remember

scamming? for those of us born in the early 80's and subject to the grunge era in our adolescence, scamming was tight, scandalous, sexy, fun. Tantalizing. Illicit. Tacitly heterosexual-- I would never describe any of my early sexual explorations with other girls as scamming. Exploitive, particularly on the part of the boys, whose focus on scamming was more vehement, focused, insistent than the girls.

For us young ladies, it was this strange invasion; both welcome and reviled, exciting and disgusting; that hardened part of a boy rubbing up against a your leg, or even more fascinating, against that part of you suddenly softened by an unfamiliar heat. I have a comical and slightly frightening memory of being at Josh's house with my friend Melissa when I was 13. Melissa and Josh were "going out," and were sleeping together-- she was 13 and very physically developed, he was 17 and a traditionally immature teenage dude.

It was a summer day, bright and hot in the little Los Angeles suburb where I was raised. We had walked to Josh's from Melissa's, a good three mile trek. She disappeared into his bedroom after we drank beer on the front deck and smoked joints in the living room of Josh's and his little brother's house. Josh's room was furnished with a bunkbed and mismatched comforters. Imagine having sex in a bunkbed. It was probably more comfortable at 13 than it would be at 27.

His little brother was seedy and crass in that gross, desperate teenage way; a dirty little 'stache, messy jeans and hair, red rimmed stoner eyes. He was a boy to avoid, as evidenced by his name-- it was danny, or johnny, something -nny, a diminutive version of his given name, and he was a smaller, less attractive version of his brother Josh. That day he was set on getting at me- from the minute Melissa and I arrived he was working whatever he could to touch me, handle me, kiss me, fondle me.

Something we knew that we should be defending against while also inviting it; that was the only respectable way to go. If one went to far when scamming it could turn against you, your reputation wasn't exactly ruined in that 50's sense, but you were making yourself vulnerable to the pushy expectations of too many young, overzealous teenage boys. That's what Melissa had to fend off, and I was not going to open up that box.