Teens Try To Find Love Through Sex

It’s just after 10:30 on a Wednesday night, and 16-year-old Michelle has a question.

“Uh, this is kind of embarrassing,” she giggles, then blurts out her query, which amounted to this: Can you paralyze a man by blowing into his penis?

Judy Kuriansky, psychologist, sex therapist, author of the new Q-and-A book “Generation Sex” and host of the radio call-in show “LovePhones,” doesn’t crack a smile.

“Where did you hear that?” she asks.

“My sister. She read it somewhere,” Michelle says.

Dr. Judy explains. No, you can’t paralyze a guy by blowing into his urethra.

“His you-WHAT?” Michelle asks.

And that is how it goes for two hours, four nights a week on New York’s Z-100 and stations around the country that carry the show.

There’s 13-year-old Chris from Ohio, who says he’s only turned on by female characters in comic books and on TV. There’s the 19-year-old who cheated on his fiancee with her best friend, and the 19-year-old who lost her virginity but said she didn’t feel anything, and wonders what she’s doing wrong.

Whether parents wanted to face it or not, many teenagers have always had sex.

The difference, according to Dr. Judy, who has been taking calls from teenagers for 20 years, is that sexually active teenagers are becoming active earlier, and talking about it more openly.

“Radio today is much more explicit now than it was 15 years ago,” she says. “Kids today, from what I sense, are terrified about their future. There’s a sense of meaninglessness and aloneness. ‘LovePhones’ gives them a sense that they’re not alone. They trust us, and we’re there.”

The questions came fast and furious on a recent Wednesday.

The teenagers ask about angle and position and frequency. Dr. Judy tries to get them to talk relationships, respect and commitment.

It’s an uphill battle.

They ask about mechanics. She tries to talk emotion. Young as they are, the teens sound like clinicians, or plumbers - will X fit with Y? And, hip as she is, Dr. Judy sounds like a sap, preaching respect and restraint to an audience that wants to know if there’s anything wrong with getting hot for the family dog.

Blame divorces and remarriages, working moms and absent dads, and kids left home alone. Blame advertisers and TV shows that pump lust over the airwaves and onto the streets, throwing prime-time characters into the sack at the drop of a zipper and slapping half-naked bodies on billboards beside elementary schools.

Blame the cynicism of a generation growing up in a time when sex can kill and jobs are scarce and diamond anniversary-style love can seem as distant as a myth from another planet.

The truth is this, Dr. Judy says: “Kids are being more sexual sooner. They’re looking for love, and they don’t know where to find it, and they misinterpret, and they see sex as love. … I wish they wouldn’t do it. But if they’re doing it already, somebody needs to be honest with them. You can’t just close your eyes and say it’s not there.”