Emanuela Orlandi: Teen (15) Kidnapped for Vatican Sex Parties?

Back in 2013, I went to the Theater for the New City in the East Village to see Mario Fratti's The Vatican Knows. The play was loosely based on the 2012 New York Times (May 14, 2012) article "Crime Boss’s Tomb Is Exhumed for Clues in Missing Girl’s Case", which is about the kidnapping of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi. 

Emanuela Orlandi

According to Times, there are three theories about what happened to Emanuela:

1. One theory is that she was kidnapped on the orders of an American archbishop, Paul C. Marcinkus [d. 2006], a former president of the Vatican bank, who was linked to a major Italian banking scandal in the 1980s.

2. Others cite an anonymous phone call the Vatican received weeks after Emanuela’s disappearance, demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the [alleged Islamic extremist] gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, in exchange for her release.

3. Lastly, in 2005, an anonymous phone call to a television program implied that Emanuela had been kidnapped as a favor to Cardinal Ugo Poletti [d. 1997], who in 1983 was the vicar general of Rome. The caller also mentioned that Emanuela's kidnapping could have been related to the Italian mafia. (The BBC (14 May 2012) reported that the girlfriend of Enrico De Pedis, an Italian gangster, claimed that De Pedis kidnapped Emanuela in an effort to extort money from the Vatican.)

However, none of these theories mention why Emanuela was targeted.

 

Approximately a week after the Times' article was published, another shocking theory was published in The Telegraph (22 May 2012) and The Huffington Post. Per The Telegraph, Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's 85-year-old chief exorcist, confessed that 15-year-old Emanuela was kidnapped, forced to participated in Vatican sex parties, and then killed and discarded.

Father Amorth confessed: 

"This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were organised, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the 'recruiter' of the girls. The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up a victim of this circle."

Most recently, Netflix posted Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi (2022), which is a four part documentary series about Emanuela's kidnapping. The Netflix documentary referenced some of the theories that the Times piece mentioned like a possible link between Emanuela's disappearance and Agca. 

In addition, the Netflix series theorized that Emanuela's kidnapping may have been linked to the Italian mafia, the Pope, Poland, and blackmail, because, allegedly, John Paul II borrowed money from the mafia to fund the Solidarity political movement in Poland. 

Taking all the theories into question, one has to ask, "But why was Emanuela targeted?" Per Emanuela's friend, who shared with the Netflix documentarians, a high ranking member of the Vatican slash someone close to the Pope tried to sexually seduce Emanuela, which may explain why Emanuela was used as leverage in the blackmail schemes against the Vatican. 

Surprisingly, Father Amorth's assertion that Emanuela was kidnapped to participated in Vatican sex parties was not mentioned in Fratti's play, in the New York Times piece, nor the Netflix documentary. 

Manguso's VERY COLD PEOPLE: New England Incest, Nude Teens & Student-Teacher Sex

In Sarah Manguso's Very Cold People, which is set in a New England town, Ruthie's mother "glared" at Ruthie for not being boy crazy like Amber - Ruthie's elementary school classmate. (Amber's older brother liked to tickle Amber: "[...] until she dropped her towel.") And Ruthie's mother was "furious", because Ruthie wouldn't make herself: "[...] sexy for people to look at, to convince them I was already grown up." However, after a cashier told Ruthie, "I like your body. It’s slim and trim, like I like." Ruthie's mother smiled at her and said, "Mmmm."

At a party that Bee, who still took showers with her father, held for Ruthie and Charlie: "Bee's towel slipped [in the hot tub], and everyone saw the tiny creased dumpling of her vulva." Subsequently, the (very) young party goers watched a "little dirty" movie about two girls whom: "[...] raced to lose their virginity by the end of the summer."

Ruthie wore T-shirts over her swimsuits, which made it appear that she might be "naked underneath". Consequently, her grandfather told her that she had: "[...] to stop walking about like that."

Amber's niece, a fellow 6th grader, shared with Bee that she looked older than her age (i.e., 13), but the way she said it gave Ruthie the impression that Amber's niece had been told by a number of men that she looked mature. 

“Amber’s niece went to school with us for part of that year. When she introduced herself to Bee she said, I’m still thirteen. I know, I don’t look it, and the way she said it told us that she’d heard it so many times from so many men that it seemed as deeply a part of her as her own name.”

Ruthie, still in middle school and a budding teleiophile, related that she was "in love with Amber's older brother" and that she: “[...] was lit from the inside with a desire that fastened itself to any boy in the vicinity of my body.” And Ruthie “[...] imagined that Winifred’s husband was handsome, dark in a way that none of the boarding school boys were.”

In (high school) study hall, Bee shared with Ruthie, via a note, that she had gone to a boy's house and "bit the big one" but that "milkshake came out instead of pee!" Subsequently, Bee got pregnant, but it was bittersweet, because: "[...] her father wouldn't want to go near her anymore."

Ruthie's middle school gym teacher put his hand on her: [...] ass, moved it around as if trying to get the dimensions of it, to quickly memorize its shape in the full light of the gym [...]" 

Ruthie found her gym teacher's carassing "old-fashioned" and "almost tender". She referred to his feeling as a "so-called molestation" that she admitted was "wrong". But her first thought was that it was "sweet", and she shared:  "I knew that, on some level, he liked me.”

In 9th grade, Charlie, Ruthie's wealthy friend, was: "[...] picked up by a cop. She had been running through the field at school, screaming. And she was naked. Just screaming.” By high school, the nymphet exhibitionist, had a student-teacher affair with her tennis coach. After practice, Charlie and her coach would have sex in his car. Interestingly, Charlie liked to keep him inside her after. But, like Ben Kalmen (Michael Douglas) in Solitary Man, the coach became needy. 

In high school Charlie joined the tennis team and almost immediately started sleeping with the coach. Charlie’s mother often chatted on the phone with me if I called when Charlie was at an imaginary tennis practice, having sex with the coach in his car, down by the brook.

Charlie had said that she liked to keep the tennis coach inside her for as long as possible afterward so that she could still feel him. 

Charlie despised the tennis coach for being in love with her. She told me that she’d stopped sleeping with the tennis coach long before she actually stopped, if she ever had stopped.

And in another example of the shadowy side of nympholepsy, Uncle Roger raped Debbie, his daughter,: "[...] for fourteen years, starting when she was two." And Ruthie observed Uncle Roger seducing Brett - his granddaughter:

At the other end of the table Uncle Roger tickled Brett, [his granddaughter] his fingers in her ear like a lover’s. Wrapping her hair around his fingers, kissing her neck, whispering in her ear. She beamed. She was eight or nine years old, in hair ribbons.

Alexandra Jacobs' wrote in her New York Times review of Very Cold People, that Manguso: 

"[...] shows how feminine identity in America can be built up with material objects — dolls, Girl Scout insignia, barrettes, makeup [...] — and then torn down by violation, sexual and otherwise. A gym teacher’s inappropriate touch; a shoe salesman’s remark; a friend’s creepy dad; frottage on the commuter rail. All these things happen, in an era when such events were often considered not reportable offenses but just a part of growing up — character-building, even."

Very Cold People and Jacobs' "just a part of growing up" reminds me of a colleague whom shared with me in Manhattan that incest slash sexual abuse was rampant back in her suburban middle class neighborhood near Chicago. And it's safe to surmise that due to the allure of nymphets, but the disregard for even legal age gap relationships, incest slash sexual abuse is still rampant in my old colleague's neighborhood and in neighborhoods around the world. 

LAW & ORDER: SVU "Exchange [Student]" | Teen Strip Poker & Hotel Sex Party

Talk about the representation of the allure of nymphets in pop culture! Law & Order: SVU "Exchange [Student]" (s20e21) opened with a teen strip poker scene with 15-year-old Emelia in her bra and panties. 

To make a long episode short, shortly thereafter, a sex tape of a three-way between Emilia Barassi (Anna Van Patten) and two men "more than twice her age" was discovered by NYPD on Emelia's iPhone.

Of the sex tape, that was allegedly filmed by Lara, Emilia's sister, at a sex party at the Harper Hotel, Emilia confessed to NYPD's Benson that she wasn't forced to make the age-gap sex tape:

Emilia: "I met him online [...] It was when I first got here [from Italy as an exchange student]. I was just lonely, I guess."

Benson: "Emilia. The men in the video. They were more than twice your age."

Emilia: "I was just once [...] They didn't force me."

And of the sex tape, Lara confessed to NYPD's Rollins and Carisi that Emilia was "into" the three-way and requested a copy:

Lara: "She [i.e., Emilia] was into it."

Rollins: "And you didn't think she was little bit young for this [i.e., sex tape]?"

Lara: "Look. She had to grow up sometime [...] I love her. I wouldn't do anything to hurt her."

Rollins: "Why'd you send her the video?"

Lara: "She wanted it."

Subsequently, we learned that Emilia and Lara lied about being sexually abused by their, now jailed, Italian father, because they were "brainwashed" by Richard - their host parent. And how did Richard brainwash Emilia? Emilia, "With his fingers. He put them inside me and said he loved me."

In addition, Richard had sex with Emilia and Lara, respectively, while Richard's wife watched and (sometimes) applauded. Richard's wife shared with NYPD, "He thought it was funny. The old bitch watching the younger bitches [...] Sometimes he made me applaud his performances."

Interestingly, after Richard's demise, Lara screamed, "I loved him [...] I was the one he really loved!"

Lastly, Emilia and Lara weren't the only nymphets who were housed by Richard. There were seven additional exchange students including a 16-year-old from Ponta Pora whom left Richard's after he showed her, "[...] homemade porn starring Richard and the girl from my town that [sic] stayed with them two years before."

FIVE TUESDAYS IN WINTER's "Creature": Teen Age-Gap (Sexual) Affair Gone Awry

We came across Lily King's Five Tuesdays in Winter in Harper's Bazaar (November 2021). Five Tuesdays in Winter is a book of eleven stories, which raises the question: Why did Harper's Bazaar choose to profile "Creature"? And why was "Creature" the première story in the book? Could it be the allure of nymphets?

Here's the magazine's plot summary for "Creature" and a quote from the author:

[...] [Carol] a 14-year-old girl is hired as a live in helper for an elderly woman but becomes infatuated with [Hugh] the woman's married son [...] There's no question that my supreme interest is love-all kinds of love," King says, "and all the ways that it goes right and awry."

And that's exactly what happened in "Creature."  After Carol met Hugh, with his "watery green" eyes, she felt light, she was filled with excitement, and she had difficulty breathing:

“As I raced up the wide dark stairs, I felt light, my chest full of something new and exciting, a helium that lifted me from step to step and made breathing difficult but somehow unnecessary.”

Subsequently, Carol waited for Hugh, observed him closely, and "greedily" breathed is his scent: 

“I waited for him to come downstairs before we left the house.”

“His green bathing suit clung to his bum and I could see its exact shape, two bony teardrops. He gave it a little wiggle then, as if he knew someone was watching.”

“I could smell Hugh. I knew the scent by then. It was sharp and unclean, even after a swim, and I knew I wouldn’t like it anywhere else but coming up from his long taut body. I breathed it in greedily.”

Not only did 14-year-old Carol know that Hugh was married to Raven - a blond, but Carol wanted to hear how Hugh spoke to his wife: “I wanted to hear how he spoke to Raven.”

In Carol's notebook, under a copy of Jane Eyre, which is about an age-gap affair between ≈ 19-year-old Jane Eyre and ≈ 40-year-old Mr. Edward Rochester, were pictures drawn of Hugh, poems written about Hugh, and entries such as:

“At the pool he lies on his back on the concrete with his arms spread like Christ on the cross and I want to ravish him.”

Carol even put herself to sleep with thoughts of Hugh:

“I smelled him and remembered how I’d put myself to sleep the night before with a story about him taking me out into the woods where there was this old tennis court no one used anymore and him teaching me to play and afterward kissing me, a tender, delicate kiss [...]”

After Carol learned that she had Hugh's full attention, he informed her that he and his mother were of the opinion that Carol was a (teen) seductress. 

“I understood that I had his full attention now. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I’d never had any boy’s attention before as far as I knew.”

“You are trouble. I, like my mother, think you are trying to seduce me.”

In the end, after reading Carol's notebook, Hugh made an age-gap relationship faux pas by not letting Carol set the pace of the relationship. Unable to resist the allure of a nymphet, Hugh cornered Carol in the bathroom, he kneaded her young right fountain, and he penetrated her (with a digit). Consequently, Carol fled, and like most victims of abuse, she didn't share what happened. 

E. Jean Carroll: A Sexually Molested (Pre) Teen Girl Scout

There's an excerpt in New York magazine (June 24-July 7, 2019) from E. Jean Carroll's What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal where Carroll alleges that she was raped in Bergdorf Goodman by President Trump. 

And Carroll wrote that when she was a nymphet, another pre-teen shoved objects into her vagina. 

One day my parents gave a party. Everyone brought their kids. Arthur and Evelyn drove up from Indianapolis with James to the redbrick schoolhouse where we lived, deep in the hills north of Fort Wayne. As the parents drank cocktails in our big yard with the scent of the blooming wads of cash infusing every inch of Indiana just after WWII, the kids played up on the hill beside the schoolhouse.

James was 7 and a half or 8, a bloodthirsty, beautiful, relentless boy. He ordered everyone around, even the older kids. To me he said, “I’m going to shove this up you again.”

We’d played this game before. Our families had gone on a camping trip to Pokagon State Park, and I learned that an object could be shoved up the place where I tinkled. I don’t remember now what it was, probably a stick, or maybe a rock. It felt like being cut with a knife. I remember I bled.

This reminded me of an episode of Pamela Adlon's Better Things where, in a game of Truth or Dare, Duke dared another pre-teen, "Put four Monopoly pieces in your vagina." She did! 

In addition, when Carroll was a 12-year-old Girl Scout, after being crowned Miss Camp Ella J. Logan, she was repeatedly fondled by Cam - the waterfront director:

I walk over and whisper: “What?”

They whisper: “You are Miss Camp Ella J. Logan.”

After they put the papier-mâché crown on my head, the cape on my shoulders, and give me the baton covered in Reynolds Wrap, Old Cam, No. 6 on the Most Hideous Men of My Life List, the waterfront director, takes me out in a boat and runs his hands under my shirt and up my shorts. 

He is breathing and moving his hand slowly and hotly, and I fight no battles in my head. My mind goes white. This is Cam. This is the man who has watched me grow from an 8-year-old Brownie Scout, and his notice is an honor. This is Cam, who teaches me to swim and dive and awards me the coveted White Cap! This is Cam, who continues to run his hand inside my shorts and under my blouse — even in the dining room during dinner, under the table, squeezing my thighs, shoving his fingers — saying, “You’re my girl. You’re my girl. You’re my girl,” and making me Girl Scout–promise “not to tell anyone.”

He does this until I go home. I am 12.

LAW & ORDER: SVU | A Catholic Church Teen Prostitution Ring

Here's IMDb's summary for Law & Order: SVU "Manhattan Transfer" (s17e17):

While SVU investigates a pair of vice cops found in the middle of an underage prostitution sting involving high-ranking public officials, the team discovers that a priest may be involved in a high school sex trafficking ring.

Near the beginning of the episode, Officer Benson shared with ADA Barba that SVU raided an upscale teen prostitution party:

Officer Benson: "We responded to a tip that underage girls would be at a sex party and in attendance was Bronx ADA Winn, two assemblymen, a retired D.A. investigator, a councilman, and I'm sure that you recognize."

ADA Barba: "Judge Wheeler. Why am I not surprised?"

Nina Kelly, a nun, was at the sex party too. As well as, detectives Russo and Jefferson. Sister Kelly was working undercover to breakup the teen prostitution ring. Detectives Russo and Jefferson were supposed to be working undercover to breakup the teen prostitution ring, but they couldn't resist the allure of nymphets. 

Cara, a 16-year-old prostitute and student at St. Fabiola's - an all-girl's parochial high school in the South Bronx, alleged that detectives Russo and Jefferson would arrive early to the sex parties and force her and other nymphets to perform oral sex. 

And of detectives Russo and Jefferson, Sister Kelly confessed: "They're not cops. They're rapists."

Interestingly, Officer Benson opined that the girls were victims of [statutory] rape and were sex trafficked, but Captain Gerbic rebutted that that girls were not victims but were willing teen prostitutes. 

Officer Benson: "But underage girls are still being [statutory] raped and trafficked."

Captain Gerbic: "Well, where SVU sees victims, we see willing participants. These girls are not exactly madonnas."

In what we view as a bit of racism slash classism, BX9, a south Bronx based street gang, were initially suspected of running the teen prostitution ring. 

But we learned in episode 18, "Unholiest Alliance", that the prostitution ring was operated by Bishop Catalano, Monsignor Mulregan and Father Eugene - for over 20 years. 

The "Unholiest Alliance" of the Catholic Church procured and provided teen prostitutes to ADAs, assemblymen, D.A. investigators, councilmen, lawyers and judges - to name a few. 

And the "Unholiest Alliance" couldn't resist the allure of nymphets too. We learned from former nymphets that Bishop Catalano and Monsignor Mulregan made Catholic schoolgirls sit on their laps - in the nude. The schoolgirls were touched in a[n] "[un]G_dly manner". And they were made to pose naked and "perform sex acts" on the Bishop and Monsignor.

Lastly, in another bit of racism slash classism, the episodes stressed that the teen prostitutes were from the south Bronx, but let us not forget that teen prostitutes can be from the UES and Rome's wealthiest district too. 

[SPOILERS] HBO's MARE OF EASTTOWN: "Teenage Girls Are Fucking Sneaky"

Here's HBO's plot summary for Mare of Easttown:

As her life crumbles around her, a small-town Pennsylvania detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) investigates a local murder [of Erin]. The series explores the dark side of a close community and provides an authentic examination of how family and past tragedies can define our present.

Mare of Easttown is unique in its use of the allure of a (dead) nymphet to make a hit streaming series. For example, near the beginning of episode 2, Erin's 17-year-old topless corpse was on display. 

Erin's 17-year-old Topless Corpse

And very interestingly, the series did not consider Erin a victim in her attempt at teen prostitution via Sidedoor's escort service, and the series did not imply that Erin was groomed into her age-gap sexual affair with John Ross.  

Of Erin, Mare said:

"If you're a teenage girl, baby at home and a [strict] dad like Kenny, you're not gonna open an account on Sidedoor with pictures like this on your own computer. Trust me. Teenage girls are fucking sneaky."

Detective Colin Zabel, Mare's partner, may have been naive about nubile nymphets, but not Mare.  Erin may not have considered teen prostitution for a Prada bag, but nonetheless, 17-year-old Erin seriously contemplated teen prostitution to earn money for your child's ear surgery.

Of his relationship with Erin, John Ross shared with Mare:

"It wasn't just sex, okay? Yes, there was sex. It was. We were both having a hard time. I mean, she was having problems at home, and then things between Lor [my wife] and me weren't great. We could confide in each other in a way that we couldn't with other people. I mean, we had this connection." [Emphasis mine]

Erin's Sidedoor Escort Account

Thus, John stressed that his age-gap affair with Erin was consensual. Erin even hid a photograph in her bedroom of the age-gap couple - postcoital. But more interestingly, not once did Mare accuse John of grooming and victimizing Erin.

Uncle John & Erin Postcoital

Erin didn't want to end her age-gap affair with John, because she came to the realization or was convinced that she was groomed and/or a victimized. It turns out that she was simply tired of the lies (i.e., hiding her age-gap affair) and wanted to go public. To which John replied:

"Are you fucking crazy! You're a fucking child!"

And John's son did not confront his father about having an affair with Erin. On the contrary - he scolded Erin. 

"Stay away from my family! Why would you do this?" [Emphasis mine] 

Wait, although it wasn't stressed in the series, did I mention that John was Erin's uncle?! 

Let's review Erin's "sneaky" behavior:

Erin made an account of Sidedoor, an online escort service

Erin had an consensual incestuous affair with her uncle 

Erin took a postcoital selfie (with her uncle in the background) 

Erin told her boyfriend that John's baby was his son. (Yes. Erin had a teen boyfriend too whom shared that, in terms of his parent's attic, "That's where she'd suck my dick.") 

Mare of Easttown and Mare's comment about "fucking sneaky" teens reminded me of Betsy Karasik's Washington Post Op-Ed (August 30, 2013) where she opined that consensual sex between teachers and high school students should not be criminalized:

"When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relations with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word..."

15-year-old Winslet in Dark Season

And talk about art imitating life. Per Kate Winslet's Wikipedia page, 15-year-old Winslet had an age-gap affair with 27-year-old actor-writer Stephen Tredre:

While filming Dark Season, 15-year-old Winslet began a romantic relationship with actor-writer Stephen Tredre, twelve years her senior.[14][200] She considered him a major influence in her life and they lived together in London.[7][24][222] They broke up in 1995, but remained close until he died of bone cancer two years later.[14][223] Winslet skipped the premiere of Titanic to attend his funeral.[224] In a 2008 interview, she admitted to having never got over his death.[7]

 

Christopher Columbus' Settlers Demanded Pre-Teen Sex Slaves

Dylan Matthews posted on Vox "9 reasons Christopher Columbus was a murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel: Why do we even celebrate Columbus Day?" (Oct 12, 2015). And what was the eighth reason?

8) Settlers under Columbus sold 9- and 10-year-old girls into sexual slavery 

This one he admitted himself in a letter to Doña Juana de la Torre, a friend of the Spanish queen: "There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid."

Here's an excerpt from Columbus' letter to Doña Juana de la Torre via Boyd's Christopher Columbus, His Life, His Work, His Remains, Vol. 2: As Revealed by Original Printed and Manuscript Records:

 

Piper Weiss' YOU ALL GROW UP AND LEAVE ME: A Manhattan Private School Teen Obsessed with Men

In her New York Post piece, Piper Weiss summed up the story of Gary Wilensky well:

[56-year-old] Gary Wilensky was a popular tennis coach on the Manhattan prep-school circuit, well-liked by students and parents alike. Piper Weiss was a [14-year-old] student at Chapin, the all-girls private school on the Upper East Side. She was taking private lessons from Wilensky in 1993 when he attacked one of his students [17-year-old Jennifer Rhodes] in a failed kidnapping attempt and subsequently killed himself in a scandal that rocked the private-school world. In her new memoir, “You All Grow Up and Leave Me” [...] Weiss writes about the abduction and its aftermath.

But Weiss' memoir adds some intriguing and relevant details, one of which is hinted at in the subtitle: "A Memoir of Teenage Obsession". 

Weiss confessed in her memoir that not only was she obsessed with Wilensky, she was jealous of Rhodes:

I wanted it so much when he was alive, but even more now that he is dead. I know I'm not supposed to think this. I know he did a bad thing. There was a cabin with chains inside it. [...] I knew they had to do with sex or violence or both [...] He picked her and now she matters. Everyone wants to know what she has to say and how she feels because he chose her. She matters and I do not.

Weiss raised an issue that was similarly related in Anne Rice's Belinda. Weiss wrote:

The private in private school means just that. It is a class distinction. Ours is the world others want to expose, and it must be closely guarded. [...] Privilege is based on secrecy. Our parents know what others want to know, and so do we. Privilege comes with a certain trust that if broken results in the loss of such privilege [...] 

However, like Emily Jane Fox, who shared in Born Trump: Inside America's First Family, that Ivanka Trump and her 8th grade classmate flashed a hot dog vendor from the Chapin's third floor window, Weiss shared some secrets from the Manhattan private school world:

In the eighth grade [...] We took Latin and algebra. We read Romeo and Juliet. We drew on our legs [...] and cupped the soft underside of another girl's breast in the locker room.

Weiss wrote about her 9th grade science teacher. She shared that she was advised to flirt with him for a better grade, because it was easy if he deemed a private school coed to be a "sexual creature":

He has difficulty looking students in the eye, I think, out of fear that his thoughts might be heard. The year has just begun and it is already clear whom he favors - the girl with the see-through skin [...] When she speaks in class, he flares up with an allergic crush. Anything she says is very good. 

Everybody knows he has pets and they are an undeniable type - long-limbed girls with billowing horsetail hair who are soft-spoken [...] When I found out he was my teacher this year, a junior told me to flirt with him for a better grade. It is believed to be that easy if you are a sexual creature in his eyes [...] 

Piper Weiss

Just like the Manhattan prep school coeds in Nick McDonell's national bestselling novel Twelve, Weiss swallowed pills as a teen: 

My mother's bottle of Valium, for when she flies, is in a cosmetic bag underneath their bathroom sink. (I swallowed three.) 

All through my teen and twenties I would scavenge her room when she was away, rifling through cabinets for old prescriptions, jewelry boxes for stale weed [...]

Weiss got the part in a TV movie, but her mother wouldn't let her act, because: 

It was a movie about a man who loves a little girl. That sounded okay, I told her, because some men are nice and some little girls are wise and, I imagined, sometimes they could be friends. 

Apparently, one of the popular girls on the all-girl private high school campus had a "breast-first swagger" and Weiss shared a sexually charged rumor about her that was based on her short stature: 

There was a rumor among certain private school boys that I give blow jobs standing up. 

As if the private school kilts aren't short enough, Weiss and her classmates had a habit of making them shorter: 

Bianca and I are halfway to school and our rolled-up skirts are riding up our waists. [...] The teacher's ruler to our kilt hems, the assessments of our clothing as "too short" and "too tight."

On a related note, Weiss wrote that her classmates opined that their young bodies were currency: 

Our currency is our bodies. We have what others want, what they feel they deserve. [Consequently] [a]t school, we trade stories of being groped by strangers [...] [For example], [...] when a Rollerblader glided downstream along Lexington Avenue, stopping short to cup my chest [...] 

Weiss shared that her first obsession with men began with Jim Morrison: 

It was an obvious choice, an early teenage-cult follower move, spurred on by my newbie sexuality and Oliver Stone (i.e., The Doors (1991)). 

This "obsession," as my mother calls it, began when I was twelve, before the movie came out, I swear. I saw the real Jim perform on a PBS documentary my dad was watching and bought the paperback biography of his life, which is better than the movie. 

Weiss described giving a tip to Tony, a Serbian hairdresser, at European Hair Design: 

The slick act of sliding a tip to someone else is so out of my league, small, breast-budded me presenting a secret gift to a full-bodied man, something he needs that I have.

We already wrote a post about the Agnès b. Lolita backpack.

Piper Weiss @ 13 | A Year Before Gary Wilensky 

In the chapter titled "girl: x rated", Weiss described her teen voyeurism:

WHEN THE BOY IN THE WINDOW flicks his bedroom lights on and off, it means pay attention. [...] Then he puts down the blow-dryer, walks to the window holding himself with one hand. He waves with the other. 

His is the only penis I've ever seen, and it appears to be half an arm's length [...] He is instructional in the way he touches himself - as if he's teaching a group of students the techniques of a sport. It's all about form, control, consistency. 

I have seen this boy's most intimate body part countless times.

Subsequently, Weiss returned the favor: 

I've stuffed a hot pink satin bra from my sister's drawer with balled-up tissues and tightened the leather strings on my suede hot pants. [...] Across the alleyway, the boy flicks his lights fast and furious. A silent applause. 

Towards the end of the memoir, Weiss describes teens:

You are a walking fetish - a child in adult prosthetics.  You are a sensationalized news story. ("Shocking transformation: Underage teen sprouts sex organs.") [...] All around you, they purr and coo, they psst. Your body brings out the worst in them - fear for your safety, fear of their own perversions. You can read their minds. 

We know from Slut: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence that things happen between Manhattan private school girls and their doormen. Weiss described an encounter with her doorman:

Kilt rolled up at the waist, hair in a bun, frizz at my temples, homework half done and shoved in my book bag, I'm ready to go. I can feel it. [...] By the time I reach the lobby, one of the doormen, a young blue-eyed man with a goatee, who is too pretty [...] to look directly in the eyes, hands me the house phone.
"It's your mother."
"You forgot breakfast," she says. 

Lastly, Weiss describes a scene with Wilensky that relates to the title of her memoir You All Grow Up and Leave Me : 

"I won't leave you," I say. "I promise." His arms gather loosely around my back [...] 
"I love you, Gary," I say, because it's different from We love you, Gary [...]
"I love you, too," he says.
And then I get out of his care like a girl who has just been kissed. 

Faw's ULTRALUMINOUS: A Teen Bartering Sex

Some of the books that we review are focused on nympholepsy (e.g., Emily Prager's Roger Fishbite) while others are peppered with nympholepsy (e.g., Lauren Myracle's ttyl). Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous is of the latter sort but very much worth a post.

Here's part of Alexandra Schwartz's description of Faw's Ultraluminous that was posted on The New Yorker:

[...] the novel’s narrator is chiefly motivated by heroin. She’s a high-end prostitute who has just returned to New York after ten years in Dubai, and quickly establishes a roster of clients: “art guy,” who lives in a luxury condo in Williamsburg and takes her gallery-hopping; “calf’s brain guy,” who takes her to exotic dinners at trendy restaurants; “junk-bond guy,” now retired to the apartment he shares with his unsuspecting wife on the Upper West Side; and “the guy who buys me things,” who takes her shopping at Prada and Hermès. [...] “Ultraluminous” is a sort of “American Psycho” from the prostitute’s point of view, a damning, often hilarious account of toxic masculinity and Wall Street money culture.

And here are the relevant excerpts:

K, the narrator, shared that she began prostituting as a teen:

I was terrified of the first man who paid me. I was eighteen. It was my first time overseas. He took me to a restaurant that I would learn to make fun of but only later. I was convinced they could tell, the driver, the waiters, the hotel staff, him. I wanted to appear professional [...] 

But K exchanged sex in a bartering transaction before she was 14:

The first man I ever had sex with was British. He didn't pay me but it was an exchange. He was the manager of a club I wanted to get into [...] It was on Bleecker and Thompson. I lied and told him I was fourteen [...] 

But K first learned of her (sexual) power when she was 12:

I was twelve. It was the first warm day after four brutal months and I walked down Avenue B, all arms and legs, and suddenly I had this power. Since then it hasn't stopped.

This is how K was enticed into prostitution:

I was dumb like any eighteen-year-old. This girl told me her friend's sister did it. She said she went over there for one year and made enough money that she wouldn't have to work for five. 

"You have to do all the pervert shit, not just fuck them. You have to do whatever they want. Like old men, like with harems."

"I get it," I said.

"They buy you stuff, too, whatever you want," she said.

We were doing coke in the bathroom at a club in Chelsea where we were both bottle girls. 

Interestingly, when K was 10 or 11, a man inappropriately assumed she was a prostitute:

I was on the subway without my mother and in the crush before the doors opened a man stuck his hand up my skirt and grabbed my crotch and asked how much I cost. I was wearing one of my outlandish outfits but in an instant all my confidence disappeared. I knew it was my fault. I had rolled the waist on the skirt, twice. I remember his hoarse, bossy whisper in my ear. I remember it being a new sound. I was ten or eleven. 

Schwartz started her New Yorker piece by sharing that she devoured - no “inhaled” Ultraluminous.