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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Young readers tell us that real sex is when you don't use a condom, that real love is always hard to find -- and that they don't hate baby boomers that much. Really.
Sep 20, 2002 | [Read Part 1, 2, 3 and 4.]
Real sex is when you don't use a condom
What's it like to be young? I realized this year on my birthday (26) that even though the professional world still regards me as inexperienced and green, I'm too old to be trendy and the only thing I have in common with Britney Spears is a pierced belly button. Basically I'm teetering on the rope bridge that hangs across the generational divide. Wait, strike that earlier statement -- maybe, like Britney, I'm not a girl, not yet a woman. Or maybe I am. What the hell is a woman?
At my age my parents were both on their second marriages and raising four kids. They had careers, well-plotted lives and colorful stories about the fun they'd had when they were young, being that at the ripe old age of 26 they were officially adults. I'm still living in an apartment decorated with my family's cast-off furniture and my houseplants are all dead.
College is over, it was fun and went by in a blur. In fact it ended four years ago. I'm not sure where those four years went. According to my childhood dreams I should be either A) married to Mr. Wonderful, considering children, and working in a phenomenally rewarding job; or B)hiking Mt. Everest while dropping needed food supplies off to starving villagers. Instead I'm dating a truly wonderful guy who lives 1,000 miles away and working a job that I really like, some days.
Sex is a sport. Sometimes you have sex with someone you care about, sometimes you don't. "Real" sex is when you don't use a condom. That's how you know it matters. Otherwise, it's only slightly more personal than a handshake, and usually less sincere. The great guy 1,000 miles away and I have great sex, about once a month when we meet up. Otherwise we cross our fingers and hope the cellphone connection won't fade when we have our daily conversation. Sometimes, when we're both busy, e-mail must suffice.
Relationships defy definition. I've had a string of boyfriends and even a couple of fiancés,. Do you have to have "the talk" to technically be in a relationship? Do you have to have an engagement ring to be engaged? When looking back on these undefined encounters, is it accurate to call it a relationship if it's possible you were only "hanging out" for six months, a year, two years? Why is it that no one takes me seriously when I say I'm seriously involved with someone 1,000 miles away?
I know it sounds like I'm bitching, and I am, but truthfully I'm happy. I take great solace in the knowledge that I'm completely, blissfully normal. All of my friends are just like me. All of their friends are just like me. Even my married-with-kids friends are just as clueless as I am, though it's disheartening for me to know that adulthood doesn't come with the car seat and the mortgage. Maybe someday I'll wake up and be a real grown-up, and that's actually a comforting thought.
Then I see my parents. They're divorced (a few times over), hang out in trendy bars, drink Red Bull and vodka, wear clothes designed for people five years younger than me, date people five years older than me, and get their feelings hurt every time someone implies that they might be -- gasp! -- too old for their current behavior. So I console myself that, young or old, clueless or settled, where I am is where I am and that's where I have to be.
--Rebekah Gleaves
What will we tell our children?
I'm 22. Finished college last year, have no use for my degree in this job market. I see hypocrisy and arbitrary conventions everywhere, and it makes me furious. I imagine it's pretty much how the boomers felt, but my generation refuses to handle it the same way. The boomers tore down illusions but replaced them with nothing (part of me wants to say they replaced them with drugs). After spending 20 years floating around in a void, the boomers gave up and adopted their own versions of what came before. Not totally content, they persist in trying to recapture the earlier freedom. My generation is floating in the same void, but not wanting to give up (or "sell out" in boomer-speak) we are faced with the impossible task of defining human existence for every life decision we must make.
I suppose it's pretty much the same old "why are we here?" dilemma of human existence. My generation, as much as or more than any before it, does not want to predicate our lives on an incorrect answer to that question. But without an answer, how do we go on? What can we expect from each other? What will we tell our children?
It's easy to see why boomers gave up. The uncertainty is almost maddening. The only stronger feeling is that picking the wrong answers just to have answers would be worse. We are also in the unique position of being a smaller generation than the one before us. In the prime of our adulthood, at the point when previous generations took the reins of society, we will be helpless against a giant voting bloc of sold-out, where's my medication, why can't you do things our way geriatric boomers. And we'll be slaves to their Social Security payments.
Isn't it obvious why so many of us don't seem to care? About anything?
-- Matt Rosenberg
