Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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My college roommate was dead at 19. So was David. Eric was dead by age 17. Some nights Eric worked till daybreak as a hooker on the Westside piers and then stumbled directly into class. He and I went to Intermediate School together in NYC. He had been hooking since 6th grade.

I knew 14 year old girls who regularly got into Mudd Club, Aria, and Studio 54, picked guys up, and went home with them. And guess what: they weren’t “sleeping”.

Back in those days all us sexually active kids went to a free health clinic for teens called “The Door.” Amazingly, nobody there ever spoke to us about safe sex. They treated kids for all kinds of things - but it was all after the fact.

Most of us learned about condoms from older kids. However condoms were next to impossible to get our hands on because we were “under age”. So unless we stole them, we didn’t have them. Adults were still in the pot smoking, acid rock haze, free love era of the 60’s and 70’s, and were oblivious to the mounting dangers appearing on the streets in the early 80’s.

For me, I’m pretty sure gonorrhea at 17 saved my life: it made me terrified of sex. This was a good thing since, as a kid growing up on the streets of the West Village, I was travelling in some pretty wild circles. If gonorrhea had not rendered me terrified of sex - I’d be dead. I lost some 500 friend and acquaintances to the tidal wave of disease ripping across Manhattan Island in the 80’s.

But here’s the really crazy part. It wasn’t until I was a junior in college that someone finally told me that I could have sex in relative safety if I just wore a condom every time. My “groinecologist”, as my University sexual health clinic doc liked to refer to himself, was a grouchy ex-football coach. He’d patch kids up without pain medication and tell them to suck it up. In fact, he used the physical pain of STI’s to make his point. He said, “always keep peckers wrapped in cellophane and you’ll keep your kitty and your pecker healthy.”

That was my college level safer sex talk.

I say all this to explain why I am so happy to have sex-ed being mandatorily taught in New York City schools. It’s about time that we wake up. 6th graders are having sex. Not all of them for sure, but enough of them. Whether we like it or not, they will find a way to play. We always did. Basements, elevator shafts, train tracks, abandoned buildings. Anyplace just unsafe enough to keep adults away.

Sex is an impulse. Sex is a reality. Kids are having sex. We are finally dealing with this reality head on. Kids need to understand safer sex practices. Kids deserve to live in a world of open sexual communication and embraced sexual diversity. They deserve to discover the importance of regular self pleasure, and deserve to learn the skills, knowledge and tools to say “yes” when they mean yes, and “no” when they mean no.