Sex Education in the 80s: Fuck Self-Worth, Just Don’t Get Pregnant
Raised blue-collar and Catholic, I understood the rules.
The summer I was thirteen, I learned alcohol made me desirable.
Pubescent boys pawed my breasts, overeager to explore what they discovered in the centerfolds of their dad’s private stash. Neighborhood teens, too cool to acknowledge me on the block, shoved their hands down my pants on the dark sand under the boardwalk. Men wanted me—beach town college dropouts and career barkeeps, who believed I was sixteen, not thirteen, because of my skill in making them cum with the rapid flick of my wrist.
In the mid to late eighties, in the working-class neighborhoods of second-generation European immigrants, the driving age was seventeen, and the drinking age had just been increased to twenty-one, but sixteen seemed to be a respectable dipping limit for males under thirty. Statutory rape wasn’t a scandal. Consent wasn’t a headline.
We were Catholics. It all started with Eve.
Giving men access to our bodies was the default. It was our origin story.
Refusing would have been as damning as the pious condemnation of promiscuity. Either way, I’d be branded so I chose to be branded and desired.
As a teen, I became an expert at the delicate balance of dosing for the high and avoiding the vomiting and blackouts. My expertise might be overstated given the number of times I woke up from a blackout smelling of vomit.
But, I trusted the street rules.
- As long as I didn’t go all the way, I was fine. It was okay to be a slut, just not a whore. Penetration was the bar for damnation.
- If you gave it up in a blackout and no one found out, and you didn’t remember, and there was no physical proof, then I was still a virgin.
- Don’t give it up to just anyone and don’t get pregnant.
Self-respect wasn’t a priority.
My first real-time was on the top bunk of a boy I dated for a few months, my first boyfriend. I was sixteen. Beer cans lined the window sill, overturned Solo cups stained the carpet, DJ Easy Rock blared from a boom box, and a house full of horny teenagers danced outside his bedroom door.
I told him it was my first time. I believed it was my first time. He had doubts.
There’d been rumors; a football player claimed he scored. That was alcohol’s magic. It blurred the ranks. My chubby thighs and mousy brown hair didn’t put me in the league of jocks, except under the canopy of inebriation. I don’t remember past the fondling and fingering. There were no witnesses, and I’d somehow made it home. I denied the accusation with absolute certainty because, in my mind, it hadn’t happened.
It didn’t matter how many boys and men I’d let probe and lick between my legs. It didn’t matter how many blow jobs or dry humps I gave. Everything but was the eleventh commandment.
I hadn’t fucked anyone—consensually. That’s what mattered.
The condom wrapper fell to the ground.
I was Catholic and a virgin; this was my first real-time.
Teen sex, alcohol abuse, and Catholic “morality”—can you relate? Let’s chat in the comments.
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