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Reader Feedback on "Puppy Lust"

From another gal also approaching 30, you took the words out of my mouth. The older we get, the more unattractive and damaged we become. Of course young love is perfect. Even the agony of early heartbreak is more poignant. Mature love is sad and gets too complicated the longer two people's histories are when they are trying to merge.
--KK
06/14

lorelei, i'm new to the internet and to nerve. i'll check it out more. i enjoyed puppy lust. nearing 30 i'm becoming more skeptical of those feelings described being a part of my life again. the other day i told my neice to live it up now cause it's all down hill from here. good night.
--J.S.
08/06

after reading "puppy lust" , i have to say i absolutely understand how you feel. just thinking about the all consuming transcendent love/lust of youth makes me feel like lickin my fingers right now to see if theres any frostin left. id go so far as to say that kind of love isnt even possible for someone after a certain age ( and a certain cynicism sets in ) . older people may bash it,,,, but who are they to decide, after all, everyone makes there own definition of love , there isnt a litmus test for it after all. your article serves pretty well as a jumping off point for my definition as far as im concerned .....
--e-bo
07/27

Perhaps it's because I am reading your recent article with the haze of sleep still over me but your words really spoke to me and made me smile. Your vivid descriptions brought me back to a time not so long ago when my emotions boiled with similar intensity and my mind reeled with the posibilities of love and I wanted to thank you for the brief trip back in time.
--RB
07/23

Hey Lo; I think you said it best by indicating that "you didn't know better" when as a youth you expressed your love. I idolized love so much as a teen that I couldn't even express it. Love was religion, and it had usurped my Catholic mind. I actually stopped being a Catholic because of "sex/love" (there was no real difference to me, except in the case of self-love. Women were goddesses. Pygmalion is a fitting fable to descibe my feelings towards them. It took a while (and a crazy redhead girlfriend) to snap me out of that spell. Contrary to your assesment, I don't see that period as one to live up to. I still love women. My lust for them is as strong if not stronger than my teen years (if you can believe that). My respect for them has also grown, for now I'm no longer clouded by mystery and naivete. The need to communicate has replaced the need to worship. on the other hand, social mores have established rules which adults abide by, and in turn those rules kill spontaniety and true communication. So I say, fuck the rules. The imperfection which you allude to by comparing your current beauty to your unripened self are as absurd as the assumption that no man can live up to your teenage Titan. You will never feel the youthful anxiety as long you hold it as a standard, and attempt to play the same role over and over again using mannequin stand-ins. I sincerely wish you will find a suitable partner, hopefully where you'd least expect it. A pardigm shift will provide you that youthful exhuberance you long for. willseven
--WF
07/23

i've read a few of your articles now, and i just wanted to say that besides being many other good things, they are great writing -- very sharp, economical, and thrilling to read. thank you
--DV
07/23

Forty years, two marriages, and countless lovers later, when I think of love, I still think of high school and parking with Lance on a dark Lover's Lane. You got it exactly right: ". .. it was about experiencing a level of comfort that stripped us of any self-consciousness. It was about feeling the freedom to make complete asses out of ourselves because we were so sure we could never be seen as such in each other's eyes. It was about experiencing our deepest and most vulnerable emotions through our bodies without fear." It has never been so "pure" since.
--LW
07/19

excellent writing; hot, steamy teen love
--mm
07/17

My, my. How you do write Lorelei. Just read your puppy lust article and found the way you string words together to describe such an important time in a young person's life, enchanting. Your narrative was compelling enough to engage my own older but still vivid memories of that time. From his point of view though. Amazing, how memories of details change and are different and even get blurry over time, from person to person. But when lust is the power experience behind these memories, that's where we find our commonality. Everyone recalls those moments with great fidelity. How can anyone say that hot raw sweaty physical sex can not be a spiritual experience when the memory of it is so enduring, indeed, eternal. Thanks for the memories.
--LA
07/17

I have said before that both you and Emma should write more frequently, in addition to your Em and Lo Down advice column. THe first time was after I read Emma's piece on why she doesn't use condoms; it was remarkable for its honesty and self-awareness. I had the same thought after reading your article today. Although I am currently in a committed, adult relationship that is satisfying in many ways, it does not, and probably could not, match the intensity of passion and the purity of feeling that I experienced in my teens. I also love your writing style, how you can mix intellectual analysis with down and dirty descriptions of sex, using words like "fuck" when needed for effect, but not excessively. Is that your real prom picture above the article? I wonder if your former boyfriend reads Nerve, and if so, what he feels today. Fond memories; annoyance that you shared those private moments with the world; or regret at losing someone so sexy and passionate, yet so smart and thoughtful. (If I wasn't involved with someone, I could fall in love with you myself). Keep writing!
--ML
07/16

Thanks for your recent piece! I'm a bit older than you (33) but I remember all too well those days, and I think the reason so many of us, if we would only admit, see our high-school years as a romantic and sexual utopia is NOT the things that we and our partners WERE (young and tight, firm of breast and buttock, energetic, flexible, innocent...), but the things that we weren't. Now, when I enter into a relationship, or even a conversation with a woman I find attractive, I take so much with me--there are so many things that I AM now: I am someone who has lied and been lied to for sex, someone who has awoken in the morning hungover and desperately afraid to turn my head and see who else was in the bed with me, someone who has discussed names for children one day and found a hastily-scribbled Dear John note the next, someone who has traveled a great distance for love and for whom someone has traveled a great distance, someone who... well, you take my meaning, I'm sure. Then, I was so open and unencumbered. I was able to approach with a freshness of vision and lack of defense, and that allowed a real high-bandwidth emotional connection that I despair these days of ever matching. I've had great sex and deep love since my "first," but those early experiences are so vivid... As to the inevitable poopoo-ing of the Church of Mental Health and its high priests, it has some merit. As a society we have a stake not only in keeping down the rates of teen pregnancy but in keeping teens in a state of mystery. Teens must believe that there is a reason to grow to adulthood, and the myth/reality of the shallowness of young love is one those reasons. Somehow, in some way, we so-called adults have to have an advantage. It wouldn't do for a tenth grader to realize and really believe that, just maybe, it really doesn't get any better than this. Regards, and keep up the good work at Nerve.
--PE
07/13

How true, how true...that nothing since has been so true. Today I hold your hand in mourning.
--SS
07/13

What a fabulous article-I was brought back to the days of innocence because thats what first love really is-none of the bologna of the real "grownup" world of jobs and kids and your once tight bod starting to fall after the fourth rugrat-God, do I miss those days. But, on the other hand, it makes me realize that I still feel that way about my hubby and I do believe a shower would be delightful this evening! thanks for the excellent read.
--dam
07/12

Loved it. I hate crying at work and it's the only reason i didn't. You and your site rocks. Thanks for so much.
--DV
07/12

I want to tell you that I really enjoyed the article you wrote titled "Puppy Lust." I agree with the point you made, but the most admirable quality of the artice was the manner in which you beared yourself to the world. That willingness to be vulnerable before anybody and everybody -- well, it takes balls. Congratulations. I look forward to reading more of your articles.
--CC
07/09

I really enjoyed your article about your high school love/lust. It's heady stuff, and I don't buy it when people say young love isn't real. I can offer some proof of that. I'm 32, and last year, married my very first EVERYTHING from high school. We found each other after the demise of our first, miserable marriages. Yeah, reality seeps in and we have our "issues," but he still makes my heart race. Thanks for the article.
--MM
07/09

In my very jealous state of mind I can only say... aren't you fucking lucky!
--TW
07/09

Lorelei, You really struck a chord.......it's so good to hear it coming out of someone elses mouth!I am a fierce believer in the bone rattling, awe-inspiring, dive into my eyes kind of love. I was a hunter of puppy love.........with a strong belief and the intense horniness of adolescent hormones I looked...and looked.Passing through spare moments with others, but never meeting my match.I was toyed with on occassion , as in - I was in love, or they were in love, but never WE were in love.Of course I got older... questioned my sanity after probing friends about their relationships and sex and love, whilst still forging ahead with my defiant beliefs.I'd be in a relationship with all the promising aspects willing to leap into the fire, but something wouldn't match up........usually the sex.I was seriously beginning to think there was something wrong with me and tugged my friends sleeves "what's up with me?", their replies, inevitably were "isn't that just how it is." I was stunned none of them (even though I think everyone wants and looks for it)seemed to believe in love....in being-in-love!Many(many), years later, it finally came my way...when I was 41, no less! Busted me wide open ,threw me for a loop, opened me up.There is nothing like it, even if it doesn't work. I've been vindicated, and it has nothing to do with puppies, and I thrill to the thought that it may, by chance, pass my way again....because, alas, there were different directions to take in our personal lives. We actually had to shut the love off to move ahead! The love is still there, but now I want it all...true love that fits into my everyday life...so I forge ahead. Sometimes I feel like a pioneer, or an explorer.So many folks have given up by the time they reach my age.True love is liberating, and frankly I don't believe it dies. It's just waiting for someone to light the fire and jump into that burnin'ring with equal abandon. Damnit!
--LL
07/07

A friend of mine sent me the link to your article, saying, "THIS is what I want! It almost changed my mind." She's talking about her decision, still intact at 23, to keep her virginity until she's married. Yeah, she's Catholic, but one of the cooler ones that I know, even if she's still under the weight of Catholic guilt in relation to self love. Anyway, we've both become a bit addicted to nerve.com lately and I wrote back to her with something, and thought I would share it with you, so you know someone out there is reading your stuff and has a chord struck:
"Already at 20 I'm starting to feel like she does. I remember things I did with Marissa [my second girlfriend, first experience from second base through home on the sexual diamond] and marvel at my boldness. For 16, a lot of stuff that I did surprises me. She got off in 7 different places in our school thanks to my insistence and unrelenting desire for her. Situations where she was saying No, and non-confrontational me wasn't believing her; I was right for not. I think I loved her more than I thought I did at the time. I see this in the golden glow of hindsight, but there were a lot of wonderful things about her, and she taught me so much without me ever really realizing it until later. I told her I loved her before I was completely sure, but it wasn't too long after I said it that it was completely true."
Thanks for a nice bit of nostalgia on this ho hum day at the office.
--JW
07/06

I loved your story. It recalled to me those times, that feeling...though I must say that for me it continued onward through my early 20's. As I've (alas!) passed the 30 mark I've continued to think long and hard about "love", "sex", "relationships" and their undeniable (and often bewildering) connections. After every failed relationship, I've sworn to commit in the future to just great sex...and yet again and again I've fallen in love, and subsequently into ultimately unfulfilling and suffocating relationships. Your writing led me back to that time when there was no confusion, when every desire, expectation, and experience melded into a perfect harmony of physically expressed emotional shared ecstasy. Thanks.
--JP
07/06

Knowing you probably only get emails from wierdos, I had to nevertheless write to thank you for "Puppy Lust," which touched me very deeply. As something of a late bloomer (by today's standards) I didn't experience this until I was in college, when I fell desperately in love with a freshman girl during my senior year. Attending a very conservative school, I was very nearly expelled over my behavior with her. I don't regret that in the slightest--I would have been proud to be expelled over her. What was furstrating was the way everyone assumed that what she and I had was meaningless, or immature, or somehow less than the Greatest Thing on Earth. That was only about three years ago now, but not a day goes by that I don't think of her. It's actually rather ruined my romantic life, come to think of it, because I constantly compare every relationship with that feeling of TOTAL innocence--a feeling, the betrayal of which, as you said, adults seem to consider the hallmark of a mature ! mind.

Fittingly enough, after I graduated, never perhaps to see her again, I read Milton's PARADISE LOST for the first time. It has been insufficiently noted how sexy PARADISE LOST is, and I found the passage, in book 8, where Adam explains how he felt upon first meeting Eve, to be the only other place I've ever found an understanding or a sensitivity to the purity of that feeling. He says,

I enjoy, and must confess to find
In all things else delight indeed, but such
As us'd or not, works in the mind no change,
Nor vehement desire, these delicacies
I mean of Taste, Sight, Smell, Herbs, Fruits and Flours,
Walks, and the melodie of Birds; but here
Farr otherwise, transported I behold,
Transported touch; here passion first I felt,
Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else
Superiour and unmov'd, here onely weake
Against the charm of Beauties powerful glance.
..when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in her self compleat, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say,
Seems wisest, vertuousest, discreetest, best; All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded, Wisdom in discourse with her
Looses discount'nanc't, and like folly shewes.

--anyway, I'm getting all sappy. Thank you for an excellent article.

--TS
07/06

Just wanted to say that that was *excellent* work! Thanks fer sharin.
--SX
07/06

"An Ass Like a Peach"! Dear Lo, So many asses and so much fruit. Your delightful phrase and story jogged my memory of my 50's teenage years. Many of the courtship rituals you described fit me. The long,long phone calls for one. We both feel asleep on one such nightly call. Thanks old Ma Bell for flat rate service. A dime for a minute or 12 hrs. Of course we didn't do proms since most of us were drop outs and those who graduated were to cool for proms. The backs of cars was still the perenial favorite for sex of all kinds. That's why we had to have our wheels. Puppy love is such a gratutious phrase. The difference between "real love" (whatever that is) is that you lived for the moment. No future, no past, just living in the present. Somewhat Buddist in a micro way. We did not know it then. Your guy seems "too good to be true." Mr. Goodbar with a "porno member." But I knew guys like that except could only sneak a peak at their dicks when diving off the pier at Coney Island on St. Patrick's Day. Homophobes that we were! The girl I remember was Louise Gallo. Her father owned a small grocery store and Louise always had money. We didn't speak of love - just sex and how to spend her money. Louise's father was a tough guy who unfortunately was a bleeder. So when he caught us riding my motorcycle when she should have been in school, he was easily put out of action by a Casius Clay like jab. Louise screaming, "Don't hit him he is a bleeder." He was! I loved your story. We all have our own versions.
--pats
07/05

Hey Lorelei...this is Lindsay your former intern..just writing to say that I thought the story was beautifully written and oddly timely since I just spent a (platonic) weekend with my high school sweetie in Boston. Back to work...
--LG
07/05

Christ Almighty, Lo! Where were you when I was in high school? Why, had I been lucky enough to have met someone like you then, I do believe I would've become a better adult. No less cynical, mind you, just more presentable. So tell me, your Puppy Lust reminiscences, do they emerge from the viewpoint of an emotionally grounded and sexually knowing woman? Or are these from the teen you speaking now years later? Are the two even separable?
--rg
07/05

Wow, this story hits so close to home for me. I'm young and in love (for the first time). It scares me to think that I could lose this feeling of innocence and purity with my bf, but it's worth the risk. I really enjoyed your article.
--st
07/05

lorelei and the pursuit of innocence... "hey babe, listen up. forget about all that psychological mumble-jumble, the first cut's the deepest and that's that. intellectualizing the situation isn't gonna shift yer head one single bit. the soul-burning beauty of lost innocence is that you wear yer scars well. and the yardstick you use to measure sensitivity will serve you well in years soon to follow... now who wouldn't wanna be with someone who can plunge that deep? ...stay well"
--gt
07/04

amor vincit omnia, aperto vivere voto, experientia docet, docendo discimus
--dd
07/04

very nicely written. the article conjured up similar memories but I would ask that you think back to any significant act of substance/awareness during those special years. was not most everything somehow heightened, more real? just a question
--RH
07/03

Poor you. That's what cynism and unrealistic standard do to a mind: it kills it. I don't claim any understanding of the specific reasons, though.
--Ubik
07/03

i had as similarly earth-trembling first love experience and assumed for the next 12 years that colors would never be as saturated, if only because the impact of seeing them for the first time can't be duplicated, but i am now in the midst of an even more powerful and every bit as puppy-ish love experience ... it happens ...
--blv
07/03

Lo, this is completely devastating in the best way.
--pyk
07/03

You hit the mark, Lorelei! I'm a 40 year old man, and I remember my first love. Its intensity, its purity, and its all-consuming desire. I remember her, however selective my memory may be, and the devotion I gave to her. She was a goddess for whom I was willing to sacrifice anything. Keep remembering those moments. Forget the psycho-babble. Most psychologist choose their professions to figure why they're fucked up.
--df
07/03

Jeesus. Hot! I loved it.
--xx
07/03

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