On the table were a couple of big pots of steaming liquid Swiss cheese and baskets of bread chunks. There were maybe twenty of us sitting on the floor around a low table in Sybil's family room. Erica and I decided to go to her Ne w Year's party at the last minute for two reasons - one, because that's when she invited us, and, two, we had noth¬ing better to do. I don't know Sybil that well since she lives in Summit and we live in Westfield. I'm not sure that either explanation is 100 percent right but generally Erica is very good at analyzing people. Erica says this is because of Sybil's fat problem and her need to feel loved - the getting laid part, that is. She told me herself, the last time she was visiting her cousin, Erica, who is my good friend. and has been laid by at least six different guys. My Guilty Pleasure is edited and produced by Ellen Silva. on the subway recently, I could feel the guy beside me skimming over my shoulder. What's so shocking about that? I may have come for the scandal, but I stayed for the feminist lesson. At its core, it's about female teenagers who make responsible birth control choices - who, when they're ready, have sex on their own terms, instead of for the gaze or approval of men. What shocks me is that in the age of sexting, Bristol Palin and online porn, Forever. I'm 28 now and I know couples my age who can't communicate as well about their hopes, their fears, their families and their foreplay. There is real, awkward, friendly intimacy between the main characters in Forever. I was under the covers with a flashlight, listening for footsteps on the stairs. in a single sitting - sometime between my first crush and my first kiss. Courtney Sullivan has written for The New York Times and for the essay anthology The Secret Currency of Love. The resulting bedroom scenes are as detailed as any clueless adolescent girl could hope for. Which led me to look up the word 'speculum.' Which led me to realize that my parents must never see this book.

She goes to Planned Parenthood to get the pill. Katherine and Michael talk explicitly about their sexual desires. There is not a hint of dot, dot, dot here. I'm a freshman at Dartmouth.'' Katherine continues: 'Unfortunately, he was also a creep.'Īt the same party, she meets Michael, a fellow high school senior. It was the narrator, Katherine's description of a boy at a party that did it: Once I turned the first page, I was hooked. Had I realized this, I would have read it much sooner. had caused an uproar when it was released in 1975, or that some people called it smut, or that it would go on to be one of the most banned books in America. We met by the tether-ball court during recess and read novels aloud.īy seventh grade, the book club had disbanded.

In fifth grade, I was a member of an all-girls book club.

Books like forever judy blume