Chapter 1
There are few subjects that provoke such dynamic reactions as teenagers and sex. To consider the two as they relate to each other in a single work is to court disagreement, for everyone has something to say about adolescents and their sexual patterns. Enunciations are issued from the Vatican, and from the corner grocer, the educator, police administrator, psychiatrist and from the milkman, shop foreman, and barber. Everyone speaks out on youth and sex. And, usually, it is agreed that the two topics warn of a hot mixture that threatens society with perverted values, immorality, and even eventual extinction.
Teenaged Americans are an important force in their nation's total wealth, both economic and emotional. Today's teenagers spend vast sums of money on every imaginable item that is manufactured and sold. They are more affluent than their parents were. They are more influential, too. Advertisers court the members of the "Pepsi Generation" as a solid block of buyers for anything that's new, "in," youthful, bright, or sexually oriented: cars, rugs, Hondas, soap, travel, rent-a-cars everything.
America, more than any other nation, is youth-centered. Until the emergence of the African nations, the United States was the teenager of the world of nations. And, with the muscles of youth, it showed its strength and vigor and leadership. It brought respect to the young. This, remote as it may seem, is important to the present consideration of America's teenagers and their sexual attitudes and behavior.
"It is not unusual that so much is written and said about teenagers and sex today," says Robert Collingworth, Ph.D., a sociologist on the faculty of Michigan State University at East Lansing, Michigan. "When we consider the American teenager, we are really making a self-consideration of our-self and our nation of the things and spirit that made our country what it is or isn't today. Many nations fairly well ignore their youth until maturity, and without too adverse effects. But this is not so with America. Our teenager is cuddled and scolded and analyzed and questioned, much as if he were a suspect insome horrible crime. Why? Because through him we are questioning ourselves; seeking answers for our own. insecurity, our origin and place in the world, both as an individual and as a nation."
And Alberta Peering, 'a well-known Eastern psychologist, claims, "Teenagers today, usually through sex, demonstrate no more or no less than the very principles that have become the foundation of our country. Sometimes these principles largely pleasure-centered are not very pleasant to view, but they are the mirror's reflection of what we are as a nation."
The teenager as a mirror of his nation's sex mores will always be a matter of speculation among professionals. But upon the matter of the teenager's indulgence in sex and its aberrations, there is almost total agreement. The teenager of the 1960's is sexually sophisticated, promiscuous, atuned to sexual deviations, and generally follows a pattern of behavior that is more sexual than that of any group of young people in the world.
What is the reason? There are many. Affluence, says one authority. Parental permissiveness claims another authority of equal reputation. The Bomb, the population explosion, environment, government any number of rationalizations are offered as the reason that young people are as they are today. But, with every authoritative discourse on the subject, there is a counter discourse taking an opposite viewpoint. So the teenager and his sex life continue to confuse and befuddle.
Environment is cited most often as the reason for the teenager's wayward sexual life. Generally, it has been accepted that a deprived environment fosters promiscuity. There are abundant case histories to substantiate this claim. However, there appears to be an equal number of cases of teenage sexual looseness from environments that are not deprived and from the homes of parents who have been the opposite of neglectful or poor.
The following case histories demonstrate the dynamics of the problem from both sides of the question. The cases are taken from those of environmental influence. Each case calls the other a liar as it relates to the cause of teenaged sexual promiscuity.
CASE HISTORY ENVIRONMENT
Tracey Dore was born of an over-privileged family. Her father was a corporation lawyer. Her grandfather and great-grandfather had also followed the law, and the firm of which her father was the senior partner was one of the most successful, and affluent, in the state.
Tracey's mother was socially inclined. She was bright, too, having graduated with honors from an Eastern woman's college. Mrs. Dore considered her family her career, however, and devoted her time to that endeavor. She was also active in civic organizations, an art club, the country club, her upper-status church, and social entertaining. Mrs. Dore considered herself the perfect helpmeet for her prominent husband.
Until Tracey was five years old, the Dores contented themselves with the family residence along the lake of one of the nation's better suburbs. When it became apparent that Tracey was not meant to have brothers or sisters, Mr. and Mrs. Dore decided to build a new residence in the same area. The new house was ultra-exclusive, though smaller than the family "mansion." It was here that Tracey grew up.
A bright child, Tracey did well in school. She was popular with her peers and favored by her teachers and adult associates. She was very pretty, having been gifted with bright blonde hair, round, hazel eyes, a clear complexion, and a mouth that seemed sexually persuasive. Her body, from her early teen years, was that way too. Tracey's breasts were large and mature and the cause of considerable attention from the boys in her classrooms. Her legs were good and lithe, and her hips flared. Merely walking caused every part of Tracey to move in a sensual rhythm. She had the tone of an athlete, too. Her movements were quick and agile: She was possessed of strength.
Although the Dore family was wealthy and influential, they were less given to status symbols and snobbery than many of their neighbors. The Dores were familiar with money and the luxuries it bought. Their wealth was old wealth, in the family for generations. And, better than most rich, busy people, both parents were attentive to their daughter, aware of her activities, and determined that she should grow up a "good," well-adjusted personality. Tracey, quite obviously, thought otherwise.
When Tracey entered junior high school one of the most exclusive in the nation she immediately discovered that boys found her attractive. And she found that she enjoyed them much more than she had anticipated. Tracey had been allowed rare dates from the age of 12, but these were only for supervised parties and outings of the young people of the community. They were not dates, except in the sense that boys asked girls to accompany them to these activities. The Dores permitted a few such "dates." But once in junior high school and having arrived at the age of fourteen, Tracey was overwhelmed with the attention she immediately received from the opposite sex. And she was astounded at the number of activities boy-girl dating activities that were available to the young people of the school. Until this time, Tracey had largely contented herself with many close girl friends, talk about boys, some social activities, church, family, and plans for the future.
Now she became immersed in thoughts of boys this and little else.
Coincidental with her new-found attraction to boys, Tracey began masturbating. The following is the girl's own description of the circumstances surrounding this event. It has been taken from Tracey's first interviews with a psychiatrist who had been retained by the Dore family to curb their daughter's savage appetite for sex.
"It happened in the bath tub," Tracey explained. "I well, I discovered a part of my body that I didn't know I had [clitoris]. Everything seemed to open up for me or maybe it was me opening up to everything else but I'll tell you the feeling I had made me think I was going to faint or die. And I didn't care. I remember thinking that if this was what death was all about, well, I was happy to die even wished that I could die more than once, or maybe repeatedly."
"Did you penetrate yourself during masturbation?" Tracey's psychiatrist asked.
"No," she replied. "I didn't put anything in me, if that's what you mean. I just--just...." (The therapist has explained that Tracey, naturally a fluid speaker, seemed suddenly tongue-tied.)
"Go on, Tracey," the doctor encouraged.
"I just kept rubbing that spot on my body," she said softly, somewhat reminiscently, it seemed to the therapist. "And then I seemed to grow or swell, kind of blow up until I actually did burst, and that was when I thought I was dying or fainting or something like that."
Undoubtedly, Tracey, because of her background, her morality and personal cleanliness, suffered considerable guilt feelings over masturbation. But she could not rid herself of the habit. Nor did she cease it until she found another to share the guilt, to take on the responsibility of her masturbation.
Mr. and Mrs. Dore finally consented to Tracey's dating an older boy from school. He was seventeen. He drove his own car. He was quite handsome. He had quite a reputation around the school as a sexual sophisticate. Tracey kept this information from her parents.
The Dores, who insisted upon meeting the boy, Tom Buffer, were very impressed with his manners. They commented again and again on his courtesy, grooming, and the poise he displayed when in the presence of adults.
Tracey's date with Tom was simple. They went to a show an outdoor drive-in type. Before the first feature was completed, Tom produced a bottle that had been hidden in the glove compartment of the car. He handed it to Tracey. She declined the liquor. Tom did not force the issue. He swigged from the bottle several times before returning it to its hiding place.
Soon Tracey and Tom exchanged intimate kisses. Tom was very expert, and Tracey learned quickly. Within five minutes her tongue had become as deft and piercing and tantalizing as Tom's. .
Tracey has explained that she wanted to appear more worldly to Tom than she really was. And perhaps it was this wish that moved her low in the car seat, that made her tongue shoot more hotly into her young lover's mouth perhaps it was this that made her arch her breasts until they crushed against Tom's heaving chest. Perhaps.
Or perhaps it was merely the natural call of the young and healthy toward the instincts of sexual commingling.
When Tracey first felt Tom's hand creeping up the inner side of her leg and beneath her skirt, she gasped. Then she smothered the new cry that wanted to escape her lips. She smothered it by a strong, responsive tongue-kiss that meant to the boy that would mean to any boy that she loved his aggression.
Tracey did love the feel of Tom's hand upon her inner thigh. And she admired the deliberateness with which his fingers moved, the way they separated panties from flesh in a wide opening that allowed him a full cupping of her body, and it seemed to her that his hold upon her would quiet the pulsation that struck against his fingers. But it did not. Instead, it encouraged heat and yearning and pulsation. And again Tracey muffled a cry as Tom began a light spinning, a caress that was gentler than her own had been, a stimulation that was greater than she had learned to give herself.
Tracey became entranced by Tom's loving touch. So engrossed had she become with her growing, bubbling sensations, that she did not notice the boy's new maneuver. But soon she felt him arch strongly, and then she felt the suddenness of young male passion against her body. Tom was now partly nude. Tracey, by instinct, and by stories that had been related to her by more adventurous girl friends, knew what her date wanted. Slowly, she reached out her free hand. And then she became dazed to the double stimulus of touching and being touched.
"It was like I always thought love should be,"
Tracey has related to her therapist. "It was mutual, you know. like I was loving him and he was loving me at the same time. And then, at the end, when I ... when it was over, well, it was as if I had been melted by love by what Tom had done to me. And I knew he felt the same way. I knew what I had caused to happen to him. It didn't even bother me."
Apparently, Tom had some misgivings about sexual intercourse with Tracey Dore. They dated for many weeks, and during all this time their intimacies were restricted to mutual masturbation. Tracey knew that Tom had had intercourse with other girls. She wondered why he did not persuade her toward the act. She had never given him any reason to doubt that she "would go all the way."
The answer was never supplied for Tracey Dore. Nor, years later, for her psychiatrist. Tom became disinterested in Tracey. He began "going steady" with another, older girl, and he ceased dating all others. At first, Tracey was very upset. She had fancied herself in love with the attractive boy. Now he was gone. And gone before they had fully united sexually. She couldn't understand it.
From the beginning of her relationship with Tom, Tracey dreamed of the moment that they would have sexual intercourse. Although thrilled by the manual love they did know, and brought to climaxes by it, too, Tracey was certain that "real" love would top all thrills she had ever known. When Tom and the chance for it suddenly departed her life, she was left distraught, insecure, and, even for one so young, physically wanting. But not for long.
Tracey became the subject of much dating by her boy school chums. The Dores, recognizing that their child had suffered traumatic reactions as a result of the broken romance, became generous about Tracey's dating habits. They also became less particular about who the boy was who desired their daughter's company.
A high school senior named Bill was the first to date her following the break-up with Tom. They attended a school dance, then drove directly to a lovers' lane section of the suburb.
Bill was different from Tom. He let Tracey know from the beginning that any love-play from him was only meant as stimulation for the act of intercourse itself. And after a half hour of violent tongue kisses, Bill's mouth upon Tracey's breasts, her hands exploring his hard body, and the constant pressuring of their bodies against each other, they were in the back seat of the car, prone, and readying for love-making.
Tracey was not embarrassed when Bill removed parts of her underclothing. Nor did she look away from the quick exposure he made of himself. But she recoiled slightly when he gripped her, adjusted her, then lunged to her youthful giving; she recoiled, even fought a bit, against this act of first entrance and unity. But Bill was an expert lover. He did not hurry after the first contact had been made. Instead, he remained nestled within the cradle of love she had given him. And from this togetherness, the warmth and excitement of joining, Tracey herself began the first hip thrusting movements of a woman in an act of love.
Tracey was disappointed in her first experience with intercourse. She did not achieve an orgasm; the act seemed less than that which Tom's hands had provided. She wondered if love the absence of it for Bill was the cause. She had only a short time to wonder about it, however. Bill, revitalized and vigorous, pressured for a new encounter. Tracey gave it.
This time, feeling, Tracey later reported, like a woman familiar with every aspect of love and sex, she was slower and more consciously aware of the act she was committing. She moved hard, but slowly. She held herself tightly against the young man. And finally, after arching high, she discovered that a new sensation was sweeping her--a sensation that seemed composed of two parts
the fullness of Bill moving upon her, and the friction contact that was being caused at a higher spot of her body that place that had already been responsible for masturbatory thrill. Tracey became inflamed with feeling, mad with longing, tense and taut and ready to unleash all the pent-up fury of young womanhood. She was bloated and full, trembling, stammering incoherent words as her mouth opened at Bill's ear. And she was breathing as he was breathing, hard and raspy and dry.
Tracey's sensations bloomed and exited her body at the exact moment the same experience began for Bill. They thrust and spun and pumped. They mumbled words that were foreign to their ears, words of obscenity, lust, and a heaven-hell feeling. And then they slumped in exhaustion, still entwined to each other.
Both rumor and professional opinion speculate as to whether or not a girl as young as Tracey could become almost totally addicted to sex. Granting the intense psychological problems such a subject would have, many authorities feel that a single sexual encounter would not produce a true addiction for sex, that the process is-likely to be more gradual. But other people who deal daily with sexual problems doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists have known many cases wherein a girl, even a mere child, upon the successful completion of her first orgasm through sexual intercourse, became so consumed with sex and the benefits derived from it that it became almost her total preoccupation. This is the way it was for Tracey Dore.
Tracey didn't even bother to pretend that she was in love with Bill. That, she now knew, didn't matter. She sought his company for one reason alone. Sex. They shared it plentifully. They never failed to achieve the maximum in sexual thrills. They dated steadily until Tracey turned sixteen. Then, for some reason that was never adequately defined for the psychiatrist, Tracey became bored with her schoolboy lover. She did not, however, become the least bit bored with sex.
During summer vacation from school, Tracey attended an exclusive summer camp for wealthy girls. The first night of her residence, she forced a sexual encounter with the senior camp advisor. And from there Tracey jumped off to a multitude of summer sexual experiences, including, for the first time, a departure from intercourse with her introduction to cunnilingus and fellatio. Before her period at the camp ended, she was dismissed for unlady-like behavior. The Dores were shocked. Tracey didn't care. Her interest in parents and home had ceased; her lust was for boys and men and the thrusting of her body to them.
During Tracey Dore's senior year of high school, she became pregnant. Her family sought, and failed to secure, a legal abortion. Then her father used his influential law firm's contacts to find an underworld abortionist. Tracey was aborted, successfully and illegally. Three months later, she was again with child. This time, the Dores did not secure an abortion for their daughter. They referred her to a leading midwestern psychiatrist who, after many interviews with Tracey, decided that it would be best if the girl had the child, then put it up for adoption. Tracey seemed disinterested in the entire affair. She hated only the inconvenience of a growing, bloating body.
During Tracey's psychotherapy and during her pregnancy, she continued to indulge heavily in sexual intercourse and a number of deviations. Sometimes she reported the events to her therapist, sometimes she did not. She rarely sought to gain any real insight into the problems that motivated her to promiscuity.
When she should have been graduating from high school, Tracey was giving birth to a baby girl at a private hospital in a distant state. There is little evidence to indicate that Tracey suffered remorse for the turn her life had taken. She returned to her parents' home and immediately set off on a course of devastating sex. She had it with boys, young men, middle-aged men, and twice with men in their sixties. She, because of her parents' persuasion, returned to psychotherapy, but her part in the treatment was largely a sham. During it, she continued her steady pattern of sex. She had it abundantly, and with almost anyone who sought her.
When she was seventeen, Tracey acquired a venereal disease, was treated for it and cured, returned to the man she had suspected as carrier, had intercourse with him repeatedly, was again infected, again cured, then discovered that she was once again impregnated.
The Dores acted decisively this time. They hospitalized Tracey at an exclusive private mental hospital where she was treated with both drugs and psychotherapy. She left the hospital only long enough to deliver and put up for adoption her new baby. Then she returned to the hospital where she remained in continued incarceration for a period of two-and-a-half years. When she was discharged, it was believed that she had gained sufficient insight into her problems to curb her immense sexual appetite. And she did, too. Shortly after leaving the hospital, she married a promising young lawyer in her father's firm, and at this writing is living a successful, nearly-normal sexual life with her husband.
CASE HISTORY ENVIRONMENT
Kitty Quinn was the offspring of several generations of poverty. Her parents, originally sharecroppers in the South, relocated to the North when Kitty was just a baby. The elder Quinns never really adjusted well to the city. They were distrustful of it, loathed its cement-encased activity, and constantly yearned for a return to the land of their heritage. Kitty seemed a foreigner to her parents. And they to her. Raised in an urban area, the child was as different from the parents as it is possible to be. Sometimes Kitty wondered if her folks were real. She entertained many fantasies about birth and adoption, all of which placed her in a superior role to her parents. Was she perhaps a wealthy girl, lost and taken in by the Quinns to be raised? she would question herself. Would her real parents some day arrive to claim her?
Kitty's fantasies are easy to understand. The Quinns were pathetically poor. The father labored in non-union shops for small wages. His work was never secure. Seldom did he work more than a few months steadily. To supplement the family income supplement in a way that still provided only the merest essentials Mrs. Quinn also worked as a domestic for families in a middle-class suburb. Her wages were meager, and since her jobs were attained through an employment agency, she had to share a percentage of her wage with the company.
During the years when Kitty Quinn was five to ten years of age, she was "watched-over" by neighbors while her parents worked. But after Kitty turned ten, she largely took care of herself and her two younger sisters, ages three and five. Kitty didn't mind being unattended by her mother and father. Actually, she preferred it, for she was a dreamer, and aloneness made opportunities for greater fabrication of the dreams. Without the parents, symbols of her poverty much more than the run-down residence and neighborhood, Kitty's dreams could soar as high as she desired.
When Kitty turned eleven, she began to communicate with boys. Until this time, .she had been shy and introspective. These qualities seemed to disappear coincidentally with the beginning of her menstrual cycle. Then Kitty could not see enough of the boys, talk to them, be with them enough.
The neighborhood offered Kitty an abundance of young male companionship. Many of the children of the slum area were regular truants from school. Many belonged to gangs that ran the streets night and day. And all of them seemed to possess the despondency of poverty, seemed to show in their eyes and manner that there was nothing ahead for them but hopelessness. And all of the children of the streets were ultraoriented to sex. It was the one thing that put them on an equal basis with the affluent and successful.
Kitty Quinn, during her period of psychotherapy, described for her psychiatrist the circumstances of her first encounter with a genuine, sexually-aggressive act toward herself by a boy of fifteen. She was eleven at the time. The anecdote follows and has been developed from psychiatric notes recorded during Kitty's initial therapeutic interviews.
Kitty, dressed in a neat but tattered dress that was much too short for her maturing body, leaned on a fence and watched the neighborhood boys engage in a rather unorthodox baseball game. There was little equipment for the competition. There was also little skill. But there were a great deal of activity and much cursing. Kitty was used to the obscenity it was as much a part of the streets as broken pavement, littered front yards, and deprivation.
While Kitty Quinn leaned on the fence, she was aware that her body was framed between the broken boards. She had considered this at the beginning. She was anxious for her body to be revealed to the boys on the field, all of whom she knew, many of whom she admired a great deal, and a few of whom she had made subjects for her daydreams of love and romance. Kitty noticed how some of the boys glanced at her. She was pleased, and she felt confident, too, for she knew that her body was blooming, knew, too, that the absence of underclothing except for panties was clearly revealed to all the boys because of the light material of her garment.
The baseball game ended unorthodoxly, too. A fist fight developed, endured, then ended, and with it went the end of athletic activity for the day. Kitty continued to linger by the fence. She scuffed the toe of her right shoe against the ground. And then she stopped. A boy, Harry, fifteen, but tall and strong for his age, stopped in front of her.
"Hi," Kitty said at once.
"Hi, yourself," the boy answered. "What did ya think of the game."
"Crazy," she told him.
"Yeah, crazy," he agreed. "But did ya see me hit that long one."
"Was that you?"
"Sure it was me, Kitty," he exclaimed. "You know that. Stop teasing."
"Yes, I saw it," she said, smiling and blinking her long, dark eyelashes.
"What are ya goin' do now?" Harry asked.
"Go home, I guess. It's almost time for the folks to get home from work."
Harry turned and noted the sun setting fast in the west. Then he turned to Kitty and said, "Ah, you got plenty of time yet. Besides, your old lady don't care if you're home on time or not."
Kitty nodded, then asked, "Why should I stay out? What have you got in mind?"
"Thought maybe you'd like to see the Scats' Clubhouse."
Kitty nearly gasped aloud. The Scats were one of the toughest gangs in the neighborhood. She hadn't known that Harry was a member. But she did know that girls were never allowed inside except when the members wanted except when they wanted a girl there for special, sexual reasons.
"The Scats' Clubhouse!" Kitty exclaimed. "Yeah, sure."
"I didn't know you were a member."
"Well, I am," he said. "Joined a month ago."
"Gee."
"Come on, it's a pretty nice dump. I think you'll like to see it," Harry said.
"Are you allowed to take me inside?" she asked.
"A Scat is allowed anything he can manage."
"Is anybody else there."
"I don't know."
"You see, I wouldn't wanta..."
"Yeah, yeah," Harry interrupted. "All you chicks are the same. At the beginning, that is. Come on, let's go."
Harry tucked his hand under Kitty's forearm and pulled her away from the fence. She followed, walking at his side, very aware of his hot touch upon her arm. She felt older than her eleven years. She felt richer than her right, too. Rich in the knowledge that a boy liked her, wanted her, and sought to be alone with her.
The clubhouse was located at the very eastern end of the slum neighborhood. It was a garage, long deserted and taken over by any who claimed and held it against gang aggressors. Presently, it belonged to the Scats. But ownership could change in a single night of fighting. The garage was part of a complex of buildings: deserted store, four-family flat, and a barber shop. The property was totally neglected by the owner. Occupancy of any of the buildings was ignored by the police to a large extent. As long as gang fights and other crimes did not issue from the area, the police were content to leave the area alone, and leave it to those who chose to occupy it. At least, the police reasoned, the property offered a focal point from which they could pick up suspects when they wanted. With a gang clubhouse in the garage, a roundup of suspects for any crime was always easily accomplished.
"Gee, a garage," Kitty exclaimed.
"Yeah, but wait until you see the inside," Harry said excitedly.
Importantly, Harry withdrew a key from his pocket and unlocked the garage door. He pushed it open. Then he walked in, beckoning for Kitty to follow him.
Kitty had a sense of mystery and intrigue when she entered the clubhouse. These were forbidden grounds: She felt a part of it, felt herself as a forbidden being, but one who wanted to be less forbidden.
It was very dark inside. The windows were covered with old draperies, and the structure itself was of the type that made all the interior darker than normal. And the sun had set further in the west.
"Well, what do you say about it?" Harry asked. "I can't tell. I can't see," Kitty explained. Harry grunted, said something unflattering about "chicks" and their eyesight, then went to the corner of the garage and lighted a kerosene lamp.
Kitty looked around. She was surprised that the Scats boys with the dirtiest habits had established a semblance of furnishings within their dwelling. There were seats that had been ripped out of cars and buses. There were many pillows and quite a few straw mats, giving the impression that a Chinese restaurant had known the burglary of the Scats. There were some chairs, most of them of the overstuffed variety with the stuffings sticking out like foam from a bubble bath. The springs seemed solid, though. There was no jutting wire that Kitty could see. There was a rug at one end of the garage floor. It was worn and threadbare.
"Real cool, eh?" Harry asked.
"Yeah, cool," Kitty replied.
She smiled at Harry. He grinned back at her. She again observed how tall Harry was, how he seemed much taller and more attractive since they had entered the garage, as if this place was his dominion and he had grown to fit it. Kitty noticed, too, how Harry's black leather jacket an item that was standard equipment for gang members, regardless of the weather, seemed to glisten in the light. It made her feel strange to look at it. It made her feel hot and charged with recklessness.
Kitty turned away from Harry and walked to one wall where an array of pictures had been hung. She looked at them and felt new heat sweep her body. The pictures were pornographic in the most vivid sense. All of them were of nudes. Many depicted men and women in various love embraces.
"Bet ya never thought the Scats dug art, eh?" Harry said, a little self-consciously.
"Um no," she answered softly, still staring at the paintings.
"We got some new ones, too," Harry said. "Here, I'll show you."
Harry turned and went to a dresser in the corner of the room. He opened the lower drawer and withdrew a packet from it. Then he moved to Kitty.
"These ain't for hanging. At least not yet," he said.
He handed Kitty the packet. She took it and noticed that the dozen pictures felt glossy beneath her fingers, indicating that they were photographs. They were. They, too, were pornographic.
Kitty really did blush when she looked at the first photo. It was of a man and woman performing an act of sexual intercourse. Kitty had seen such photos before, but always in privacy with girl friends or alone. Viewing them in front of Harry made her feel odd. But she dutifully looked at each photo, even the last several which displayed the subjects in postures of cunnilingus and fellatio. Then she handed them back to Harry.
"Great, ain't they?" he said.
"Great," she repeated.
"And it's a cool clubhouse, ain't it?" Harry said. "Real cool," she answered. "Wanta sit down?" She looked around. "Where."
"Any old broken chair will do," he said, grinning.
"I'll take the floor, thanks," she answered. With that Kitty squatted on the floor, burrowing her young buttocks into a straw mat. It pricked. She moved a bit. It still pricked, but she endured it.
Harry glanced at her, rather pointedly looking at her bare thighs, for her dress had crept high above her knees. Then he sat down beside her. Harry looked around, taking in all of the clubroom, then expressed what a psychiatrist later called, "a crude but insight-filled explanation for the reason poverty-riddled children team up, meet in gangs, and establish a 'home' of their own."
"Gee, but I like it here," Harry said. "Even when I'm here all by myself just sitting or sleeping doing anything or nothing. I like it."
"Better than home?" Kitty asked.
He sneered. "Better than any place."
"Why?" she asked simply.
"Because here I'm something more than I am any place else in the world." He paused, looked around, then said, "I feel safe here. Safe. like nothing can happen to me."
Kitty, unmindful that Harry spoke of inner things, of security and the lack of it away from his gang and their possessions, looked around and laughed, then said, "Bet a girl's never been here before."
Harry did not answer. He glanced at the straw mat between his crossed legs.
"Has there ever been a girl here before?" Kitty asked.
"Sometimes," he admitted.
"Oh." She sounded hurt.
"But not like you're here now," he explained. "The girls who have been here well, we've brought them in, if you know what I mean."
Kitty thought she knew what he meant, but she, for-some unexplainable reason, wanted to hear about it from the boy.
"How do you mean?" she asked.
"We brought chicks down here on purpose."
She cocked her head, indicating her lack of understanding.
"Sometimes we stole the chicks from some gang we sliced up," he said softly. "We brought their gals here. For fun." He paused, then as if to excuse himself he added, "Hell, once they were here they didn't mind a bit. Jeeez, you know how the chicks are. They like the winners. Some of them do, anyway."
"But nobody's been here like me before, eh?" Kitty inquired.
"Not by me," he answered.
"But the other guys have brought their own chicks here, eh?" Kitty persisted.
"Maybe. I don't know."
"But you haven't?" she said, pushing.
"Naw."
Kitty seemed satisfied, even a little victorious. She and Harry talked of other things for awhile, then he changed the subject.
"Feel like having some juice?" he asked.
"Liquor?" she asked.
"Naw. Wine. It's all we got right now."
It seems incredible that a girl of eleven should even consider a drink of any alcoholic beverage, but the reader, and all, must remember that the young of poverty are as familiar with drinking and other so-called vices as the average adult of any economic classification.
"Will ya take a drink?" Harry asked.
"Yeah," she answered. "But only a small one. Hell, I gotta get home for dinner." Harry laughed. "The hell you do."
"I do," she insisted. "Since when?"
She furrowed her brow, then she, too, laughed, and in these few seconds the mood of their togetherness changed. Gone was all introspection. Gone, too, were their individual reflections upon the inner turmoils of their lives turmoils that as children they did not understand but which were, nevertheless, present in their beings.
Harry pushed to his feet, went to a refrigerator which stood solemn, without electricity, and minus food in the corner of the garage. He opened the door and withdrew from the inside a half-filled bottle of wine. He brought it to Kitty, carrying it in front of him like some crazy torch bearer out of a surrealistic drama.
"We'll be a little better stocked on grub and drinks after this Friday," Harry explained, squatting on the floor again and placing the bottle in Kitty's lap.
She hesitated a moment, then raised the bottle and took a long swallow of the red wine. When she brought it down, she stifled the urge to choke and handed the bottle to Harry. He drank from it. Then he rested it on the floor between them.
Harry was quiet for a few moments. He seemed to be thinking deeply. Then he said, "How did ya like those crazy photos?" referring again to the pornographic pictures.
"They were kind of dark," Kitty criticized, suddenly feeling very humorous and devilish.
"We may be taking our own pix soon," Harry said as seriously as a businessman discussing a new venture. "The guys figure we can take better pictures than those and sell 'em." Kitty nodded.
"Of course we gotta steal the camera and equipment first," he said. "But we got a heist all planned. There's a big market for crap like that, ya know."
"I suppose," she said.
Harry took more of the wine. When he brought the bottle down, his eyes feasted on Kitty's maturing body. And his look, suddenly candid, caused a reaction in the eleven-year-old girl. She felt a quivering at her breasts and in a moment realized that her youthful nipples had hardened were hard and pressing vigorously against the material of her dress in a way that pointed directly at Harry. She felt flustered. She reached her hand out for the bottle of wine. Harry, still watching her, continuing to rove his eyes over all of her form, handed her the bottle and watched her take a long swallow of the liquid.
"That burns," she said.
"Yeah. Right in the belly," Harry agreed.
"It makes me feel hot all over," Kitty said. She was surprised at her words. They seemed like a confession. And they seemed to come from some part of herself that she had never before recognized, or even knew existed.
"Hell, you think that's good, wait until we get some real booze in here," Harry said. "We got a liquor store lined up shouldn't be long."
"What ya really need is a hi fi," Kitty offered.
"No electricity," he answered unhappily.
"Can't ya get it?" she asked.
"Can't steal that kind of juice, chick," he answered, laughing. "And I doubt like hell the utility company is about to set us up in a garage that doesn't even belong to us."
"I suppose not," she said.
"I know not," he added.
They each drank from the wine bottle again. Now, Kitty felt eloquent and confident. She felt disposed to rise and dance around the room. And she did start to rise, but faltered and stumbled back to the floor. Harry was very quick to catch her. His arms went around her small waist, and he pulled her to him.
Kitty went to the leather-jacketed boy willingly. She was dizzy and he offered steadiness. And, besides, the cool leather of his jacket against her cheeks made her feel comfortable and good. She stretched, resting her upper body in the cradle Harry had made of his arms, and stretching the rest of her body straight out, on an angle that bisected Harry's position.
"You're drunk, ain't ya?" Harry said softly, looking into her face.
"I guess so," she answered.
"You're pretty, you know," he said.
"You're drunk too," she said. ; .
Harry laughed. But only for a moment. Then he stopped. Then he lowered his face and captured Kitty's mouth with his hungry lips.
Kitty had been kissed by boys since she was ten. The kisses, largely, had been implanted by peers of more impulse than practice. Not so with Harry, however. He did things to young Kitty's mouth that made her head swim in a hotter circle of confusion. And his hands were busy while he kissed her. They touched at the young bumps of her breasts they parted the bodice and touched flesh, fingered all of it, tweaked at her small nipples, then dived lower to knead and caress under her dress and at her young, shaking thighs.
When Harry brought his mouth from hers, his hand continued to play at her thighs. They did not pressure or urge for greater closeness. They merely patted and smoothed her flesh, all of which made Kitty think in terms of his tenderness, his gentle ability.
"Didja ever do it?" Harry asked in a husky voice.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Cause I can get knocked up now," Kitty said, staring straight into his eyes. "My old lady said so. I can't let that happen to me."
Harry sighed. Then he said, "Have you ever done anything else?"
"Like in those pictures?" Kitty asked.
"Yeah."
She shook her head. "Will ya?" Harry asked. "I don't know..."
"Please!" he interrupted.
"How," she said, finishing the sentence he had cut off.
Harry sighed again. "I'll show ya."
She closed her eyes and shook her head again, the motion causing her cheek to cuddle deeper into his leather jacket.
"Please," the boy said again.
Kitty did not answer. But she changed her position slightly, just enough, apparently, to indicate an agreement that she could not bring herself to verbalize.
Harry shifted his position too. And he made an adjustment of his clothing. Then, slowly, his fingers laced into the thickness of Kitty's brown hair.
The eleven-year-old girl did not resist this fellatio introduction to sex. By her eyes, her expression, by the mood she cast as she reclined on the floor, poised close to Harry's lap, she seemed a vacuum of feeling, an automaton performing as she had been told to perform, a child of the streets obeying a command of early sex that was stronger, more incapable of denial, than any command from home or school or church.
Kitty was very inexpert as a fellatist. But expertness was not needed for attainment, and in almost no time at all, Harry was lurching, cursing, whipping his body as his fingers tightened in her hair and jammed her closer and closer and closer-jammed her so deeply to him that she could not escape the final volley of his pent-up desire.
Then there was awkwardness. A great deal of it. There was silence between the two young people for a long time, and when they did finally speak, it was as if their words sought to escape the reality of what they had done inside the Scats' Clubroom.
Kitty became Harry's chick. She took her part in gang fights, intrigues involving other gangs, thefts, hijacking, and all the activities of the Scats' and their chicks. And she became a sexual property of the gang as a group-a requirement of any girl who belonged to a member.
Kitty, from the ages of 11 to 14, confined her sexual activity to the membership of the Scats to this and to Harry whenever he demanded. Strangely, Kitty was thirteen before she experienced sexual intercourse. Until this time, she confined herself to fellatio pleasures for Harry and his colleagues. She had attained somewhat of a reputation for this specialty, and it was much sought after by all the boys.
During her thirteenth year, Kitty became pregnant. She sought an abortion and, through the help of the Scats, found an illegal practitioner. She was aborted, but because of an inconsistency of her menstrual cycle she was in a more-advanced pregnancy than she had thought. She hemorrhaged badly, and was finally taken to a city hospital by Harry. She was given emergency treatment, several pints of blood, and eventually was out of danger. It was then that the police began their questioning.
Kitty was loyal to her butcher-abortionist. She did not reveal his identity, not even at the threat of her own imprisonment.
Kitty, upon release from the hospital, was investigated by the juvenile court social agency of the city. The conditions of her life were considered intolerable. By probate court order, she was removed from her home and parents and placed in a foster home of upper middle-class bearing. After three weeks, she fled her foster-daughtership, returning stealthily to her old neighborhood and the Scats. She was able, with the members' help, to hide out for three days before she was apprehended. After a new review of her case, she was incarcerated at a girls' training school from which she also escaped. Kitty's freedom lasted longer this time. She made contact with Harry, and with him fled to another section of the city where they immediately set up business as pimp and whore. Within six months, Kitty was arrested for prostitution, jailed, then returned to the training school. Here she remained for a solid year. She was released, placed in a new foster home and remained there for nearly a year. But it was not a quiet year of rehabilitation for Kitty. She made it her immediate business to seduce both of her foster brothers, one of whom was a year younger than herself. When, through her pregnancy, the facts of her foster-home residence became known, Kitty was placed in a new girls' school that had facilities which enabled her to give birth to a baby son, which was immediately placed for adoption.
During Kitty's tenure at both training schools, she was exposed to sessions of psychotherapy, both in group sessions and as an individual patient with a psychiatric case worker as therapist. It was felt, however, that Kitty Quinn was beyond the ability to gain insight to her problems or to respond in any dramatic way to alleviate the promiscuous pattern of her life.
The promiscuous teenager knows little loyalty to class or economic background. They spawn in every environment. That the poverty-classed are more disadvantaged and more apt to fall into sexual patterns at an earlier age, there is little doubt. But the advantaged youth is drawn to sexual misconduct too, often at a rate that matches that of the underprivileged.
Environment is important, let there be little doubt, but this condition alone does not assure personality adjustment, stability, and proper values. Hostility and rebellion churn in our young in the young of every socio-economic group established in the nation.
The case histories which follow in this book will depict the young in tortuous sexual situations. The purpose is singular to present for better understanding the communications of the young as we seek to understand them and as they in turn look for self-understanding.