by Craig Carton
My dad is competitive like me, so I tweaked him by saying there was no way he could get us home that night in time to watch the Mets-Astros playoffs. If he did, I would buy dinner and Baskin-Robbins ice-cream. If he didn’t make it, he’d have to pay. To his credit, he got us there by the top of the third, drove more than seven hundred miles in one day, engaged me in zero conversation about anything (other than how we were making good time), and deserved the fudge brownie ice-cream sundae I had to buy him when we returned.
There have been lots of stories of athletes getting in trouble by dating or sleeping with teenage girls. Now, most of us have had experience with teenagers, but it was when we were teens ourselves, or in our early twenties dating eighteen-year-olds. We aren’t, however, pro athletes with tons of cash and the celebrity status that all girls, not just teens, find attractive. The problem is, for pro athletes (as it is for all of us), it’s unacceptable to be wooing, dating, or banging a teenager unless they have been dating since college. Which would still put the girl on the young end of the scale when they first started going out.
I will never forget two of my own experiences with teenage girls.
The summer before my senior year of high school was eventful. I lost my virginity that summer. Sadly, though, it wasn’t filled with romantic music or the seek-and-destroy type of love story that we know from the movies. Nope. My first time took place in the front seat of my parents’ Chevy Caprice classic wagon, and yes, there was fake wood attached on the outer side panels. The real wood was attached to me. I had messed around with plenty of girls but had never found the right one. Either I wasn’t making the right moves, or I had picked the wrong girls.
The last girl I dated before I got the job done was a girl from Westchester County. She was a lifeguard at the camp where I was a counselor. She had the single greatest body any sixteen-year-old has ever had, and other than a slightly hooked nose, she was stunning. We had fooled around after camp in my car or hers for a few weeks, and there was a connection.
One late summer night, she decided to have a small house party with five girls and five of the guy counselors. Everyone knew I was with her, so the other fellas had to worry about partnering off with a girl of their own. After doing some shots of J.D. followed by Bud chasers we were all feeling pretty good. Then the wine coolers came out. That’s right—wine coolers. None of us had ID good enough to walk into a liquor store and get booze, so we had to settle for whatever was left of her dad’s Jack. We then replaced it with cola, figuring that by the time he came home to drink it, it would be flat and look like whiskey. The beer came from one of the guys’ older brothers, and there wasn’t much of it. So Bartles & Jaymes it was, topped off by a little Seagram’s from her dad’s stash.
After making an outdoor fire in one of those pits you always want to order when you’re flipping through the SkyMall catalog, it was time to make my move. I grabbed her hand and told her to come with me. We went inside and starting making out in the kitchen. Luckily I didn’t shoot a geyser right then and there. I was so hard, I could have popped a hole through both our pants. First base, all good, and now on to second base. Hands creeping under the shirt, attacking the rack like it stole something.
Then it happened. She said, “Let’s go to my bedroom.” YESYESYESYES! I was going to get laid! Two condoms had been gathering dust in my wallet since my bar mitzvah, nearly three years earlier. I had considered putting new ones in there, just so it wouldn’t look like they had been there forever.
Up to the bedroom we went, and onto her bed. I was now tired of her boobs and ready for the treasures that lay in wait elsewhere. I slowly moved my hand past her belly button, and began trying to pry my fingers past her belt. What the fuck! I tried and tried, but I barely got my hand halfway down her pants. This being the days before woman got Brazilians, I felt some Chewbacca action, and I knew I was getting close.
If I felt that today, I would tell my wife to get a wax immediately. How we used to tolerate a hairy bush I will never know, but I blame it on our parents. That whole free-love, 1960s bullshit spanned damn near three more decades of women thinking it was all right to have Dr. J in a leg lock. My boys are blessed. When they’re grown, they will never have to know what it’s like to part a woman’s lower Afro to reach the Promised Land.
Anyhow, this girl had a tourniquet around her waist, so I did the next best thing. My middle finger made it down there and even inside a little bit, while I dry-humped her for an hour. I was hard the whole time, but it got to a point where it wasn’t even sexy. We made out as I played nonstop with her boobs, and then finally I got bored and said we should go back downstairs. When I got home, I had blue balls the size of the Rock of Gibraltar. I limped around all weekend, even after taking care of business myself.
Fast-forward six weeks. There I was, getting it on in my car with a girl from a rival high school, whom I’d met at a house party. There was no way I would be denied this time. Rumor had it that she was easy. We had been drinking for a few hours when I knew I had to get her home. It turns out her dad was anti-Semitic, and if I dropped her off at her house, I would have to meet him. If I did, he would ask if I was Jewish, and that would put the kibosh on our plans. So she told me to park two blocks down, in front of some random house. Within two minutes, my pants were around my ankles, and we got the job done.
When you are sixteen, it’s okay to do whatever it takes to try to land another sixteen-year-old. But when you are Lawrence Taylor, Mark Sanchez, or dozens of others, it is not.
Let’s take LT first. In 2010, LT was arrested for “sexual assault of a minor” after he ordered a hooker to his hotel room following a golf course appearance. Now, we all know that LT is a scumbag from the drugs and his multiple arrests. He ain’t a good guy. Ordering a hooker, in and of itself, isn’t a problem to me. I think it ought to be legalized. But LT took it to another level. The girl who showed up that night was fifteen years old. I don’t care who you are, when you are fifty and experienced with women, there’s no way you aren’t clear that the naked girl in front of you is a kid. I realize that girls today are developing more rapidly than ever, and some even could be confused for an of-age woman when they’re all dolled up, but there is no way you can’t tell that a fifteen-year-old is too young.
Lawrence should be thrown in jail for life and never seen again. There are those who make the argument that he had the right to assume the hooker was of age, since when did hookers come with licenses proving their age? It’s a dumb argument; it makes me want to puke and then spit it on the people that make it.
The difference between Mark Sanchez and LT is so glaring that it also bothers me when people compare them. Sanchez was in a club where you had to be twenty-one even to enter the place. Now, I know the law does not excuse ignorance as a defense, but at first he did nothing wrong. He simply met a good-looking girl.
Mark is an incredibly handsome dude, and the chick he picked up, and I imagine (but don’t know for a fact) hooked up with all night, was attractive for an average high school chick from Connecticut. But in terms of the starting QB of the Jets, who could bang any New York City model and probably has a few under his belt, this chick was a five on the Carton chick-rating scale.
Mark met the girl at the club and took a liking to her, and he asked her how old she was. She said, “I’m seventeen.” His first response was perfect: He said, “Sorry, you’re too young. Call me in a year.” If he had only left at that point, all would be good, but she must have grabbed his cock or stuck a finger in his ass, because he didn’t leave after telling her goodbye. She responded by saying “I’m legal. It’s seventeen in New York and sixteen in Jersey.” Again, she was telling the truth. You must hand it to her for doing her homework. She could have done her senior thesis on the topic. Factual and practical, the girl knew what she was doing.
Since apparently she was Phi Beta Kappa, Mark took her at her word and left the club with her. I mean, would a girl lie about that when she has the chance to bed down t
he starting QB of any team, let alone the Jets? They went back to his place, and did what I imagine came naturally. Then he must have gone to shower, and that’s when he made his second mistake. He left a teenage girl alone in his apartment with complete access to his shit. She of course took pictures. I mean, I would have. He’s Mark fucking Sanchez, for crying out loud!
At some point she went home, and then he made his third mistake. He started texting her and calling her late at night after playoff games. Her response to one text when he asked her to come over at 3 a.m. was, “Sorry Mark, I have school tomorrow—high school.” Too funny. Nothing like being horny and having your girlfriend cock-block you because she’s studying for her SATs.
She must have been good in bed, because then he took her out on a date. Brutal decision, because now you can’t even deny anything. As you know, he got photographed by TMZ or some other photographer when he walked into the restaurant. At some point he must have turned his brain on and figured out that banging a seventeen-year-old was bad for his image. He called it off, and she did what any normal person would do: she e-mailed Deadspin.
While what he did was stupid and amoral, it wasn’t illegal. Life goes on, but we can all learn some valuable lessons from LT and Mark Sanchez:
1. If she looks too young, she is.
2. If a girl says to you, “I’m legal,” run.
3. Don’t ever take a teenager out to dinner.
4. You can’t trust a hooker.
Not that I haven’t spent some time with hookers myself.
Bob Murphy and the Mets made me forget my encounter with a hooker.
I don’t deny spending lots of time with strippers and Hooters girls throughout my life, but I’ve never paid for sex. Let me clarify that statement: I never once paid a working woman solely for sex. We have all paid for sex in some way, and we have done it a lot. Every time you take a woman out for drinks or buy her dinner, you do it with a goal in mind, and that goal isn’t to find a soul mate or a best friend. Instead, it’s: “I hope this date ends with us in bed naked.”
Sex was the one and only goal of every date I ever went on:
Showering before the date: SEX
Cologne on entire body: SEX
Opening the door for her to get in the car: SEX
Stopping at a bar before dinner: SEX
Nice restaurant for dinner: SEX
Nightcap after dinner: SEX
Tickets to a sporting event: SEX
Rollerblading: SEX
Hansom cab in Central Park: SEX
Walking her to her apartment door: SEX
Pretending to love her poodle: SEX
Pretending to be interested in what she has to say: SEXSEXSEX
All of it is geared toward getting laid. So I have paid for sex—you bet your ass I have—but I never paid a girl expecting cash for sleeping with me. There’s a big difference. I have been in the company of hookers, and despite never having received “favors” from them, I could have if things had played out differently.
For me, sex was never emotional or deep. Sex was important to me, but more as a conquest and a challenge. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy it, and every now and then I am good at it, but I am often removed from the sensual personal act of sleeping with another person. Being with a hooker would appear to be the perfect sexual outlet for me, but I find the concept of paying for sex disgusting. As a kid who grew up with the specter of Magic Johnson and AIDS, I worried about contracting the disease. I had no problem being with strippers and Hooters girls. While I’d be lying if I said that every one I went out with was premed or wanted to be a lawyer and was paying her way through school, I did feel that they were in a different category from hookers.
The first time I ever saw a real hooker was when I was seventeen years old. I was a counselor at a summer camp with my best friend, Steven. We both became friends with a kid named Mike. One summer night we were drinking in Steven’s basement, and we were debating what to do for the night. We called a few of the female counselors to come over to Steven’s house and swim in his pool and party, but they couldn’t come over until later in the night. So we planned for them to come over at ten. However, it was only seven, and the idea of the three of us drinking alone for several hours didn’t seem too intriguing. Going to a bar with our lousy fake IDs just to prime ourselves for the night seemed like a bad idea. And then Mike announced, “I know what we can do! Let’s go get blowjobs.”
Now, he didn’t say, “Let’s go get blowjobs from a hooker.” He just said, “Let’s go get blowjobs.” At seventeen, I wasn’t going to say, “No, that’s a lousy idea,” and neither was Steven. I had recently been devirginized and was eager for more. The idea that I could just get into a car and drive somewhere and some chick would blow me seemed great. The three of us jumped into Mike’s car, and he started to drive. I’m not sure if it was me or Steven, but at some point one of us asked where we were going.
Mike smiled, said, “I know just the spot,” and cranked up the Zeppelin tape. About fifteen minutes into the ride, it was clear that we were going toward Manhattan, so I lowered the radio and asked again if we were going to a club or to some chick’s house he knew. He looked over at me and said, “We’re going to find a hooker.” This concept, which just twenty minutes earlier seemed like the greatest notion ever, now seemed like the single dumbest idea of all time. A hooker? “For real?” I asked. Mike reassured me, “I do it all the time. It’s totally cool. Don’t worry. I know where to go.”
I was worried and scared at the same time. Going back to Steven’s house and waiting for the girls to show up seemed like a much better idea. I started to pepper Mike with questions, so much so that he got annoyed with me. We wound up driving close to Times Square and started cruising down the street in the mid-forties between Tenth Avenue and Broadway.
After about seven trips up and down, we found her, a lone figure in high heels and a ridiculously short miniskirt and black leather jacket. She was walking with her back facing away from traffic, looking at cars as they drove past. Driving slowly was a sign that we were looking to conduct business. She came over to the window. Mike said, “Three blowjobs,” so matter-of-factly that I was surprised. I thought there might be some pleasantries beforehand, but it was right to business. I heard her say something like “Just you, or all of you?” and he said, “Three of us. How much?”
I didn’t get to hear the rest of the conversation, but it went well enough for her to tell Mike to pull over halfway down the street, turn his lights off, then have two of us get out of the car, as she would take care of us one by one. Mike volunteered to go first, which was just fine with me. I was desperate to not go at all. This was one of the those early male-bonding situations where you don’t want to do something, but if pressed, you are going to have to do it. If you don’t, you can no longer be trusted.
Two things concerned me. The first was the police. It would be just my luck if the first time I ever got arrested, it was for getting a blowjob from a hooker. The thought of being arrested, going to jail, and making that phone call home unnerved me. I started to pace while Mike was in the car. Every now and then I looked over and saw the woman’s head going up and down, which made me even more antsy.
The second thought that unnerved me was whether I would be able to get it up. At that age, I spent most of every day with some sort of hard-on, but for once my little guy wasn’t in the mood. I started to try to imagine my favorite Playboy model naked. No dice. I tried to stimulate myself through my pocket. No dice . . . What was I going to do? There had to be nothing worse than being kicked out of the car by a hooker because she has nothing to work with. I played every imaginable sexy scenario in my mind. Each one made it worse.
And then, as if it were a gift from the gods, it happened. The car door flew open. At the same time I heard Mike yell, “What the fuck?” The hooker leaned her head out the door and start puking all over the side of the road, the car, and Mike. Vomit was everywhere.
I had my out.
There was no way I was going to let this hooker blow me now. Thankfully, there was no way she wanted to anyhow. She got out of the car still heaving, which made me start to heave as well. There is nothing worse than the smell of vomit. She limped to the curb. We got into the car. Thank God it was summer, and we could roll the windows down for the drive home, although even that didn’t help.
Mike was livid. Not only didn’t he get to finish the blowjob, but his car stunk. Nobody was in the mood for Zeppelin or for anything else. Most things that happen to guys we can laugh about and break each other’s balls over, but that night all of us were silent. We all agreed to put the Mets game on the radio. This was the summer of 1986, so the Mets, who were closing in on winning the National League East, were playing the Expos at Shea.
On the way into the city we had checked the game on the radio a few times, but nothing grabbed our attention. On the way home, though, it became clear that we might be the three luckiest guys in the world ever to have a hooker vomit in their car. When we turned the radio on, Bob Ojeda hadn’t let up a single hit. The Mets had never had a no-hitter in their franchise’s history. Here we were, about to catch it on the radio.
Ojeda took the no-hitter into the seventh, and we were all jacked up and talking again. The hooker was no longer important. We were Mets fans, and we were cheering our asses off. We were about ten minutes away from New Rochelle, and if Ojeda could get through the seventh, we could watch the rest of the game on TV. John sped his car along the Hutchinson River Parkway as Ojeda got the first Expo out. Next up was light-hitting Luis Rivera. As he came to the plate, we got off the parkway and were now just two miles away from home and history, when Wham! With one out in the seventh, Luis Rivera singled. Two batters later, he scored to tie the game. Shit!!
We had to be the only three guys to fuck up blowjobs and a no-hitter, all in the same night.