"For Soyini Forde, being a virgin doesn't mean she's asexual or a prude. The freshman at the University of Tampa admits she recently lied to a guy about her sexual experience to get some action. 'If he knew that I was a virgin, then he might think that I'm this delicate flower or some shit like that. It's happened before. He thinks, Oh God, I'll corrupt her,' says Forde, who dabbles in oral sex and 'dry humping.'"
~~ From an article on hook ups in Link Magazine

Teenagers like to have sex; this is a statistical fact. A 1996 study by the University of California at Los Angeles concluded 53 percent of all high school students have had sexual intercourse; moreover, the respected Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates 80 percent have had sex by age 18, which officially makes you a freak if you're still a virgin for some reason.

It wasn't always this way. A Jan. 25, 2001 article in The Chicago Tribune proclaims that forty years ago only 29 percent of teenage females had lost their virginity; compare that with 63 percent today and you get a clear picture of how far we've come, no pun intended. These soaring sex stats are directly attributed to the popularization of a certain little pill around 1965 and the ensuing Sexual Revolution.

While we don't have time for detailed history lessons, this aforementioned Revolution basically transpired on October 24, 1966 at approximately 8:13 p.m., when two longhaired kids from Creighton, South Dakota named Bodang and Pootack came to the deep and meaningful realization that -- get ready for a deep and meaningful realization here -- girls would actually have sex with them in exchange for marijuana!!

Word of Bodang and Pootack's magnificent breakthrough spread quickly through hippie circles from Coast to Coast, of course, and our parents subsequently recall the late 1960s as a time of Free Love and Beautiful Poetry. Others, however, consider it the Great Massacre of American Morality. For example, 60-year-old Gerard Reed, chaplain and professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in sunny (and apparently ultraconservative) San Diego, California.

"We're now trying -- in schools, courts, hospitals -- to cope with the consequences of the 'sexual revolution' which erupted in the 1960s," Reed says. "Yet we allow movies and TV and womens' magazines and Playboy to peddle their untruths to unsupervised youngsters, who fall prey to the notion that sexual satisfaction abounds in nightly 'hook ups' and uncommitted 'relationships.'"

By the way, the reader should probably note that whereas Bodang and Pootack are obviously historical reconstructions, Mr. Reed is an actual human being. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused; Journalism isn't always the most translucent science.

"Women are sex objects just as nature intended they should be. Healthy, normal guys look at a pretty, sexy woman and they naturally want to make love to her. There's nothing mysterious about it, nothing arcane or evil. They spot a pretty girl and raw chemistry takes over and runs the whole show from that moment until the guy scores with the object of his desires. . . .We become men in a physical sense as soon as we find out about sex and girls and getting laid and testosterone and enormous erections and pudenda and all the rest of it. . . . Variety is good. Get as much as you can."
~~ From The De-Balling of America by Evan Keliher
(Mr. Keliher is a Doctor of Education, has been married for 46 years and proudly served in the Korean War. He is also the author of Grandpa's Marijuana Handbook: A User Guide for People Ages 50 & Up.)

Now that we've adequately (not really) covered the history of teen sex, let's focus on the here and now. As previously detailed, we reside in the Age of Hooking Up, and teen sex is about as common as good-night kisses. What do actual teenagers think about this? Here's an excerpt from a recent interview I conducted with Lisa ________, a typical 16-year-old who doesn't particularly want her last name printed in connection with any of these quotes:

MB: So Lisa, how many times have you had sex?

Lisa: Let's see . . . probably like, three . . . eight . . . eleven . . . twelve . . . yeah, probably like fourteen.

MB: And how many boys have you had sex with in all?

Lisa: Oh God. Hold on, I'm going to count on my fingers. Jerry, um . . . Mike, Casey, Aaron . . .

MB: What was your first time like?

Lisa: Oh God, it was awful. I was really, really drunk and I didn't know what was going on and the guy was just like, "Take off your pants." It wasn't anything special or anything like that. And it was really bad -- he had a really small dick!

MB: How small?

Lisa: I couldn't even feel it.

MB: So like, three or four inches maybe?

Lisa: Probably four. Small.

MB: If you could do it all again, would you have waited longer for your first time?

Lisa: Yeah, I would've waited until it was someone I knew and had feelings for and stuff.

MB: How many of the kids at your high school have sex, would you say?

Lisa: Well, it's a seven through twelve school, and I know a lot of the eighth graders are having sex. I'd say most of the junior and seniors . . .

MB: Why do you think these hook ups are usually accompanied by mass consumption of alcohol?

Lisa: Because it gives you an excuse that next day after it happens. If you hook up with a really ugly guy or something you can just say you were drunk and it's not a big deal.

"Not a big deal," huh? Depends on who you ask. We all know the two big arguments against sex before marriage: Pregnancy and Disease. The general consensus is kids shouldn't have kids of their own (500,000 did last year) and nobody wants hideous bloody pus-filled blisters on his or her genitalia (Planned Parenthood estimates one in four sexually-active teenagers has a Sexually Transmitted Disease).