Chapter 5
THE RISE IN DEVIATIONS AMONG TEENAGERS
The newspaper boy had one of the busiest corners in the neighborhood. He was sixteen, a hard working high school junior, and he supported his own needs by daily attendance at the corner, selling the three daily papers issued in that city. Adults knew him and liked him. He was a neighborhood fixture. His appearance was that of the average high school boy, except for one item. He wore a sweatshirt. It bore the inscription "69," and below it, in smaller lettering, "Breakfast of Champions."
Upon investigation it was soon learned that the paper boy's inscribed sweatshirt was not out of the ordinary. The majority of the boys in school wore them. Some had different lettering, but all referred to the number that has become the symbol of deviational sex.
Adults, buying papers from the boy, would notice the sweatshirt, buy their paper, and say nothing. A few would smile shyly. None seemed the least upset that sexual deviations were now brazenly advertised on teenaged clothing. None, it seemed, concerned themselves as to what manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer made profits by plying the lure of sexual deviations upon the young.
An observer of the "Breakfast of Champions" newspaper boy selling his wares was moved to investigate the issues of that day's newspapers, sensing that there might be some comparison between international, national, and local news and the boy with the dirty sweatshirt. Some of the news items of that day pointed up the hypocrisy of our day and our society.
The newspaper contained several articles concerning teenaged vandalism at a city park. Another article told of a fifty-one-year-old man who had killed his forty-five-year-old wife's lover. A number of columns discoursed on the deliberate lies one political party attributed to the other. And there was a considerable spread devoted to a recent court case concerning an obscenity trial, in which the prosecution sought to ban the distribution of an important book on the grounds that it would "corrupt our youth."
And the newsboy, numbered 69, sold his papers.
This anecdote has, this reporter believes, important implications. It describes a flamboyant advertisement by youth of their own disregard for conventions it shows that today's teenagers are not only becoming more deeply involved in sexual deviations, but that they are advertising their activities.
Why? What lies behind it?
"Youth is rubbing his nose at all adults and authority," says Dr. Jacob Kaslimeir, a Toledo psychologist. "All evidence points to the fact that young people today are experimenting more with deviational patterns than at any time during history. We can ask why, then look to ourselves for the answer, for the teenager is the product of adults and adult responsibility. Or adults' irresponsibility."
Teenagers are feeling their muscles earlier these days. The advertising world has helped to make them aware of their power. And buying power soon becomes a sense of other kinds of power. Thus the teenager today, sometimes embittered and hostile, often wishing to vent his fury on an adult world, and frequently given to exploiting and embarrassing the adult world whenever possible, seeks to, and often does, top anything and everything that adults have ever dared to do. "We can do it better, Pop" "You're not 'IN' watch us!" "Man you went out with 23-skidoo."
There is a growing concern among the professionals who deal with teenagers that the upsurgence of deviations among teenagers will eventually rob them of the true joy and beauty of sex.
"If a young person becomes deviationally oriented," says Dr. Mary Skourus, a public health physician, "they may very well gain false impressions as to what true sexual fulfillment really is."
And a Southeastern psychiatrist recently wrote in a Menninger Clinic Bulletin that, " ... the rise in sexual deviations among the young is a part of an increased effort of us all to attain greater thrills, know more responses, different responses, and to, in short, pursue and attain an orgasm that is unreachable, but is, nevertheless, constantly sought."
Is the search for intense orgasm the whole motivation behind the rise in teenaged sexual deviations?
"This is only part of it," stated Dr. Hardy Wilksboro, a criminal court psychiatrist. "Everything in life today is faster, higher, harder, faster, more long-lasting. Play a little game with yourself. Read the advertisements of the day and apply them to your own life. You'll see what I mean. The world of advertising and mass media pretty well tells us what attracts us: speed, sports, girls, etc. So play the game in reverse, read and listen to the ads and see how they fit into our lives. I believe this is the clue to rising sexual deviations among the young. They have to be 'hep' in a world that is getting forever more 'hep.' So kids have to live up to what's said about them. They have to be ultra-sophisticated. They can't let anyone know that they are really children, playing a game of sex of which they have little true understanding. And so kids and deviations are part of the scheme of things today. It's unfortunate the kids are the eventual losers but that is the way things are."
But how do teenagers become acquainted with deviational acts? Do they achieve the thrill they anticipate? Does it blight their lives? The following case histories show some teenagers and their involvement with sexual deviations. Neither space nor attitude allows for a full discourse upon the motivations and personal psychology of the participants. Their cases are presented as a method of communication between our young society and the older society which seeks to understand its children.
CASE HISTORY
Clara was eight years old when she decided to investigate the party-noises in the downstairs rooms. Her mother and father, well-to-do and popular, entertained a lot. This particular night the noise seemed especially high to young Clara. She crawled from her bed to secretly view the activity.
Clara didn't see much. But what she did see, her psychiatrist later claimed, formed a distorted pattern of what sex was, how it was conveyed from male to female, and the meaningfulness of love.
When she reached the bend of the carpeted stairs, Clara crouched down and settled at a point that allowed her a partial view of the activities in the living room. Everyone she looked at appeared to be drunk. This didn't shock Clara. Her family and their friends always drank a lot. But what she couldn't understand was that most of the men and women were only half-dressed. Nudity was for bedtime and bath time! She couldn't understand it. But as she watched the four couples displaced equally around two card tables, she noticed that their loss of clothing had something to do with the cards they played. After a series of cards being dealt out, there would be much laughing, and those who were apparently the losers would discard another item of clothing. Soon nearly everyone was completely nude. Clara wondered what would happen next.
First there was more drinking, then someone placed records on the hi-fi. Couples moved together to dance. Clara wanted to laugh. The people looked so ridiculous dancing without clothes, especially the men and ladies who were fatter than average. But she did not dance. She decided that it was time to return to her bedroom.
Later that night, Clara was awakened again. This time by strange noises coming from her parents' room across the hallway. Quietly, she moved from her bed to the hall. She paused. The noises sounded stronger. She was compelled to continue on, enter the room and investigate the strange sounds, at the same time that something cautioned her, told her to ignore them and return to her own bed.
Clara crept across the hallway. The door of her parents' room was open a crack. Clara pushed it open another few inches and looked inside.
Moonlight sliced through the room. It framed her parents and their activity. Lying crosswise on the bed and in opposite directions, their heads bobbed and shook and moved as if they were dogs burrowing a bone. Clara couldn't understand what it was that they did. She knew that it had something to do with sex and the party that had been held downstairs. She knew, too, that it had something to do with nudity. But she could not understand her parents' role in this strange night drama. It was confusing and a little disconcerting, as if this scene made certain demands upon herself demands that were equally confusing. Clara continued to watch her parents in their love activity. The sounds that issued from both her mother and father confused her too. But soon, fearful that she would be discovered, Clara returned to her own room. She crawled into bed. After a while, she fell asleep.
This was the extent of Clara's spying upon "forbidden sex." She was not persuaded to again view her parents' parties or their own secret activities in bed. Actually, her views of sexual distortions were briefer than those of many children; however, the experience explains a pattern that makes one wonder if Clara, as a younger child, might not have viewed the same, or greater, sexual activities, especially during the early, subconscious-forming years of her life.
Clara began dating when she was fourteen. Unlike many of her girl friends, she was not boy-love-bitten. She was not beside herself with joy at the prospects of dating. And she did not particularly enjoy herself when she did go out with boys. But she did comply with the conventions of her young society. She permitted her date a maximum of petting without "going all the way." She did not experience any arousal within herself. That was to come through the unique means of an older man and a sexual deviation.
As Clara arrived at her early teen years, her parents began to include her in some of their adult activities. She was always in attendance at the Sunday afternoon cocktail parties that had become a custom for her parents. She didn't especially like the events; however, one middle-aged man who was always in attendance paid her a lot of attention. Soon Clara began to look forward to seeing the distinguished looking man named Bradley. And for the first time she felt the ripple of emotions that told of a "crush."
There is every indication that Bradley sought to encourage the fourteen-year-old girl's affection for him. He brought her small gifts and treated her as a man who courts a woman. The others of the Sunday afternoon party group, including Clara's parents, thought the situation was charming, often commenting on it in the presence of Bradley and Clara, saying such things as, "You two really are steadies, aren't you?" and "Better watch out, Clara I can see the glint in Bradley's eye."
Bradley did indeed have a glint in his eye. It was for the girl, and was made up of those complexities that sometimes will cast a man of midlife with a girl of early teens, or even younger. And the glint in his eye told of ambitions. It told, too, of opportunities he would soon create wherein his ambitions would be fulfilled.
Bradley made the opportunity during a weekend party at his own summer house. The usual Sunday afternoon cocktail party crowd attended, including several small children and Clara. She was the in-between age member of the group, too old for the other children, too young for the drinking adults.
(It is interesting that Clara's parents prided themselves on including her in so many of their social activities. Their motivation for this should not have produced pride, a psychiatrist said. Instead, the parents should have recognized their inadequacies as parents, for the inclusion of their daughter in adult, seductive-permissive parties, planted the seeds for their child's seduction, and for the distorted pattern it followed. Their entire life, in fact, worked toward making their child a follower of sexual deviations.)
By early evening of the Saturday that initiated the week-end party, everyone, including Clara's parents, was quite drunk. It was then that Bradley invited the child to explore the land around his summer home. "Who knows what we might find?" he said.
Clara has admitted being thrilled at the prospects of an adventure with the handsome Bradley. She has stated, too, that she had no pre-sense that the adventure would include her introduction to a sexual act.
Hand in hand, Bradley and Clara explored the woods adjacent to his property. Within the woods, it was dark. During their wanderings, Bradley maintained an easy banter with the girl. And she responded in like fashion. Soon they arrived at a clearing. Bradley suggested they stop and rest. Clara agreed.
The first sign that Clara had that Bradley entertained a sexual desire for her and for this day came from his eyes. They could not leave her young body. Constantly, they roamed from the dip of her bra top, to the tightness of the bottom of her play suit, to her long, bare legs.
Clara was not particularly surprised when Bradley initiated a conversation that hinted at the sexual, when he referred to her beauty, and when his body came into close proximity with her own. She was surprised that he kissed her so arduously, however. She had expected hesitation. There was none. He pressed her close to him and plunged his tongue again and again into her fresh, young mouth. And soon his hands were upon her breasts, teasing them into greater fullness and making the ends hard and hurtful and alive with passion.
Clara does not recall the exact circumstances that brought about a change in their postures, but suddenly she found herself fully stretched upon the ground and lying crosswise at Bradley's lap. He held her tightly, was bent over and kissing her hard, but when the embrace ended Clara became aware of something else: Bradley had begun to remove his clothes, and she saw his naked body.
Slowly, gently, Bradley urged the child toward his taking. She did not protest. Something deep within her young body told her that this was the thing to do, that this, fellatio, was the medium of love that she must learn.
Under the guidance of Bradley's hands curled into her hair, Clara, within minutes, became a proficient fellatist. Bradley uttered animal sounds and writhed beneath the fury of her young, hot lips. But it was Clara herself who made the act beneficial to herself. Near the end of her frantic motions, she shifted and wrapped her thighs around Bradley's leg. She squeezed hard and in motion with her bobbing, shaking head. And at the end when Bradley groaned and gave up all that had been churning and pent-up, Clara created a mad scissors grip and experienced the reality of a sexual climax: Somehow, amid a distorted combination of her growth and experience, the fourteen-year-old girl had combined orality with friction-pleasure release.
The next day, Clara and Bradley met for another sexual episode. This time the man attempted to have sexual intercourse with her. Although she allowed herself to be undressed and lay nude with her middle-aged lover, she refused him entrance and insisted upon repeating her fellato endeavors that had been learned only the day before.
And fellatio became the child's pattern. Through the years, with Bradley, other men and a few boys, Clara obligingly committed fellatio, while continuing to reject sexual intercourse. At nineteen, she suffered a nervous breakdown which required hospitalization for over a year. During the year, she participated in sessions of psychotherapy from which her problems were somewhat resolved.
After the patient's release from the hospital, her therapist stated, "Clara, like many young people today, seem to grow up with distorted ideas of the sex act. For some, this becomes the prime means of sexual gratification, often causing deeply-seeded problems to come alive and erupt in the form of emotional stress, a nervous breakdown, or outright insanity."
CASE HISTORY
When the class decided on something new for kicks, it was Vera M. who suggested that they swim nude at the beach of the city park. This was not unusual. Vera was usually the first with any off-beat suggestion.
Sixteen years old, with an impish expression and a wicked figure, Vera was a leader of the young set in her community. She had given up virginhood at fourteen, had "gone steady" with a dozen boys, had been expelled from school for behavior unbecoming a female student, and generally had conducted herself in a manner that awed her parents, school officials, and the juvenile authorities who eventually became concerned with her case. Vera, it seemed, was determined to "top" anything that anyone else could think of for thrills.
The nude swimming episode ended in a police raid which the youngsters escaped. There were many other such incidents until Vera decided that sex alone provided enough kicks for all. It happened on a night when she was dating an eighteen-year-old boy. Another couple double-dated with Vera and her boy.
"What are we going to do tonight?" asked Tim, Vera's date.
"Too cold for swimming," Vera offered.
Everyone roared laughing as they recalled the circumstances of the escapade months earlier.
"I've got a bottle with me," Tim said, holding up a pint liquor bottle.
"Big deal," said Vera.
"Well, it's something."
"Not much. Come on, let's ride around a while," Vera suggested.
The other boy jerked the car into action as Vera and Tim settled deep into the cushions of the back seat. As they moved through the night, dipping into first one drive-in restaurant, then another, hoping to find friends and excitement, Tim pulled Vera close to him. She went willingly, even if somewhat boredly. She allowed his kisses-"sloppy kisses," she called them once and she allowed the intimacy of his hands sliding within her blouse. Vera felt little response. Her emotions were tuned to greater thrills, to excitement that had something to do with teenaged status more than with bodily reactions.
Vera, while she gave herself in embraces, kept observing the couple in the front seat of the car. They sat very close together. Vera could see the boy's right shoulder moving, and she knew that his hand had slid inside the hem of her girl friend's skirt; knew, too, that the boy's hand moved in a stimulating caress. And to Vera it seemed like kid stuff. To her it seemed an admission of youth and inexperience.
It unnerved Vera to see the couple in the front seat, she has claimed. Something within her was challenged, maybe her leadership of the young set, or maybe just because an excitement was being created that she had not herself initiated. And it was this, it was later psychiatrically established, that led Vera to an experimentation with community sex.
Leaning over the front seat Vera suggested that the group find a location where they might "have room for some fun."
One of the boys, Tim, offered his father's fishing cabin if they were sure to clean it up before they left.
Vera ordered that they head immediately for the fishing cabin.
It was very dark when the four young people made their way from the car to the cabin. They crowded around Tim as he boosted himself through a window he was able to open from the outside. And they giggled and jammed into the cabin when Tim opened the front door.
They raided the ice box. They found a halffull bottle of liquor to join Tim's pint. They found some records to play on the hi-fi. They danced.
Something special burned inside Vera this night. She has stated that she felt disposed to "top anything she had ever done before."
She snuggled her body close to Tim as they danced. She slightly ground, then crushed, her thighs against him. She felt his quick response to the action. It encouraged her to burrow closer. And from the corner of her eye Vera saw the other couple dancing in the same fashion. It provoked her competitive spirit.
"Switch partners," Vera called out when the music ended.
She hurried to the other boy and went within his outstretched arms. A new record started. They danced, Vera cuddling close as she had with Tim. And from this new boy she found the same hard response to her closeness. She encouraged it by thumping close, then away, then close again, and she smiled to herself as each new motion brought forth a greater response.
When the record ended, Vera turned around and said to her friends, "It's hot in here. I'm getting rid of some clothes."
The others laughed and shouted their approval as Vera pulled her sweater over her head, boldly revealing the white flesh of her body except for a black lace, strapless bra.
"Good old Vera," shouted Tim. "Always the first to jump into the water." He stripped his shirt from his body, baring a hard, brown chest, which was only lightly sprinkled with hair.
"Yeah," agreed the other girl. "Vera's the leader follow the leader." With that the girl stripped her blouse off.
The other boy shouted, too, then disrobed to the waist. And the four of them resumed dancing. Soon it became a game. At the end of each record, the partners would strip away another article of clothing, change partners, and return to dancing.
Vera, down to nothing but a skirt and the undergarments beneath it, felt the thrill of leadership, even felt that she could get her friends to do anything that she wanted. She was not sure what it was that she wanted, except that it hinted at some exceptional activity. She peeked from Tim's chest and saw the other couple embraced and kissing involvedly. And then she knew that she wanted them to share some community of sexual thrill.
Within fifteen minutes, Vera arranged that the four of them should change partners several times, by the rules, reducing their attire to nothing. Vera made Tim dance close to the other couple. She wandered her hand from her partner's neck to the boy next to her. She gripped him.
"Jeeez," he moaned. "You're wild, Vera."
"Yeah, like a jungle cat," she replied.
She released the boy, then urged Tim, her partner of the moment, toward the fireplace and the bear rug that fronted it. She forced him to a sitting place. Then she turned to the others.
"Over here now," she said. "It's 'nature' time."
"Nature time," Tim repeated. "What's that?"
"That's for doing what comes naturally, and doing it together," she explained.
The boy made a grab for her, saying, "Now you're talking."
She pushed him back. "I said 'together,' and that means the four of us."
When the four of them were seated on the rug, Vera's girl friend looked a little bewildered and said, "I don't quite see how."
"You'll see," Vera told her.
Vera and Tim embraced, stretching long and prone upon the rug. The other couple did the same. The bodies of the four of them touched and thumped from time to time, adding, Vera was sure, to the excitement of the kisses that they traded. Several times Vera felt both the other boy's and her girl friend's body come in contact with her own nakedness. It excited her. And what excited her the most was the fact that she was somehow breaking rules of privacy that had always been obeyed. It moved her to increase the violation. Her hand sneaked out to caress at the other boy's chest, even as he was busy touching and kissing his date.
Breathing hard, Vera broke away from her own kiss and said, "All right, kiddies, let's get original."
She waited as the others' eyes turned toward her. Then, very deliberately, she placed her hands against Tim's chest and pushed him flat on his back. She hovered over him a moment, her breasts dangling downward. Then she began a violent series of kisses upon his body, touching at all of him as she moved constantly lower. And at last she was at his thighs. She paused only long enough to motion to the other boy to come close. When he did, she jutted her buttocks toward him, indicating her wish for his entrance. When his hands were placed on her hips and he had attained a posture on his knees, Vera bent to the oral love of Tim. At the same time she whirled her buttocks. The boy behind her quieted them, then lunged forward. And then the three of them quickly established a rhythm of multiple love.
"Hey, how about me?" the other girl exclaimed.
Vera motioned with her hand.
The girl scampered close, then sprawled in a way that placed herself in direct proximity with Tim's hungering mouth. Then they, too, became joined and the four young people moved as a single unit of giving and receiving, lurching, whirling, bobbing, thumping and thudding and incessantly approaching the crescendo-zoom of outlet that their young bodies demanded.
The frolicsome multiple sex that the young people enjoyed was only the beginning. They developed refinements and innovations, joining other teenagers with them. Within months, the ultra-excitement of deviational sex consumed them, making them forget normalcy and everything but their ambitions for more bizarre sexual accomplishments.
And Vera was the leader. She continued in this capacity until complaints from school and parents brought her to the attention of a social worker who arranged for the girl's psychiatric treatment. The treatment was a long time rejected, and Vera did not know its true benefits until she had suffered a nervous collapse and was hospitalized for many months.
Teenaged Americans are big for thrills and kicks. They drag cars at hair-raising speeds. They play "chicken" with hundreds of horsepower beneath the hood. They constantly seek, it seems, to top in excitement any previous generation of young people. In this endeavor they all too frequently succeed.
Sexual deviations are not confined to the young. Actually, sexual deviations are a product of adults, especially the suburban, the sophisticated, and the bored married couples. But again we must remind ourselves that our children are nothing more or nothing less than reflections of our own patterns, habits, and desires. Because of this, sexual deviations will no doubt continue to attract the young will continue to do so until new standards are established and new examples are set by all adults.