Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Today's Sexual Culture (23 page)

Yet despite the fact that the federal sodomy laws were overturned, some states still try to criminalize gay sex. One way is by keeping the invalidated sodomy laws on the books, in case the Supreme Court reverses its earlier decision. If that occurs, the state won’t have to try to pass new laws criminalizing sodomy. Additionally, eight states still have what are called
crimes against nature
laws. These laws make it a crime to have sex that is not considered “natural.” So what isn’t natural? Well, bestiality and necrophilia are usually on the list. But, often, so are homosexual sex acts, anal sex, and occasionally even oral sex. Though most states understood that crimes against nature laws were invalidated by the passage of
Lawrence v. Texas
, eight states apparently did not. The result is that despite the fact that there are no longer laws that officially make it a crime to have sex with the same sex, some states still try to prosecute gay men and boys for doing so.

There are also, of course, situations where girls are labeled criminals for having sex. One girl, a Georgian named Wendy Whitaker, spent 12 years as a registered sex offender. The crime that got her there? Shortly after turning 17 she performed one act of oral sex on a boy in her class. It was a few weeks before the boy’s 16th birthday, and because she was legally over the age of consent and he was under it, Whitaker was convicted of sodomy and required to register as a sex offender. This designation, and all the accompanying residency, work, and social restrictions, remained with her until September 2010, when a federal lawsuit allowed a few select sex offenders, including Whitaker, to petition a Superior Court judge to gain their release from the registry.

Needless to say, the most common reason girls find themselves facing sex-related charges is not because they have had consensual sex with a younger teen. Rather, most young female sex offenders bear this label after being arrested for prostitution. Despite the fact that it is against the law for an adult to have sex with anyone under the age of consent, if there is an exchange of money—even if it is money that the girl never sees because it is turned over to a pimp who is forcing her into the business—the girl can actually be considered a criminal. In some cases, for example, if the girl is convicted under a crimes against nature law, she can find herself labeled a registered sex offender and receive a far stiffer sentence than her john.

Most supporters of anti–sex offender policies don’t have minor prostitutes, let alone the average sexually active teen, in mind. Many are simply shell-shocked by horrific tales of child molesters and are terrified that a predator may strike at random. Cases like those of Jaycee Lee Dugard (kidnapped at 11 and kept captive for 18 years by a known sex offender), Elizabeth Smart (abducted at 14 and sexually assaulted by a religious fanatic over a period of many months), and Shawn Hornbeck (snatched from his bicycle at 11, also by a sexual predator, and held for five years before escaping) are so horrifying that many people simply want to pass laws allowing us to just lock up the perpetrators and throw away the keys. But while such cases are gruesome, they really aren’t common. This is hard to remember when the news media, politicians, and TV shows like
America’s Most Wanted
(just ending a 23-year run) and
To Catch a Predator
(recently returning after a three-year hiatus) make it seem as if there is danger lurking around every corner. Add to this the fact that no criminals are more vilified than are sex offenders, and you can see how easy it has become to target anyone—no matter how young—who is involved in any behavior identified as a sex crime. This is true even if the illegality of the crime in question is, well, questionable.

It’s not that real sex offenders don’t exist, or that teens can’t commit brutal sex crimes. But the way our legal system treats sex does little to address the real risks. In reality, the majority of sex crimes against children are committed by an adult who is known to the child. The US Department of Justice reports that 73 percent of rape victims know their assailants. For victims under 18, that number rises to an astonishing 93 percent. Additionally, a 2009 study conducted by the National Institute of Justice and Rutgers University found that the ever increasing laws requiring sex offender registration, residency restrictions, and mandatory minimum sentencing for sex crimes have not made a difference in preventing sex crimes against children. These crimes, if New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center is to be believed, are actually decreasing. This think tank discovered that between 1993 and 2005, the rate of reported child sexual abuse fell 40 percent.

But studies like these are ignored by terrified community members and by lawmakers who want to look tough on crime. So, rather than fighting to revamp the system, many people argue for more and more regulations. When these pass, the pool of those affected increases, and legislation designed with hardened criminals in mind gets applied to teens whose activities are significantly less threatening. To complicate matters further, state sex offender laws can trump juvenile offender laws (which generally result in milder penalties, shorter sentences, and sealed records). Moreover, our constitutional guarantee of states’ rights has resulted in numerous situations where a sexually active teen may be doing something that is legal in one part of the country but criminal in another. It is little wonder, then, that minors have found themselves sitting in jail, or saddled with lifetime sexual offender status, for behaviors they honestly didn’t know were crimes.

Think about it in this way: if we assume that kids are too immature to consent to have sex or to view pornography, then how can we possibly turn around and say those same kids have to be held to adult standards when they post a naked picture of themselves online or have sex with a slightly younger peer? Yet in many cases that is exactly what our legal system does. Hypocrisy about teens and sex is nothing new. Continuing to legislate contradictions into law without batting an eye is something else.

Love Grenade

Lidia Yuknavitch

When I first met Hannah in graduate school I was a woman gone numb. I would do anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

Hannah was one of those lesbians who looks like a beautiful boy—hazel eyes, that cool short curtain of hair hanging over one eye, broad shoulders, little hips, barely-there titties. More like M&M’s. Hannah played basketball and softball and soccer when she wasn’t being a Eugene lesbo and English grad student. She used to wait for me by my blue Toyota pickup truck between classes and hijack me and drive me to the coast, where we’d stay up all night getting it on in the back of my truck, drinking Heinekens and waiting for the sun to come up. Then we’d drive back and go to class. Or I would—Hannah thought grad school was kind of lame. She much preferred sex and club dancing.

So when Hannah captured me and my best friend, Chloe, in the hall after our 18th-Century Women Writers seminar, grabbing our wrists and pulling us toward the wall, I already knew it would be something sly. She smiled her sly Hannah smile and whispered, “Wanna go to the coast? I got us a room.”

Chloe blinked so blankly her eyes looked like a doll’s, and I think I coughed academically. But I have to admit it—my crotch went messy pretty much that instant.

Chloe said something about not having enough money or time, and anyway didn’t we have seminar papers due?—to which Hannah said, patting Chloe’s head like a puppy dog, “Don’t worry, I already bought us the weekend, complete with a
kitchenette
,” making Chloe smile as if she’d just eaten chocolate. I said something equally lame-ass, like I have to see what’s up with my boyfriend (I have to see what’s up with my
boyfriend
?), to which Hannah replied, “Really? Is he your
dad
?” and reached underneath the waist of my jeans with her thumbs. Hannah picked at something on the front of my shirt until I looked down like a 12-year-old fucktard and she tweaked my nose, laughing a little Hannah laugh, and then somehow we were on our way to Albertson’s to load up the back with beer and wine and food.

We cleaned out my monthly food stamps buying Gruyère cheese and pickled herring and smoked salmon and those cool not-American chocolate bars with fruit ooze in the center and baguettes, the checkout lady scowling at us like somebody’s mother. And, me being me, we also scored three great filet mignon steaks I stuffed in my pants. To try and recover some semblance of coolness.

Listen, you probably think you wouldn’t, but I’m telling you, if Hannah said get in my truck we’re going to the coast, raising her little trickster eyebrow and putting her hand right underneath your breast and against your first couple of ribs, going,
I dare you
, you’d go.

So there we were, crammed three-way up front in a pickup truck, beers at our ankles, Hannah at the wheel, Chloe in the middle looking a little like our kid, and me with my mane of blond out the window yelling wooooooo-hooooo. Chloe kept squirming between us. I mean, she was talking like normal and laughing like normal but her eyes had little electrical sparks in the corners. I kept looking at her but she kept looking away, or into the rearview.

About Chloe. We met each other in a Women’s Studies class and hit it off right away. She was smart as a whip but not kiss-assy women’s studies smart—her questions always burrowed underneath the obvious and her seminar papers were more thoughtful than mine. A lot. Not only were her eyes the deepest chocolate you’ve ever seen, but her tits were the roundest and fullest, most beautiful tits I’ve ever seen. When I first met her I assumed she was a dyke, mostly because she didn’t have a boyfriend and her hair was cut in a boy haircut and she knew so much about women writers. Also, after about a year we shared a graduate teaching fellow office together and sucked some quite serious face. So we were definitely headed for—something.

That’s a lie. I mean, it’s not a lie—it’s just that I’m telling it as if what was best about her was her hotness. I wish I could go back and tell her how intelligent and beautiful she was. I wish I had been able to understand the two best things about her—that she was loving, and that she was kind. But you don’t get to go back and tap yourself on the shoulder and go,
Hey, fucktard. There’s something big here.
I was busy dramatizing my sexuality.

In the truck with Hannah we were headed for the See Vue Inn. If you’ve never been, you are missing a lez secret hideaway. It’s located on a bluff above a beach full of agates, fossils, and tide pools. Whales migrate within view and sea lions play in the surf. Elk, eagles, and deer are frequent visitors. But that’s not why women go.

Women go because of the themed rooms. The Secret Garden Suite (private garden). The Crow’s Nest (nautical). The Salish (Native American). Princess and the Pea (weirdly medieval). Mountain Shores (rustica). Far Out West (cowgirl). The Cottage (you get the “house” to yourself).

We had The Cottage.

But halfway there Chloe had to pee, so we stopped at a ratty little gas station in the coast range between Eugene and Florence. Peeing women trigger other women’s bladders, so I went into the bathroom with Chloe. Those gas station bathrooms are squalid dumpholes that smell like someone shit air freshener. The floors always have weird black slime on them, the sinks are always stained with something that looks a little like a serial killing, and more often than not the toilet is backed up with either toilet paper or, well, you know. Miraculously, our toilet was not backed up. I tried to break open the crappy machine with the tiny sex toys in it like French Ticklers—no doubt installed for truckers—while Chloe peed.

When it was my turn, as I peed, I looked up and asked her, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Then why are you scratching your mole?” I wiped up and flushed, looking back to see if the water was going down or coming back up at me.

Chloe went to look in the mirror—the glass made her face look kind of Special Olympics. She messed with her hair, pushing her bangs one way, then the other. Her face started to go red.

“Um, are you
sure
you are okay?” I asked.

When she turned around her eyebrows were knitting across her forehead. Then she blurted out, “NO. I am NOT okay. Okay?” Her voice had a tinge of I’m a grown woman trying not to cry in it.

I sat back down on the toilet, which was making a high-pitched water-pipe screeching sound. “What’s up?” I asked.

She closed her eyes. She took a breath and held it in. I hate to say it, but she kind of looked like a Muppet there for a second. I said her name out loud. Then she spilled it.

“I’ve never licked pussy.”

“What?” I said, as if I’d gone deaf.

I sat there staring at her. I looked at the ceiling, the floor with the black slime, then back at her. Was she nervous about having sex with women? It suddenly occurred to me that this was not something I ever thought about. And the reason I didn’t think about distinctions such as this is that I was using my body as a sexual battering ram. On anyone and anything available. In fact, you might say I sexualized my entire existence at that point. It seemed to work a lot like alcohol and drugs. If you did it enough, you didn’t have to think or feel anything but
mmmm, good
.

I looked at Chloe more playfully. “I thought that’s what graduate school was for? I thought that’s why we took Women’s Studies? I thought all women did women in grad school so they could say I did a woman in grad school? ” I laughed. I was kidding but kind of not.

“Shut up!” she spurted at me from her corner of the shithole. “It’s not funny! I feel sick to my stomach!”

This threw me. “Like you’re gonna barf? But why?”

She turned around in a circle or two, scratching her mole vigorously. “I just…”

“You just what?”

“I’m just afraid I’m going to—you know, like, gag or something.”

“You’re afraid you are going to gag? ” I started laughing. I couldn’t help it.