American Girls (46 page)

The morning after their party, Rebecca, Sarah, Ariel, Lally, Paige, and Caleb were all sitting on the upstairs front porch around the white iron tables. They were eating bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches and bagels with cream cheese from a deli on Main Street. They had wet hair from showering and were in sweats and hoodies.

It was an overcast day, threatening to rain, and the mood was subdued. They were nursing hangovers with coffee, orange juice, and ginger ale and Advil and food.

Rebecca seemed especially reserved. Her pale green eyes were puffy and tired. She picked at her bagel.

“So I saw you with
Jon,
” Lally said with a little smile. “You were like, Okay, let's make out.” She sounded a bit gossipy.

“Oh,” said Rebecca, smiling back tightly. “That was so like, whatever…We had a good night together. Nothing special. He was a respectable sleeper.”

“You
have
to be a good bed-sharer,” Sarah said helpfully.

“He was good,” Rebecca said, shrugging. “Otherwise I would have told him to go home. But it was late and I felt bad, so I was like, You're fine, you're not gonna cuddle me too much.”

“Don't cuddle me—get the fuck
off
of me,” Sarah said.

“Who else went out with him?” Rebecca asked, looking around. Others at the table had apparently slept with Jon as well.

There was silence.

“
I
went out with him,” offered Sarah.

“I was like, Why not?” Rebecca said. “It was very unexpected. But it happened. It happens when you drink alcohol.” She tried to laugh. “When he went home, he said he was doing the ‘stride of pride,' ” instead of the walk of shame.

“I only had one walk of shame, and I pretended to be coming back from running,” Sarah said.

“Hi!” “Hi!” “Oh, hi!”

There were girls clomping up the stairs to the porch, girls in short sundresses and heels, friends of Haines. They were Courtney, Jessica, Danielle, and Cassidy.

“Why are you all dressed up?” “Oh my God, everyone looks so cute!” “How was last night?” “What'd you do?” The sister squad sat down around the tables.

“We picked up some dudes last night,” said Courtney, a white girl with tawny skin and hair. “We didn't know them. They went to school with Jesse,” another friend of theirs. “One of them was a dickhead. One guy was on the baseball team.”

“This kid went to sleep and woke up with the same hairstyle, how the shit did that happen?” said Danielle. She was a white girl in a low-cut red dress, with long brown hair and a Betty Boop voice. “He's here for the weekend,” she added. She didn't seem excited about it.

Some of them were checking Tinder on their phones.

I asked why they needed to use a dating app on a college campus, where presumably there was an abundance of guys.

“Sororities and fraternities are like a big thing here,” Jessica explained. She was a white girl, athletic-looking, with a blond ponytail. “They meet up, they have their own parties, so it's hard to meet people 'cause guys won't talk to you”—unless you were connected with their frat.

“It's, like, fun to get the messages,” Danielle said. “If someone likes you, they think you're attractive.”

Rebecca had done “Tinder PR” for Sarah, meaning she had chosen guys and messaged them for her, like a social media Cyrano.

“She swipes right on people who are terrifying,” said Sarah.

“It's a confidence-booster,” Jessica said.

“It depends what you want to use it for,” said Rebecca. “If you want to use it to hook up with someone, that's great, but what I've seen is girls complaining about how, Oh, this guy wants to meet up—he wants sex. And I'm like, That's what it's
for.
”

“I'm on it nonstop, like nonstop,” Courtney said. “Like twenty hours a day.”

“All guys are on Tinder,” said Jessica.

“They are,” Danielle said. “And they're so rude. You put up a picture and you get all these comments like, Wanna do butt things?”

I told them how I had heard from guys that they swiped right on every picture in order to increase their chances of matching with a girl.

The girls exploded with laughter.

“Nooooo,” Courtney said.

“Boys will do anything, do anything, to get it in,” Rebecca said grimly.

“Not Caleb,” said Paige.

Caleb looked up from his phone, pretending not to know what was being said.

“My boyfriend's perfect,” Rebecca teased.

“If you have good girlfriends, you don't really need a boyfriend,” Courtney observed.

“But there's a lot of needs your girlfriends can't satisfy,” Rebecca said with a grin.

“A lot of guys are lacking in that department, too.” Courtney sighed.

They laughed.

“We go sex toy shopping together frequently, Rebecca and I,” said Paige.

“We help people pick up their first toys,” Rebecca said, smiling. “Like online. A lot of guys are super-intimidated by your vibrator—not all guys are, but a lot of them are.”

“I need to get a vibrator,” Danielle murmured.

“I have three,” Paige said.

“I have three,” said Courtney. “They're all broken.”

“Oh, Courtney,” Rebecca said, giggling.

They laughed.

“Yeah, like if you're having good sex, you're having a good
life,
and if you're not, you're
not,
” said Paige. She said she wanted to be a sex therapist.

“I took a human sexuality class last semester and fell in love with it,” Courtney said. “I was so excited to go every single week.”

“You guys watched porn in class,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah, we did, but it's not really about sex, it's about yourself,” said Courtney.

“Some people are gonna hate me for this,” said Paige, with her girlish smile, “but I think porn stars are the best type of feminists because I think that they're all about satisfying themselves and their own personal wants and their own personal needs, and they recognize that they're very sexual creatures and that's just such a natural instinct and feeling for all of us; so I think it's so amazing that they get on camera and do what they love and they don't care about the stigmas around being a porn star—they just care about making themselves happy and satisfied, so I think it's just so great.”

I asked her if she knew if porn stars had real orgasms, or were they just performing?

“Oh, it's performance, I guess,” Paige said, “so in
that
way I guess it's not necessarily the best thing but—”

“What's a real orgasm like? Like I wouldn't know,” Courtney said.

They laughed.

“I wish I did,” Courtney said. “I know how to give one to
myself
—”

“Yeah, but men don't know what to do,” Jessica said, as if this were well known. She was tapping on her phone.

“Without [a vibrator] I can't have one,” Courtney said. “But it's never happened” with a guy. “It's a huge problem.”

“It is a problem,” Jessica agreed.

I asked if guys they knew tried to give them orgasms.

“If you're in a relationship they do,” Jessica said.

“They try but it's still like, they can't get there,” Courtney said. “They really just don't know how to do it.”

“They think they're doing something right, but no,” Jessica said.

“I just wanna, like,
experience,
” Courtney said. “It's just so hard voicing what you want. It's so difficult—like, I can't do it.”

“You have to be comfortable,” Paige said.

“I think that you need to have open communication with people,” Rebecca said. “But if they're not down for it, just be like, Okay, I'm not going to do this with you again. But I'm not gonna sit there and not
enjoy
myself. I wanna enjoy myself, but I wanna make sure they're enjoying themselves, too. I would so much rather they
tell
me than just sit there and be like, Oh, this sucks.”

“But how do you say that in a sexy manner?” Courtney asked. “Like does it
have
to be sexy, like”—sexy voice—“Honey, no, that's not working.”

They laughed.

“Like if he's doing something to you and it's not happening, just put your hand there and be like, How about you do this?” Rebecca suggested.

“Just guide them,” said Sarah.

“I'll just text him right now,” Courtney said, pretending to text her hookup partner.

Laughter.

“You have to
praise
them,” Ariel said. She was an early education major. “It's kind of sick, 'cause that's how I learned to get children to do what you want them to do, and it's the same with guys.”

More laughter.

“If it's all, like, negative,” Rebecca said, “like, Ach, this isn't working, you're just gonna feel like crap and it'll be awkward and ruin the moment. Move their hand and be like,
Oh
”—sexy voice—“I love when I'm on top, let me go on top.”

They talked about how ironic it was that “every woman's magazine tells you how to please a man, but they hardly ever tell you how to get them to please you.”

“I've been having sex with the same guy now since the winter,” Courtney said, “and he
still
hasn't given me an orgasm.”

“You need to talk to him,” Rebecca said.

Courtney said, “I think it's because he's always like”—determined bro voice—“I wanna make you come! And then I'm like”—anxious face—“I have to come now! How'm I gonna fucking come like that?”

They roared.

“What about your vibrator?” I asked.

“I broke it,” Courtney said.

Bigger laugh.

“Has he used it on you?” asked Rebecca.

“Mmm-hmm.” Courtney sighed.

“You need to get a new one,” Rebecca said. “Or how about you can use it on yourself while you're with him and then you can use it together—so it's not like
you
doing it.”

“Can you make your body
depend
on a vibrator to have an orgasm?” Courtney asked. “Wouldn't it be great if you could just have them without it?”

“Some women have them so easily,” Jessica said, snapping her fingers, “and other women don't.”

“Fuck the girls that can orgasm like five times without even touching!” said Courtney.

“Apparently it
does
happen,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “I think they're faking. That's the other thing—faking is so annoying sometimes.”

“Guys can sleep around, and either way they're gonna have an orgasm,” Rebecca complained. “They're gonna come, and it's gonna be great; but they don't realize it's harder for us.”

“I get really tired of faking,” Sarah said. “My question is—can they tell? 'Cause sometimes when it's actually happening”—that is, when she was having an orgasm—“they
can't
tell. Once he actually gives you a real orgasm,
can
he tell? It's really useless and annoying that half the time I'm only having sex with him so he can come. I'm really over it at this point. Like, okay, I wanna go back to bed.”

“Sex is supposed to be for two people,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah, sometimes I'm just bored,” said Sarah.

Another laugh.

“I think now women are so much more sexually aware and horny,” Courtney said. “Guys probably think girls
aren't
horny, but we are just as horny or even hornier, 'cause we can't satisfy ourselves as much as they can. It's harder to, but we need to do it—it
needs
to happen.”

“An orgasm a day keeps the stress away,” Rebecca said, smiling.

“I think men have a skewed view of the reality of sex through porn,” Jessica said. “Because sometimes I think porn sex is not always great—like
pounding
someone.” She made a pounding motion with her hand, her face intense.

“Yeah, it looks like it hurts,” Danielle said.

“Like porn sex,” Jessica said, “those women—that's not, like, enjoyable, like having their hair pulled or being choked or slammed. I mean, whatever you're into, but men just think”—bro voice—“I'm gonna
fuck
her, and sometimes that's not great.”

“Yeah,” Danielle agreed. “Like last night I was having sex with this guy and I'm a very submissive person—like, not aggressive at all—and this boy that came over last night, he was hurting me.”

They were quiet for a moment.

Eve didn't come out of her bedroom all morning, and when she finally did, she was quiet, padding around the kitchen, making food. She wore no makeup. Her hair was in a ponytail; she was wearing sweatpants and a pair of glasses. She seemed different from the girl of the night before, the brassy girl in the cocktail dress.

Her friends went off to a frat party in the rain, and she sat alone at the kitchen table eating pasta. She never said where she went the night before or what had happened or with whom; she just said that she was “taking a day to herself.” She'd been in her bedroom all day watching
Game of Thrones.

She started talking about how the show was “very pornographic.” “It's funny some people look down on porn,” she said, “and then they like a show like
Game of Thrones.
Our whole society has become like porn. Nobody wants to look at that.”

I asked her if she thought, as Courtney did, that porn was affecting the way people had sex. She said she didn't know; “but a lot of guys are just into their own pleasure,” she said. “They don't know how to satisfy the girl, or they don't even try. That's why I don't get the whole one-night-stand thing. I don't believe in one-night stands strictly for the reason that you will almost never find a guy that has you in mind in that situation. It's for him and for him only. We,” meaning girls and women, “are a lot more complicated, that's just the way we're designed, and so for someone to take the time to respect that and let both parties be pleased—like that rarely ever happens with a, Oh yeah, I'm drunk, let's go.

“It's not like we have to go get married now,” Eve said, “but why do you want it at all if it's not going to be equal? I don't understand.

“But I couldn't tell you what it is that I'm actually looking for,” she went on. “I'm just glad that it's accepted now for people to say that, like, this is not what it's supposed to be. I don't want to say that hookup culture is wrong, but—yeah, it's just not working.”

She'd had one serious relationship, she said, a boy from high school she dated through college. It ended when the boy became physically violent, she said, punching a hole through a window when he was drunk, “obliterated. I know he never would have touched me” in a violent way, she said, “but when I say I have zero tolerance for something, I'm not fucking around.” She told him, “Walk out of my life and never turn around and look back.”

She'd been on one date in college, she relayed with a wry smile. “That was like my one glimpse into dating life, and I thought, like, Wow, if only this was the norm. This was like the diamond that will never come again. That incenses me.” The boy had borrowed his friend's car, picked her up, and driven her to Main Street, “and we went out to dinner, and it was just so refreshing. Awkward as hell because I'd never done it before, but it was a real-life thrill. I was like, Holy shit, how do I look? Like I couldn't plan on what I was going to say to him…It's not like texting…Like you're here, this is live, this is now. I need that. I want that. But that doesn't happen anymore. People asked me about it afterward, like, What was it like? And it was like…” Her voice trailed off. “It was nice.

“I'm hoping so much that when I leave college and go into the adult world, that it kind of happens again,” she said. “In my head I think it's coming. But then I know it's not. It's been so long since that has been the norm that no one wants to be the one to just go ahead and do it. But what I think is funny is, this guy who did ask me out on a date got moved up so high on my list. And I wish boys just realized, like, you know, you could actually be getting so many more girls if you went about this in a different way.” The boy who took her on the date and she didn't wind up going out. “But at least I had the chance to get to know someone without just hooking up,” she said.

“Do we even know how to fall in love anymore?” Eve asked. “Do we even know what being in love is? Will we ever get there because we have such a screwed-up notion of what it should be, or how you should get there?…Everyone wants love,” she said, “and no one wants to admit it.”