i'm 27 and can't have emotionally detached hookups. can teens?
from the new york times magazine

Friends, Friends With Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall

Jesse wants to meet at Hooters. ''It's 40 minutes from where I live,'' he says, ''but trust me, it's worth the drive.''

Jesse is 15. Surprisingly, there is no age requirement to dine at Hooters. When I call the restaurant to make sure I'm not aiding and abetting teen delinquency, the woman who picks up seems annoyed I would even ask. ''No, we're a family restaurant,'' she says. So, amid the bronzed, scantily clad waitresses and a boisterous bachelor party, I find Jesse, a high-school sophomore with broad shoulders and messy brown hair peeking out from underneath his baseball cap. Jesse is there with four of his close friends, whom he has arranged for me to meet.

Among them is Caity, a thin, 14-year-old freshman with long blond hair and braces, who says that she is a virgin but that she occasionally ''hooks up'' with guys. Caity doesn't make clear what she means by ''hooking up.'' The term itself is vague -- covering everything from kissing to intercourse -- though it is sometimes a euphemism for oral sex, performed by a girl on a boy. Sitting next to Caity is her best friend, Kate, also 14, whom everyone affectionately refers to as the ''prude'' of the group. Outgoing and attractive, she's had a boyfriend for a couple of months, but they haven't even kissed yet.

In her New England exurban world, where, I was told, oral sex is common by eighth or ninth grade, and where hookups may skip kissing altogether, Kate's predicament strikes her friends, and even herself, as bizarre. ''It's retarded,'' she says, burying her head in Caity's shoulder. ''Even my mom thinks it's weird.''

Just a few weeks ago, Caity and Kate met a cute boy at the mall. ''Me and Kate walked into this store,'' Caity says, ''and this boy saw the shirt Kate was wearing that says, 'Kiss Me, I'm an Amoeba.' So he was, like, 'That's an awesome shirt.' And she was, like, 'Want me to make you one?' So he went and got Sharpies, and she went and got T-shirts, we met back there and then he said to me, 'You want my screen name?' So he wrote it on my arm. He just got his license, so he came up, and we hooked up.''

I ask Caity if that's it, or if her hookup might lead to something more. ''We might date,'' she tells me. ''I don't know. It's just that guys can get so annoying when you start dating them.''

Adam, a 16-year-old sophomore at the end of the table, breaks in, adding that girls, too, can get really annoying when you start dating them. A soccer player with shaggy blond hair and a muscular body, he likes to lift his shirt at inappropriate times (like now, to the Hooters waitress) and scream, ''I've had sex!'' Adam has had the most hookups of the group -- about 10, he estimates.

When he lived in Florida last year, he lost his virginity to a friend who threw a condom at him and ordered him to put it on. ''Down in Key West, high-school girls are crazy,'' Adam said. ''Girls were making out with each other on the beach. Lesbians are cool!''

While Adam and Caity denied it, there was a thick fog of sexual intrigue that surrounded their friendship -- and a few weeks after our dinner at Hooters, Jesse sent me an online message notifying me of a hookup in the making between Adam and Caity. They were planning to go over to Jesse's house and ''mess around.'' As Jesse explained it, Adam told Caity he didn't want a relationship, and she replied that that was fine, she didn't want one, either.

According to Jesse, Caity set the ground rules. ''Caity told me, 'Adam knows he's not going to get in my pants, but I might get into his.' For now they might just make out, but Caity said that if they hang out a lot more, maybe they'll do more.'' The next day, Jesse messaged me to say that the hookup never materialized. ''Everyone got busy. But I'm guessing it still might happen.''

I first met Jesse online at facethejury.com, one of many Internet sites popular with high-school and college students, where teenagers can post profiles, exchange e-mail and arrange to hook up. (Though facethejury.com, like many such sites, requires members to be 18, younger teenagers routinely lie about their age.) Over the course of several months spent hanging out and communicating online with nearly 100 high-school students (mostly white, middle- and upper-middle-class suburban and exurban teenagers from the Northeast and Midwest), I heard the same thing: hooking up is more common than dating.

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