“Since the school day is winding down, things in the hallway are starting to get rowdy. Jane disappears for
a while and comes back carrying a pint-size girl over her shoulder. 'Now I take her off and we have gay sex!' she says gleefully, as she parades back and forth in front
of the cuddle puddle. 'And it's awesome!' The hijacked
girl hangs limply, a smile creeping to her lips.”
-- Alex Morris in “The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant
High School,” the cover story for New York Magazine,
Jan 31, 2006.
Cuddle puddle — creative, albeit a little gross. Did we teach our children well?
If you haven't read Alex Morris's story, here's the condensed version: A small clique of
16-year-olds who attend New York's Stuyvesant High and call themselves the “cuddle puddle” experiment with their sexuality in the city. Whether they're having safe sex or not is unclear. I suppose we're to assume they are since the author notes that the kids are among “the brightest public school students in New York.” Whether they are gay, lesbian, straight or bi is yet to be determined. They're young experimenters, after all. But more importantly, some have no desire to be labeled.
“These teenagers don't feel as though their sexuality has to define them, or that they have to define it,” Morris asserts. Like Ilia, a senior boy, who as Morris notes in the piece frowns at the use of labels, says, “It's not lesbian or bisexual. It's just, whatever…”
Smart kids with their share of hormones, these students are growing up in a place and time where sex fits nicely between readin' and writin' into a little elective I can't resist calling writhematic. They are, as Morris puts it, “vaguely progressive but generally mainstream kids for whom same-sex intimacy is standard operating procedure.”
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the article is this: the sexual behaviors of the cuddle puddle don't appear to be politically motivated. No one's civil liberties are at issue, and if there's a gay/straight alliance at Stuyvesant, no one is threatening its existence. Apparently, the students are sowing their queer oats simply because they can.
Their agenda then, or lack of it, can be summed up in one of their own frequently used words: “Whatever.”
Times have changed … sort of.
East Boring High School, Ho-Hum Connecticut, 1976: The Wall. It's the place in the courtyard where I hang out with friends, smoke cigarettes and sneak a few hits of grass between classes. We talk about each other, music and our teachers and parents. We also talk about Patty Hearst, race riots and how we'll work to legalize pot when we hit 18, because surely that will bring peace to the world.
Sometimes, Heidi (not her real name), one of my closest friends, will pull a fifth of Jack Daniel's and a pint of Smirnoff out from between the liner and ripped pockets of her snorkel coat, and pass the bottles around low so we can take swigs. She has a whole bar in there, and a pharmacy, as well. If we feel brave, we raise a bottle to a friend's brother, a Viet Nam War vet, who recently blew his own head off.
We laugh, get high and talk about the next time we'll get together to laugh and get high. Some of us leave to go someplace else to laugh and get high. No one ever declares, “We're off to have gay sex now!”
We have gay sex, sure. By “we” I mean the lesbians — Heidi, Maria (not her real name, either) and I. Only gay people have gay sex in my high school.
Back then, my friends and I weren't as open about our sexuality as the kids at Stuyvesant are today, but we were more politically aware, I believe, even without cable news, MTV and the Internet. Some of us were just as selfish, though.
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