The words ring in my ears today as if they were just spoken. "When it comes to sex, never take no for an answer." Or this: "Look, girls have to say no, even if they want to do it. It's part of being a girl. So if they say no, they're really saying yes. They still really want you to..."
"If she wants to hear that you love her, tell her you love her. If she wants to hear that you'll marry her, tell her you'll marry her. The most important thing is to keep going. Don't stop. If she says no, keep going. If she pushes your hand away, keep going. You only stop if she hits you."
My generation's 'dating etiquette' is now called sexual assault. You can't keep going if she says no. You can't keep going if she pushes your hand away, or if she hits you. Today, guys know that the rules are completely different.
Or do they?
When I mentioned this story to my class recently at Stony Brook, one of the guys looked up at me and shook his head. "It's not 'don't stop until she hits you.' It's 'don't stop until she hurts you'" Time and again, on college campuses, guys told me something similar:
Girls "have to say no" to protect their reputations, they "mean yes, even if they say no" and "if she's drunk and semiconscious, she's willing.
It's really confusing," says Jake, who graduated from Yale two years ago.
I mean, like, really really confusing. On the one hand, like every week you have some dorm seminar or lecture on sexual assault, and like a constant buzz about what's "appropriate" and all, and on the other hand you go to a party on the weekend and it's like everything they said to avoid, everything that is, like, completely illegal and off-limits.
"Like what?" I ask.
Like trying to get girls drunk so they'll have sex with you. Like, I dunno, lying to them, or like telling them how interested you are in them and how much you like them and all, when it's completely not true, and all you really want to do is have sex with them and then get the hell out of there."
"Omigod, the lies we tell," says Bill, his roommate and fellow grad, a big grin on his face.
Like sometimes I can't believe what I've done to get laid. Like, I've said said, "I'll only put it in a little" - can you fucking believe that? Like, "I won't come in your mouth." Like...
At this point, though, Bill begins to look a little sheepish.
Like, well, look, I know this isn't PC and all, but a couple of times I've pushed girls' heads down on me, and like one time this girl was so drunk she was near passed out, and I kind of dragged her into my room and had sex with her. When she sort of came to a little bit, she was really upset and started crying and asked why I had done that. I think I said something like, "because you were so pretty" or some bullshit, but realy it was because, well, because I was drunk and wanted to get laid. And she was, like, there.