be in detail — as if there are rules. It’s not always that
way. The book talks about how you shouldn’t have sex if you
don’t want to. But what if you don’t know that you don’t want to until
you’re actually doing it?

About “sluts”

CAITLIN: There was this girl in my class who was having sex with her
boyfriend, and they had been going out like two years, and she was still
labeled a slut.

ODIE: Yeah, that’s kind of bad. It’s hard, because people get labeled.

SOPHIE: Girls aren’t sluts just because they’ve had sex. It’s because they’ve done, like, every guy.

ODIE: Girls who are emotionally ready and who are ready to go further than other girls, in some cases they are sluts — but some people aren’t. If they are emotionally ready, then they shouldn’t be labeled that.

About abortion:

CAITLIN: A girl in my class got pregnant when she was 14 and had an
abortion. It seems like it really messed her up. She just seems really
depressed about it all the time.

ODIE: I think she should have taken the responsibility before.
But I’d have an abortion, too. I know I would. I’m not ready to have a
child. After baby-sitting and changing diapers and all that — I mean, it’s
hard work. I’m not going to have a teen pregnancy.

SOPHIE: One of my
mom’s friends from high school got pregnant and went
away somewhere to have the baby, and gave it up — and they still haven’t
talked about it. It’s just something they don’t talk about. I mean, I don’t think you should be proud of it. But it’s the guy’s responsibility, too — it’s not like she was having sex with herself.

About boys:

ODIE: Our friends that are guys aren’t that masculine. They’re not macho guys — they’re sensitive and understanding, which is a big part of why we’re friends.

SOPHIE: I think the guys we know that are really macho are just really
insecure.

CAITLIN: I make it a point to tell our guy friends, when they say
something criticizing or sexist, to sort of knock them on the head.

About drugs:

ODIE: It doesn’t seem like such a big deal in my family. I’m not going
to go out there and do something stupid. I know the consequences — I know
what can happen if you abuse the substance. So I think if you talk about it
openly, and it’s not blown out of proportion from the beginning, it really
helps. It makes a big difference.

SOPHIE: There’s a big difference between smoking weed and doing heroin
or something. But a lot of the drug education makes it seem like it’s the
same thing. We’ve had teachers tell us we’ll go to hell if we smoke weed.

About trusting adults:

SOPHIE: At our school last year, the girls split up with a female
teacher, and we were supposed to talk about our problems. And if you didn’t
want to talk about your problems, they gave you problems to talk about. You
did that once a week, and it really didn’t really help. It created more
problems.

ODIE: Parts of the book say “tell a teacher” or “tell the police” if you
have a problem — I don’t agree. I wouldn’t want my teacher to know — a
lot of times, they invade our privacy. But I definitely trust my parents. I
have a really good relationship with my mom.

CAITLIN: I trust my parents. But some things you just don’t want to tell
them …

ODIE: Plus, we have each other. We tell each other everything.

On female sex symbols:

CAITLIN: I hate Fiona Apple. I loved her at first, I heard her song and thought, “She’s really smart.” And then this video comes on — and she’s
just stripping! It’s her and all these beautiful bodies and all these
really skinny legs, and when I saw her, she looked like a heroin addict.

ODIE: I used to hate Hole. I saw them at Lollapalooza, and Courtney Love
was such a freak — she wasn’t wearing underwear. She was so screwed up.
But then she got her act together.

CAITLIN: Pamela Anderson Lee looks like she got part of her butt taken
off and put on her lip.

It was amusing to see what a strong sense of propriety these girls
have, as if they’ve heard all about how rebellious their parents were,
and now they simply can’t be bothered with it. Their parents’ generation
went through a collective identity crisis, but these three were quick to
dismiss the identity experiments of some of their peers — “saying you’re
bisexual to be trendy,” “pretending to be anorexic to be cool” and
“pretending to be something you’re not” all ranked high on their list of
stupid things people do. When they dress differently or “act weird at a
concert,” they assured me, it’s not an act of rebellion (though their
parents may interpret it as one) — they only do it as a joke. “Because
we know who we are,” Sophie explained.

Could it be that this generation of teenage girls has inherited the best
of both the garter-belt-wearing and bra-burning worlds?
Or is it partly because they’ve heard so much about the horrors of AIDS and
other sexually transmitted diseases (and, in contrast to the generations
that have preceded them, they believe themselves to be susceptible to them)
that they feel less pressure to have sex, which allows them more time to figure out who they are and what they want? Odie, Sophie and Caitlin all agreed that the “sex” part of sex-ed is generally overemphasized — they want to know more about romance. Listening to the three of them as they giggled and talked their way through the afternoon, unself-consciously sharing their intimate thoughts with a complete stranger, I thought — for just a second — how cool it would be to be 14 again.

“You know what I would do,” offered Caitlin. “I was thinking I should
write one of these when I’m older, and I was thinking I should take notes
now. Write exactly how you remember you felt and how other people your age felt, because I always wonder about that.”

“Yeah,” Sophie added. “The sex stuff is good, but when I was in sixth
grade, I didn’t think I was ever going to have sex,” Sophie said. “I think
there should be more about kissing.”

“Yes!” Odie nodded emphatically. “There should be a book on kissing –
for kids.”