Maybe the fact that they don't have a definable agenda as it pertains to sexuality — other than please me, me, ME! — is a good thing. I mean, if these students say “whatever” then maybe their kids will say “whatever” instead of trying to pass discriminating legislation. Not the best scenario, but definitely not the worst. Maybe what they're not doing will be more effective than anything the HRC or GLAAD will do in the years ahead.
Maybe not.
The kids at Stuyvesant are caught up in a sexual revolution of sorts, where the battle cry might as well be, “The Kama Sutra in Every Backback!” And on the face of it, there's nothing wrong with that. But what's the point of a movement that isn't moving in any real direction?
It's not a movement, you say? They're just riding the waves of a movement? Okay, I'll buy that. Let them feast at the trough! Enough queers have starved. But in return, may I ask that they pay it forward? May I ask that they think about the world as if they affect it, not as if the world only affects them?
The free-love/whatever attitude of the cuddle puddle and other “vaguely progressive” teens is, well, lame. It's absent of glory. Like a circle jerk, it's self-aggrandizing.
Try to forgive this pot for calling the kettle black, but the ghost of Graham Nash is haunting me, singing:
And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
Maybe I'm asking too much from kids so young, but it's hard to see them as teens when they're behaving like twenty-somethings. Take cuddle-puddler Jane, for example. She told Morris, “I've made it my own personal policy that if I'm going to give oral sex, I'm going to receive oral sex.”
Good for Jane! Let's also hope it's good for the dental dam industry. But I wonder if it's occurred to Jane that the nonchalance with which she announced her fellatio exchange policy was afforded her by people who actually give a damn and aren't afraid to say so.
Jane and the others have an opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of gays and lesbians who will remain queer long after the SATs and who can't politically, socially and economically afford to say “whatever.”
If they never step up, it'll probably be a while before we know for sure if the cuddle puddle is actually doing a disservice to those who have no choice but to care. But in the meantime they should at least stop lying to themselves. As another student, Elle, reveals, they care more than they want to admit.
Elle told Morris that she, “kissed five people and, like, hooked up with two going beyond kissing. One of them was a boy and one of them was a girl. The reason I started hooking up with the guy is because he was making out with this other guy and he came back and was like, ‘I have to prove that I'm straight.' And I was standing right there. That's how it all began.”
Only people who care have something to “prove.”
The students of Stuyvesant might continue to say “whatever” well into college, but as they'll undoubtedly discover, there are no do-overs in Adultland. There they will say “whatever” a lot less, because almost everything will have meaning. And they will care. They will care a lot. Some will also have regrets.
Such is life.
So go on, cuddle-puddlers, have your fun, but please play safe and remember what some of us forgot: Teach your children well.
Kim Ficera is the author of Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: An Unonventional Life Uncensored. Her bi-weekly column Don't Quote Me is dedicated to all the folks in and out of Hollywood who talk without thinking or who don't know when to stop talking. Email her at kim@kimficera.com .
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