"Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage" in Salacious “Less Than Zero” Novel

Here’s the synopsis posted on Goodreads for Bret Easton Ellis’ salacious Less Than Zero (Simon & Schuster, 1985):

[18-year-old] Clay, a freshman at an Eastern college, returns home to Los Angeles for Christmas break, but feels totally disconnected and aimless there, and discovers a seamy world of drugs and [teen] prostitution

Back in 2017, I saw Less Than Zero listed on a “12th Grade English: Summer Reading Assignment” for students at an “above average” Manhattan high school, located in the Gramercy Riffs' old neighborhood, where over a third of the students are white, 15% are Asian, and (only) 10% are African-American.

Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was on the list too. In Diaz's novel, 13-year-old Ana Obregon is: "[...] a pretty loudmouthed gordita who read Henry Miller [e.g. Sexus] while she should have been learning to wrestle logic problems." Ana was introduced to Henry Miller by her 24-year-old boyfriend. Before Ana’s boyfriend left the East Coast to join the military: "He used to read passages to her all the time”. Consequently, Ana shared, “That made me so hot."

However, unlike The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the summer reading assignment teacher added the following disclaimer to Less Than Zero: "Note that this novel contains some disturbing content, including rape and drug use." However, the disclaimer didn’t prepare me for the fact that in Less Than Zero not one, not two, not three but four schoolgirls were raped, which made Vogue magazine’s recent post “Strap In: Vogue’s Next Book Club Pick Is Less Than Zero” (July 23, 2026) intriguing.

Clay’s Salacious Sisters

Before recapping the shocking schoolgirl rapes scenes in the novel, it’s relevant to discuss Clay’s younger sisters whom were described as blond and (approximately) 13 and 15. Unlike a number of teen girls who kept posters of teen heartthrobs on their walls, Clay’s sisters had “different GQ cutouts” of men “pasted on the wall” of their baronial bedroom.

After shopping in Beverly Hills, Clay joined his sisters and his mother in the family Mercedes. While their mother drove, Clay’s sisters discussed another prep schoolgirl whom was an 8th grader at Harvard-Westlake and who was going out with a 9th grader whom one of Clay’s sisters described as “the biggest babe”. Consequently, Clay’s ≈ 15-year-old sister wondered, “I wonder if he’s for sale.”

Still in the Mercedes, Clay’s ≈ 13-year-old sister asked for a Galaga video game for Christmas. After their mother suggested that the Galaga be put in Clay’s bedroom, one of the sisters yelled, “Bullshit! No way. Clay can’t have the Galaga in his room. He always locks his door.”

Clay’s sisters asked him several times about why he locked his bedroom door. Clay shockingly responded by accusing his middle school sisters of stealing his cocaine.

“Mom, tell him to answer me. Why do you lock your door, Clay?”

I turn around. “Because you both stole a quarter gram of cocaine from me the last time I left my door open. That’s why.”

Clay’s sisters didn’t immediately respond to their brother’s accusation. Instead, they asked their mother to turn the volume up, because Killer Pussy's "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage" was playing on the Mercedes’ radio. Here's an excerpt from the lyrics :

Teenage, green age, awkward in-between age

(Teenage enema nurse)

I turned fifteen, thought it was a teen scene

(Teenage enema nurse)

Thought it would be easy, but it makes me queasy

I'm a teenage enema nurse

They told me, "Stick the nozzle in

There's really nothing to it

It's not a very pretty job

But someone's got to do it"

Curiously, per the Phoenix New Times article “Killer Pussy: Old-School Phoenix Punk Parodists Gather For 30th Anniversary Reunion” (May 27, 2010), in 1982, "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage" was the second most played song on L.A.’s KROQ.

As for Clay’s cocaine theft accusation, after the family arrived home, Clay’s 13-year-old sister exclaimed out by the pool, “That’s bullshit. I can get my own cocaine.”

After Clay’s father was picked up “at his penthouse in Century City”, the family had Christmas Eve dinner “in the main room at Chasen”, where Clay’s sisters “look[ed] bored and tan and talk[ed] about anorexic friends and some Calvin Klein model” as they held their “glasses up by the stem and drink the[ir] champagne slowly”.

One morning, Clay’s sisters, while donning bathing suits in their mother’s large bed, blared Duran Duran, perused men in old GQ magazines, possibly for content to paste on their bedroom walls, and they watched porn; however, one of Clay’s sisters shared that “she hates it when they show the guy coming.” Ellis wrote:

I get up late the next morning to the blare of Duran Duran coming from my mother’s room. The door’s open and my sisters are lying on the large bed, wearing bathing suits, leafing through old issues of GQ, watching some porno film on the Betamax with the sound turned off. I sit down on the bed, also in my bathing suit, and they tell me that Mom went out to lunch and that the maid went shopping and I watch about ten minutes of the movie, wondering whose it is—my mom’s? sisters’? Christmas present from a friend? the person with the Ferrari? mine? One of my sisters says that she hates it when they show the guy coming and I walk downstairs, out to the pool, do my laps.

While sitting poolside with their mother, apropos of nothing, one of Clay’s sisters informed him, “Anyway, I’m having ON [TV] put on the cable.” Coincidentally, per Wikipedia, at its peak in 1982, L.A. was ON TV’s most successful market, which was largely due to ON TV’s adult programming option (i.e., porn).

Shocking Schoolgirl Scenes

As for the shocking schoolgirl rapes scenes in Less Than Zero, at a party in Malibu, Clay and partygoers watched a snuff film that was purchased for $15,000, where a nude, “maybe” 15-year-old girl, had “each foot tied to a bedpost” while a “fat black guy” with a “huge hardon” laid her; however, the young partygoers debated whether or not the fat black guy really killed the schoolgirl with an ice pick, wire hanger, and “thin, large knife”. Ellis wrote:

Everyone in the room is looking up at a large television screen [...] There's a young girl, nude, maybe fifteen, on a bed, her arms are tied together above her head and her legs spread apart, each foot tied to a bedpost [...] The camera cuts quickly to [...] this fat black guy, who's also naked and who's got this huge hardon [...] he has sex with the girl and then walks off the screen.

It's a snuff film, but the viewers at the party debate whether or not the Black man really killed the nymphet with "an ice pick, and what looks like a wire hanger and a package of nails and then a thin, large knife".

Later in the novel, while visiting Daniel, Clay learned from Daniel that a girl, “pretty and sixteen”, was drugged by her 17-year-old drug dealer before she was taken to a party, possibly in the Hollywood Hills, where she got “gangbanged by the entire party”. Ellis wrote:

"She's pretty and sixteen and [...] she goes to Westward Ho on Westwood Boulevard and she meets her dealer there [...] And this guy spends all day shooting her full of smack again and again..."

"And then he feeds her some acid and takes her off to a party in the hills or in the Colony and then...and then..." Daniel stops.

"And then what?" I ask, handing him back the joint.

"And then she gets gangbanged by the entire party."

Subsequently, Clay visited Rip's apartment in Wilshire, where Shandra, a “really young and pretty” 12-year-old girl, who attended Our Lady of Corvallis, a Catholic girls’ high school in Studio City, had her legs spread and tied to the bedposts. Consequently, Clay could see that Shandra’s “cunt” had been recently shaved. Although, Clay was informed that Shandra was “tight”, Clay declined to lay the schoolgirl; however, Trent, Clay’s friend from high school, had his way with the subdued schoolgirl. Ellis wrote:

"[at] Rip's apartment in Wilshire, he leads us into the bedroom. There's a naked girl, really young and pretty, lying on the mattress. Her legs are spread and tied to the bedposts and her arms are tied above her head. Her cunt is all rashed and looks dry and I can see that it's been shaved. She keeps moaning and murmuring words and moving her head from side to side [...]"

Rip says something.

"She's twelve."

"And she is tight, man," Spin laughs.

"Her name is Shandra and she goes to Corvalis" is all Rips says.

And readers learned from Clay that after a “young girl from San Diego” attended a party in Palm Springs with kids from L.A., San Francisco, and Sacramento, she was “raped repeatedly” and fatally mutilated. Ellis wrote:

A young girl from San Diego who had been at the party had been found the next morning, her wrists and ankles tied together. She had been raped repeatedly. She also had been strangled and her throat had been slit and her breasts had been cut off and someone had stuck candles where they used to be. Her body had been found at the Sun Air Drive-In hanging upside down from the swing set [...]

Clay, Blair and the Drunken Blond Girl

Blair was Clay’s girlfriend in high school. Blair was described as having “long blond hair”, she lived in Beverly Hills, and she was a freshman at, what she termed, “the University of Spoiled Children” and “Or Jew . S.C.” (i.e., University of Southern California). Blair and Clay had sex for the first time before they left for college. (Presumably, in high school, but you never know.) It happened in Clay’s Palm Springs house, where Blair’s body was “tan and wet, lying against cool, white sheets.”

However, during the novel, Blair and Clay’s relationship was strained. Consequently, in addition to having sex with Blair, Clay hooked up with another girl. For example, at the After Hours night club, a drunk girl, sixteen and tan, sat next to Clay with her hand on his lap.

After Clay returned from the bathroom, where he did not “do any of the coke”, “the drunken blond girl [...] and Blair are talking about S.A.T. scores.” After Blair appeared to leave the club with “two blond girls”, Clay and the girl danced, and the girl whispered to Clay that maybe they should go to her place, where in her bedroom, Clay and the girl undressed, and she had Clay don a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and masturbate using Bain De Soleil as lube. The girl masturbated using Bain De Soleil as lube as well. After Clay shared, “I’m going to come,” the girl asked him to “hold on a minute”, because she was “almost there”. To get there completely, the girl “move[d] her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows”.

After they both arrived, the girl,l “flushed”, turned on MTV, handed Clay “a box of Kleenex”, lit a cigarette, and told Clay to be “quiet walking down the stairs”, so he wouldn’t “wake her parents.” Ellis wrote:

[...] we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes into the bathroom [...] she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed [...] she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she’s naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain De Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do. And she takes the tube of suntan lotion from me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do [...] after this goes on for a while I tell her that I’m going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she’s almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie’s on the stereo and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on, and she hands me a box of Kleenex [...] She lights a cigarette and I start to dress. And then I call a cab and finally take the Wayfarers off and she tells me to be “quiet walking down the stairs so I won’t wake her parents.

Less Than Zero was, unsurprisingly, a major bestseller, but I would have to agree with Michiko Kakutani’s review in The New York Times that the novel was “disturbing” and that it had an “unnerving air of [a] documentary”. Kakutani wrote: “One of the most disturbing novels I’ve read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality.”