Permission To be Promiscuous, Please

Recently, there was a news item about a university study of underage sex. It stated that teens who watched porn were more likely to engage in sex than those who didn't. I couldn't help thinking, there is little else that could be more evident. In other words, duh! If it gets me hot, why not them?

But it was what else the item implied that really caught my attention, that sex among young people today is more pervasive than it has been in the past. As evident as the first finding was, this one was laughable. It seems that with each new generation, there is someone who will profoundly state that sex among the underage is now approaching epidemic proportions. Bull!

Here's the truth. I became a teen in 1956, emerged out of it in '62. During those years, I knew at least three teens who were pregnant, two of them twice. I "copped" my first feel at fourteen, touched the promised land at fifteen, and hit my first home run when I was sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I had had sex with seven girls that I can remember. Maybe more.

And I was not out of the ordinary. Most of the guys I knew had experienced one level or another of sex, and we all pretty well knew the girls who had been on the receiving end. My unscientific guess would be around fifty percent. In those days, there was no pill (although it arrived in that era), and no guy I knew would have had the balls to buy condoms. So for the most part, sex was unprotected. If there is a significant difference between then and now, it is not in the numbers.

The fact is, today sex is much more visible. It is more widely and graphically displayed in the movies and more talked about on TV. It is easier to get your hands on provocative material. But it is no more prevalent. Folks, in my era we were screwing! A lot!

Now in fairness, we never talked in public about it, and for most of us, girls and boys alike, the word, "love", had to enter into the conversation or "she" wasn't likely to do it. But that was just a part of the ritual. We all understood that rule, and you can bet "he" damn well loved her, if only for the moment. In fact many a relationship lasted longer than its natural life just because of that. The words had been spoken, and no one wanted to break that "Vow." But the net result was the same. We were screwing!

And we weren't the first. World War II brought us a flock of kids born out of wedlock, many propogated by boys not yet dry behind the ears, but who found themselves suddenly marching unto war, and with girls who still had braids, but were finding that there was more to bake than just bread. My first wife was one of them, born to a teenage mommy who fell for a young Army lieutenant who just happened to have a wife and kid in another part of the nation.

And the Flapper Era, the roaring twenties when bathtub gin and speakeasy sin ran wild, was certainly not the product of a bunch of virgins, girls or boys. There was plenty of sheetriding during that period.

Simply put, underage sex is not new, nor is it any more pervasive than in generations gone by. It's simply talked about more.

As to the role of porn, it is probable that porn played little or no role in any of those prior times. There simply was none ... at least not as we know it today. There were things like "eight page bibles," little books of graphic cartoons that showed explicit stuff. There were other underground items that people got their hands on that they read. But I found them more humorous than motivating. We all did.

No, my motivation to play Marco Polo under some skirt was because as a fact of nature, my hormones lead me there. Pure and simple. I didn't need a celuloid guide to get me started or for that matter, "her". I knew instinctively that there was something going on under "her" dress that I needed to examine. I needed to see, I needed to touch, I needed to taste. I just knew it. And "she" knew it too.

I'd be willing to bet it was the same before me, just as it is the same today.

So, study if they must, those university people. Discover the obvious, look for reasons that aren't there, and publish them to explain the obvious. But there's only one real explanation for sex ... at any age .... It's the nature of things. It usually hits you when you're a teen.