Like What's Up With Bases Anymore?

The New York Times Magazine Discovers Teen Sex

The decline in dating and romantic relationships on college campuses has been deplored often enough. By 2001, it had become so pronounced that a conservative group, the Independent Women's Forum, was compelled to take out ads in college papers on the East Coast and in the Midwest pleading with students to ''Take Back the Date.'' But their efforts don't seem to have paid off. The trend toward ''hooking up'' and ''friends with benefits'' (basically, friends you hook up with regularly) has trickled down from campuses into high schools and junior highs -- and not just in large urban centers. Cellphones and the Internet, which offer teenagers an unparalleled level of privacy, make hooking up that much easier, whether they live in New York City or Boise.

And yet, still, many date. Or sort of, falling out of romantic relationships into hookups and back again. When teenagers do date, they often do so in ways that would be unrecognizable to their parents, or even to their older siblings. A ''formal date'' might be a trip to the mall with a date and some friends. Teenagers regularly flirt online first, and then decide whether to do so in real life. Dating someone from your school is considered by many to be risky, akin to seeing someone from the office, so teenagers tend to look to nearby schools or towns, whether they're hoping to date or just to hook up.

It's not that teenagers have given up on love altogether. Most of the high-school students I spent time with said they expected to meet the right person, fall in love and marry -- eventually. It's just that high school, many insist, isn't the place to worry about that. High school is about keeping your options open. Relationships are about closing them. As these teenagers see it, marriage and monogamy will seamlessly replace their youthful hookup careers sometime in their mid- to late 20's -- or, as one high-school boy from Rhode Island told me online, when ''we turn 30 and no one hot wants us anymore.''

Regardless of which end of the political spectrum they find themselves on, parents and teen-sexuality experts tend to agree on one thing: hooking up is a bad thing for teenagers. They insist that it's bad emotionally and potentially bad physically. Female adolescents ages 15 to 19 have the highest incidence of both gonorrhea and chlamydia, and according to the latest C.D.C. figures, 48 percent of new S.T.D. cases reported in 2000 occurred among 15- to 24-year-olds. Many of the teenagers I talked to told me that no one they know uses condoms during oral sex, only during intercourse.

''I don't understand the base system at all,'' Jesse said, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. ''If making out is first base, what's second base?''

''We need to establish an international base system,'' Brian said. ''Because right now, frankly, no one knows what's up with the bases. And that's a problem.''

Jesse nodded in agreement. ''First base is obviously kissing,'' Brian said.

''Obviously,'' Jesse said.

''But here's the twist,'' Brian said. ''Historically, second base was breasts. But I don't think second base is breasts anymore. I think that's just a given part of first base. I mean, how can you make out without copping a feel?''

''True,'' Jesse said. ''And if third base is oral, what's second base?''