This is another one of those posts where I have to excuse myself and take my parents off into the corner of the internet for a moment to break some news. Hi Dad, hi Mom. Remember the drugs in high school post? This is the sex in high school post. I just thought you should hear from me first before I told the whole goshdarned internet that yes, I’ve had sex.
And you know, I would rather have swallowed my own tongue than talk about it when I was 16.
Ah, well. The universe sometimes likes to have fun with us around this kind of thing, doesn’t it? So when I was 16, in the winter of my junior year, I was completely hot for a senior boy named John. He was very cute. Was he a nice person? You know, I honestly have no idea. I didn’t know him well at all. I don’t know why he started talking to me in the dining room common room one night after dinner. I don’t know what he found attractive in me, apart from my fairly obvious attraction to him. I don’t know if he liked me or was just being opportunistic. And it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t blame him, and wish him nothing but well.
Because hell, I didn’t know much about myself either. I do know that I was very curious about sex, very personally reserved, and conscious/self-aware in ways that fooled people into thinking I must be very mature about everything. Hah. I wasn’t mature. But I was responsible, in spades. I got a double dose of the responsibility gene from somewhere in the ancestral chain (raises eyebrow at father through the internet), and so when it became clear to me that sex was a possibility, I took myself off to the school infirmary, and tried not to throw up from anxiety while I asked the doctor for a prescription for birth control.
This was 1977. I was at boarding school, and the school was expected to act in loco parentis for me. Giving me an Rx for the pill without parental knowledge was one of those huge gray areas — I was of legal age, I wasn’t breaking any laws, but I’m sure they imagined the lawsuits and the bad publicity of being accused of condoning or promoting sexual activity among students.
The thing was, they were doing their best. Social realities were so much less well-articulated in the 70’s: we did not have general cultural conversations about teenage sex or domestic violence or drug addiction, etc., to the same degree that we do now. We certainly didn’t involve the young people in those conversations. So I was very much putting them on the spot by openly acknowledging that I was intending to have sex, and by asking them to help me protect myself from pregnancy.
But it turns out the school had a process for this (I’m guessing it wasn’t the first time it had come up, grin). The doctor would write the prescription if I would agree to participate in a research project on teenage sexual activity by talking to the school psychiatrist. I don’t know if there really was a project, or if this was just a creative way of dodging liability issues. I said okay because it was the only way I knew to get what I needed, and the next afternoon found myself in the shrink’s office.
Nothing bad happened. He didn’t get prurient about my sex life or ask for Too Much Information. He was more interested in figuring out why I wanted to have sex. No, really. Apparently being 16 wasn’t enough of a reason. It was a pretty surreal conversation, because there was no way I was going to sit in a strange middle-aged man’s office and say anything like well, I want to have sex with this guy because every time he touches me I feel like my brain is turning inside out and my body is trying to achieve orbit…. I wouldn’t have even talked to my best friend about that, never mind the shrink. But, you know, we had a deal. So I just talked about being curious and I think he ended up assuming that it was some kind of intellectual exercise for me, which maybe didn’t sound so weird in a school like St. Paul’s. I don’t know. We talked for an hour and then I got to go to the infirmary and get my little piece of paper.
And then I had to take a taxi to downtown Concord, NH (not the most progressive community on the planet back in the day) and endure the utter disapproval of the pharmacist. He couldn’t deny me the pill, but he could and did explain how to use it at the top of his conversational voice so that everyone else in line got a real earful.
Ah, the 70’s. Good times.
I’m partly moved to tell this story today because yesterday Nicola gave an interview to a young woman — probably about 16 or 17 — to help with a school project. They had a 20 minute conversation about writing, and how to prepare for a career in writing. It was the first such interview this young woman had ever done in her entire life, if I understood Nicola’s report correctly — so Nicola was also modeling behavior about how to conduct an interview, how to open and close a professional conversation, what kinds of questions might be good. Not “teaching” this woman, just showing her through example and suggestion, and leaving it to her to absorb whatever of those techniques was best for her right now.
It matters how adults interact with people generationally younger. Things rub off. When we’re young, we take behavioral lessons and values lessons from even the most casual encounters — and it matters when the other people involved have more power and authority than we do (which when you’re 16 is pretty much everyone…). The lessons, even the bad ones, stick.
The lesson I took from the shrinking experience was that sometimes being responsible means jumping through hoops that make no sense. That was very instructive, really, because it turns out a lot of life is like that (another grin). And now, looking back, I’m glad I didn’t learn that it was okay to publicly humiliate people less experienced and more vulnerable than me. I hope I never do.
What a brave girl you were! I have to say that it’s wonderful to have a daughter who after all these years still surprises me. (grin)
I have to comment, because this topic came up at work the other day, and I found myself talking to two coworkers in a way that would have been impossible in the Seventies. We were being honest. We’re older, of course, and maybe that helped, but….
I blithely drifted through the problems of teenage sex as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Except, for the most part, I never got any. But the adults around me…
Well, there was this seedy little shop across from my (parochial) grade school that sold girlie magazines. They sold them to me. They also sold condoms. No questions. I think back now and the guy running the place could have been a stereotypic stand-in for the Dirty Old Man. But he didn’t lear—at least, I didn’t think he did—and buying condoms started off as a “normal” experience for me.
I was shy and reserved, too—why I thought I’d ever get to use those condoms, I have no idea (hope, I suppose) because I could barely talk to girls. But curious? Oh, my, yes! And because of the kind of household I lived in (and because of my crippling shyness) my solution to not knowing anything at all about it was to go the the local bookstore and buy a book about it. (I still have the book. 120 pages, Love and Sex In Plain Language) So when dad decided it was time to have The Talk, I already knew what he would say.
That was one of the few times my mother chimed in to the conversation and stunned me. I didn’t quite understand what she said then, but later it made so much sense.
Dad decided, since I understood the “mechanics”, to talk to me about actual lovemaking. He spun a metaphor about playing a musical instrument—with delicacy and skill—which I sort of understood, but….
Anyway, during a lull in this, mom turned to me and said “All that is very well and good, but there’s one thing you should always make sure of, no matter what—-make sure your fingernails are clipped.”
That was it. She didn’t elaborate. She went back to reading her book.
Years later….
Yes, it is very important how adults interact with kids. But often there’s just no telling how or when the interaction will pay off.
My first sexual experience was with a friend of my brother’s. He was twenty. I was seventeen. There was beer . There was vaseline. There was unprepared intercourse. Inexperienced as I was, I decided sex was over rated. Once we were necking in a park. I was wearing roomy jeans and one of my brother’s shirts. I had a short haircut. Some people drove up and he said”stand up so they’ll know your’e a girl.” The thing that made me so angry later was that it took me about a year to get mad about it. This was probably not a good way to learn about sex. Of course, I never discussed this with my parents or any other adult. I finally told my shrink when I was forty two.
Thanks, Mum. Love you!
Mark, hope is a strong force, isn’t it? Makes us do the bravest (and the dumbest) things. And I read that book too!
Ah, Barbara… some people say dumb things all their lives, but for sure we all say dumb things when we are adolescents (and lots of 20-year-olds are). Very sorry to hear about it.