In my junior year I did no dating for several reasons. One reason was that I had no driver's license. My parents had laid almost impossible conditions for my having a car of my own, and they also let me know that I would not be able to take the family car for dates. It was quite important for the boys to either have their own cars, or be able to acquire one at any time it was needed. One could frequently hear a girl saying, "but he doesn't have a car."
Driving and parking
The car was really the focal point of all these relationships. It
naturally followed then that there was a great deal of parking.
Everyone parked and it was for long hours.
When I was old enough to drive, the family car entered into the
picture. This was probably the greatest advance in helping sex
knowledge that ever came along.
In the winter of tenth grade he was sixteen and got his driver's
license. We discovered the new freedom of parking.
"Parking" often follows some other event for which the date was ostensibly
planned-a movie, a dance, or other. When both partners are willing to admit parking
as a mutual motive for dating without another needed "excuse," a new benchmark is
reached in the couple's intimacy. The following case illustrates several points: first, the
recognition of the fact that they need no excuse for parking; and second, the
importance of privacy and a mental state that accepts the intimacy as conditions for
sexual intimacy.
On the way to a friend's party, we took a wrong turn and decided to
skip the party and go parking instead. This was the first time we
ever went parking without the excuse of going on a date first. I
drove off the road behind some trees into a farmer's cornfield where
I was sure we wouldn't be seen. After some perfunctory
conversation we began to engage in typical "parking" activity. I was
soon extremely aroused and emboldened enough to fondle some of
the protrusions and contours of her body that I had been too timid
to touch before. To my surprise she did not ask me to stop, but
silently urged me on... Just as I was beginning to overcome my
trepidation a car approached on the road with its horn blaring, it
stopped and backed up so its lights shone through the trees directly
at my car. Something similar to this soon happened with several
other cars. The party was over. When everything was again quiet,
my girlfriend started the angrily-seductive "I wish we were the only
two people alive" invitation. She was obviously still very aroused. I
was not; the outside world had crept between us. The difference
was my conscience was now beginning to operate. The town, my
family, moral indoctrination, fear of pregnancy, fear of marriage, all
started to creep between my girlfriend and me. Social pressures,
inexperience, and a strongly molded conscience prevented me from
carrying out my first chance at intercourse.
The rented room-hotel or motel-is not a common setting for intimacy among
high school-age adolescents. In the Sorensen study, for instance, no boys reported
hotel or motel as the site of first coitus (Sorensen, 1973, p. 193). However, in the
following case the senior class trip provides facilitating hotel accommodations. The
high school in the United States has been one of the major institutions attempting to
uphold traditional sexual values. But it is too much to ask that the chaperone of high
school-sponsored activities maintain complete surveillance at all times, and
surreptitious occasions for erotic encounters sometimes take place despite the best
laid plans.
I was on the senior class trip, which went to Los Angeles and San
Francisco. When we were in San Francisco we stayed in a hotel;
there were two people in every room. One night, my roommate and
I were awakened around 1:00 A.M. by two girls who were also on
the trip. We had some cokes and played some cards and eventually
we ended up going to bed with these two girls. This was the first
time I had intercourse. This I remember as being one of my most
memorable experiences. We stayed there all night; we did not even
know the couple in the other bed existed. I had no guilt feelings
during or after this experience; no one else knew what happened, so
I did not have to worry about what other people thought. This girl
that I was with told me she was on the pill so I did not have to
worry about a pregnancy...