Love, Lies, and Fear in the Plague Years...

Despite what the media hipsters say, casual sex is alive andwell among the twentysomething set.

Sex in the '90s is like war. Our leaders keep telling us that it is extinct, yet it is constantly breaking out around us. The illusion of peace is called the New World Order; the illusion of safe sex is called the Post-AIDS Era. In both cases, our teachers are completely out of touch with the real world.

In the world of sex, the editors and feature writers have created--out of wishful thinking perhaps, as well as out of readership surveys and the ignorance that comes from splendid isolation--a completely mythical modern world of sexless twentysomethings.

Why are they so out of touch? The first reason is generational: Serious subjects in the media are assigned to experienced writers, older than the kids in question. The editors of prestigious magazines are often aging youth experts," doubtless very thrusting loins of the '70s hip, liberal, swinging, sexual revolutionary scene." But that was two decades ago. They publish reminiscences of promiscuity and ponderous judgments about the sexual habits of the "younger generation."

I have nothing against anyone of any age. What I do object to is that, in one of the most important debates of our time--the AIDS epidemic and sex--a generation of dinosaurian hipsters sporting Armani suits, cowboy boots, and graying pony tails keeps telling me what my generation is doing wrong.

I am a 26 year-old heterosexual male. I do not presume to write about the sexual habits of teenagers or 35-year-olds. I have read many stories telling me about the sexual habits of my generation that were not representative, so I conducted a sounding--not a poll--of guys and girls in their twenties. This is what I discovered.

Is sex still happening? Yes, no doubt, couples are still having sex. Second, are more people getting involved in serious relationships because they cannot have casual sex anymore? Perhaps, but of all the people I talked to for this article, I could not find a single example of anyone forming a relationship for that reason. Third--and this is the big question mark--are people still being promiscuous? Are they picking up people and going home with them?

A recent column in the New York Times reads: "Chastity gains ground as a social virtue whereby one prefers one's friends to be virgins." The article uses "a random, totally unscientific poll of [the author's] own generation--educated, supposedly liberal people who had some direct experience with the sexual revolution"--to declare that casual sex is not acceptable anymore. On the other hand, an article in New York magazine recently announced 'Sex in the '90s--there's more going on, straight and gay, than you think.'

Frankly, you do not have to venture through the hellish nocturnal odyssey of the club scene to find casual sex. While I agree that casual sex is less acceptable than it was in the Seventies or Eighties, to declare that chastity or virginity are actually fashionable is nonsense.

Truth is the first casualty not only in war, but also in sexual behavior. Here is a true story that neatly sums up the new regime, where lust, lies, and fear are strange companions:

A circle of friends is gathered in a Boston pub. They are young, fresh out of school, but they are not brash; brashness died last year. None of them knows anyone who has died of AIDS, but they are afraid of it. They all know someone who has been fired and they are afraid of that, too: AIDS and the recession dominate the conversation.

Pamela is an ambitious, raven-haired 24-year-old advertising executive from Philadelphia, a feminist who prides herself on being attractive. She dresses in business-as-usual corporate battle suits. Her demeanor says "I don't," and her friends believe her. But that is The Era speaking.

John, a Brooklyn dentist's son, is the same age, educated at Columbia, working miserably hard in a management consultancy firm. He is one of those men who other men ignore because he is frail, blond, and a loner; but women always notice him.

John and Pam have never met before. When the Seventies hyper-disco plays loud, they dance. She runs her hand through his hair; he tries to kiss her, but she pushes him away. Later, she agrees to a drink at his apartment. They kiss again, and this time it leads to the bedroom. Acting on the spur of the moment, neither has time for condoms or mutual inquiries.

But they have known each other for only a few hours, and in "this day and age" (the favorite euphemism for the AIDS era), people do not act this way. Everyone who knows Pam would agree, especially the girls who were at Penn with her: In four years, you get to know someone. She, of all people, never does that sort of thing. Never. But they are all wrong.

More than likely they would not necessarily want the truth. They would want to be reassured that the new natural order has been respected. Pam would probably lie and tell them that nothing happened, and her friends would be relieved.

The next day John tells all his friends about his "conquest." They ask if he used a condom. "Oh, yes," he lies. "Think I'm crazy?" And with that the circle of lies and fear, pleasure, and propriety that is the single greatest distortion caused by the AIDS epidemic is complete. This is sex in the age of death. Of course casual sex is alive and well. Naturally this generation thinks twice or perhaps thrice before they do it, but they still do it. The biggest difference is that they say they are not doing it. This is more than anything a matter of phraseology: A man may say he had great sex with a girl for "a couple of weeks"; the girl may say that she had a "relationship and went out with a guy for a month." But the events described were the same. And many people are still happy to risk it:

Harold is a 27-year-old black cab driver who hails from Las Vegas. A part-time model, he once posed naked for Playgirl He tells me that women, white and black, proposition him all the time.

Harold: 'Sure I do it, man. Why not? Yeah, I always wear a condom, but I do all the ones I can.'

Me: "Every cab driver claims that."

Harold (laughing): "You don't believe me? You don't believe that even with AIDS they still want it? Well, look at this ." He pulls down the window visor and throws a wad of paper scraps into my lap.

Each has a feminine scrawl on it, with a name and phone number. "And that was only last week," he laughs.

The Fear

Are we afraid of catching AIDS? Of course we are. No gathering of twentysomethings is complete without an AIDS discussion, and without members telling each other that, while they know the risks, they themselves are not in danger.

The subject is dominated by wishful thinking. The prime rule about the fear of AIDS is: the less likely a person is to catch the virus, the more he or she is paranoid about it. Married couples are often inexplicably more afraid than swinging singles. And, recently, men were jubilant to read that, providing they were not gay or intravenous drug users, according to published reports, the woman was far more likely to catch the disease in any case. They were safe, and condoms were unnecessary; the woman bore the risk.

At a cheap Sunday brunch in New York's Greenwich Village, Jim, 25, a lawyer at a middle-size firm, is sitting with Brad, 28, an unemployed architect. Jim: "The basic point is that we can't catch it, unless we're really unlucky, 'cause girls don't sleep with gay guys, right? And anyway, it's almost impossible to catch it from a girl. It's in the Playboy article.'

Brad: "Sure, the whole thing is a myth. The only straight AIDS victims are drug addicts, or people who get infected blood. It's all a matter of statistics.'

But where I live, the "statistics" totter the streets: pale spectres of death, leaning on walking !ticks, with faces made of aged parchment stretched thinly over brittle bones.

Condoms, Class and Looks

To use a condom is the Death of Love; not to use one is Love of Death. But safe sex is the big question: Is everyone using them all the time? No. Is everyone saying they use them? Yes.

The condom is now a fact of life (as is evident in the springing up of drive-thru "Condom Hut" shops-sort of like Fotomats for the sexually active guy and gal on the go), but most women still have no idea how much men hate them, and how they will often do anything-including taking a risk-rather than use one. Many of the guys I spoke to believed the best idea was to sleep with younger girls: less experienced, less risky. The trouble is that teenage cherubs can often have the morals of alley cats.

Greg, a 24-year-old fashion executive, has come up with a different solution: "If I decide that I need to wear a condom to have sex with a girl, I usually won't sleep with her at all. What's the attraction in having sex with a woman who may be carrying a fatal disease?"

Safe sex has given rise to a new set of double standards: Many women, for example, carry condoms in their purses, although the discovery of this treasure trove is enough to terrify any man into thinking his new partner is wildly promiscuous. I myself carry two condoms in my wallet at all times, and the usual reaction from girls when I pull them out is not to commend me for my safety, but to suggest that I obviously frequent "unsafe sluts."

So how do twentysomethings make the safe-sex decision to use a condom? The unpalatable truth is that the decision is often based on class and appearance. Guys and girls often feel the need to use a condom with partners of a "lower class.' Why?. Because they believe-quite wrongIy-that people in lower classes are more promiscuous than those of their own status. (This is ridiculous. You don't have to read Jackie Collins to know that the richer the class, the more debauched its habitues.)

As an example, my friend Paddy, 23, who is from New Hampshire and works as a salesman, was with me one evening last summer in a dance club. A girl he didn't know danced very close to him, and finally they gathered their things and came up to say goodbye. Paddy's face was triumphant, because he was taking her home, and apologetic, because he was abandoning your miserable reporter alone at the bar.

Me: `You'd better use a condom.'

Paddy: (leaning over and whispering in my ear) "No way. She was at Berkeley. She knows Lisa."

The second unfortunate criterion for condoms is looks. Men will generally decide whether they will wear a condom simply by looking at the girl. If she is very good-looking, he will not wear one, choosing to believe that such a gorgeous girl could not possibly have AIDS because she looks so pure and clean. On the other hand, men often go to bed with girls they know, or at least hope, they will never see again.

Women are sometimes just as absurd on this subject as men:

Hope, 29, a married secretary at a stockbroking firm, lives in Brooklyn with her husband, kids, and mother. At the office party, she had sex in the filing room with the firm's very straight, very married legal counselor, 34. When she tells me the story with great pride, I ask the condom question.

Hope: "Come on! He's an attorney from one of the best schools and he's not gonna have AIDS. He's not the ticket."

Of course Hope has no idea what school Mr. Legal Counsel went to.

Euphemism and Inquisition

A whole new language of the AIDS culture has grown up in the last few years: an argot of personal mythology, reassurance, and lies. My generation does not mind discussing AIDS in the abstract (Magic Johnson, Rock Hudson, etc.), but can barely bring themselves to utter the word AIDS in referring to their own personal risks.

For example, no one says "I must be careful because, if I'm not, I might catch AIDS . " Instead, it has become universal to say "In this Day and Age, I must be careful."

Also, among twentysomethings, there are two sovereign phrases of the AIDS regime: "I've never done this before" (which implies "While we are indeed indulging in a so-called high-risk act and not using a condom even though we have only just met, be assured, I am quite safe. Believe me. Oh, believe me"); and "I haven't had sex in six months," which is believable only the first time one hears it. By the fifth, it is clear that either everyone stopped having sex on a specific day exactly six months ago or, mystically, Six Celebate Months (like Twelve Good Men or Seven Deadly Sins) are the symbol of a sexually safe girl in a time of plague.

Even men, who traditionally flourish on the implication that they have had sex with far more partners than they really have, are now halving the numbers which they claim on their scorecards.

The Date as a preliminary to a love affair was another casualty of the Plague Years. The very formality of the traditional All-American Date as the social foreplay before the sexual foreplay has defeated the Date's basic purpose. In this Day and Age, it has become the cover for a game of mutual interrogation of such frosty import (e.g. survival), that the Date is more like a session in the dungeons with the Sex Gestapo rather than a tender dinner with a future lover. (Ironically, the grimness of dating has made casual sex all the more attractive.)

If the stakes were not so high, the ritual would be very comical. The conversation always begins with a vague question from the official seducer (male or female):

"So tell me, how long did you go out with your last boy/girlfriend?"

The answer should be more than three months for any respectability. The next question is: "Oh, really. Hmm, and what did he/she do?"

The wrong answers include drug dealer, rock musician, ballet dancer (for guys), topless dancer (for girls), etc., and can freeze the questioner's belly. Yet he/she goes on to say something like "Sure, but not all dancers are gay/sluts, right?" or "Did he/she live the rock'n'roll lifestyle?"

This is a tougher question than it seems. At that moment, the questioner hopes with all his or her heart and loins to hear the right answer without the slightest vocal doubt. If an answer such as 'Why's it matter?' comes back, the Date ends at once. There is nothing scarier than a person who does not seem to have heard of AIDS and as a result does not really understand why you are asking such odd questions. Maybe, they might rationalize, the questioner is just a geek. So be it. The geek lives longer.

On the other hand, an over-definite answer is equally damning. One such response that sent me running was "I know for a fact that my boyfriend never, ever touched drugs. He promised me. And besides, I of all people would have known, wouldn't I?" Pause. 'Wouldn't I?"

Sometimes the questioning by the Sex Gestapo increases the desire while at the same time ruling out any chance of performance whatsoever. For example, the guy admits that in the Eighties he once indulged in group sex. His date is intrigued by his adventures but simultaneously knows she must not sleep with him. As he talks, she can see Death and Sex balanced in front of her like the scales of justice. Thus people ask and hear more about sexual history now than they did in the past-and it is tantalizing torture.

Girls know that men will never tell them their real number of bed partners for two reasons: one is that they have likely lost count; the other is that, in the age of AIDS, the number may sound alarmingly large. (Oddly, women seem to get asked this question more than men. Yet if indeed it is easier for a female to contract AIDS, they should get asking fast.) As it is, men are more likely to apologetically ask: "By the way, just how many men have you slept with?"

Women have always reduced the number, but never as much as they do now when both death and social morality dictate it. Katherine, a 29-year-old journalist from San Francisco, reports:

"Every girl knows the number, but we can't tell the truth. Even if we're not exactly sleazes, by the time we're my age, we've probably slept with, say, fifteen guys. No, probably more, but we can't admit to more than seven. So the female rule is, Think of the real number and then halve it! But make darned sure it's below ten!"

Bisexuality & the Sex Casino

Male bisexuality is the wild card in the pack. But it is not the joker. Bisexuality is like the 007 code for James Bond: a sexual license to kill by spreading AIDS from the gay to the straight community. The disturbing part is that its existence is often denied, even though I know several girls who have dated guys who have dated guys. Who are these men who seem like strange sinister creatures living secret lives out of a Proust novel?

Eric, 27, lives in L.A. and is an entertainment lawyer. He is as attracted (and attractive) to women as he is to men. Kristin, his beautiful, redheaded model girlfriend, never suspected his bisexuality until they had been going out for five years. Then she broke up with him.

The fascinating thing is the sexual havoc Eric has wreaked at his firm. He has had four affairs at the office, two women and two men. Three were happily married at the time.

Eric: "It's kinda like packing a pistol. I guess the capital thing is the power to throw down anyone, man or woman. It's really a turn-on to have that power. Yet it's also dangerous in this Day and Age. I'm careful. The secret kick is that I feel like a beautiful outlaw riding shotgun across the desert. No one knows about it, thank god, because I'm doing well at the firm. I'm ambitious. The partners say I'm a good attorney."

If orgasm, as the French call it, is the petit mort," AIDS is the Big Death. Death and Sex are indelibly stamped together like a tattoo on the skin of my generation. While the two have been linked throughout history (Winston Churchill's father, the writer Guy de Maupassant, and Al Capone all died of syphillis), the scare has added in some ways a further mystery to the attraction of casual sex. Love in the '90s for twentysomethings has become a game of sexual espionage, with all the drama of cloak and dagger.

Chip is a 26-year-old investment banker, Mr. Straight from an Irish-American family in New Jersey. His fiancee is an accountant in Newark. A month ago he was in L.A. on business. After a tiresome dinner, he met a woman drinking alone at the hotel bar.

Chip: "She was gorgeous, but I knew she was lying to me. She kept saying she was a nurse, that was why she had the portable telephone. I made her show me her I.D. card, but I still knew she was lying. 'What do you think I am?' she asked. 'A call girl or a drug dealer?' It scared the shit out of me. it was two in the morning but she kept going off to call her answering machine. She said over and over 'So you think I'm a call girl?' and then she'd laugh this great, sexy, uninhibited laugh.

"Upstairs in my room she opened her purse and poured out a hundred condoms and a garter belt. It was irresistible. As we made love, she kept saying 'Lies, lies, lies!' again and again. No, she never even mentioned money. She was incredibly passionate. I must say, it was one of the most erotic days I've had since school. Since AIDS. Lies. Lies.'

So whoever keeps telling us that the twentysomethings have given up sex are wrong. We're still having sex, but we're afraid of it, too. We are talking about it differently-confessing our pasts but lying about our presents. No more one-night stands, we say. Condoms are the only way to go, we say. Less casual sex, sure, but we have by no means stopped. Instead, the underground of sexual adventure has become a dangerous sex casino where love, lies, and fear are a perpetual threesome in the bedrooms of America.

Illustration: (TIM GABOR)

Photo: "THIS AIN'T NO PARTY. THIS AIN'T NO DISCO. THIS AIN'T NO FOOLIN' AROUND." THE '90s MATING GAME EQUATES FEAR AND SEX. (PAUL SOLOMON/WOODFIN CAMP)