Lisa Taddeo’s THREE WOMEN: A North Dakota Student-Teacher Sexual Affair

 

Here’s part of Amazon’s synopsis for Lisa Taddeo’s (non-fiction) book Three Women:

In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with [Mr. Aaron Knodel] her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down. 

Based on years of immersive reporting and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy.

As the other two women, Lina and Sloane, may not be relevant for our purposes, we’ll naturally focus on Maggie’s story. 

(Note: In the author’s note, Taddeo reiterated that the book, which she described as “a book about human desire”,  is a work of fiction that took her eight years to complete while spending “thousands of hours” with the Three Women. In addition, Taddeo referenced: “[...] court documents and local news articles and [she] spoke to reporters, judges, attorneys, investigators, colleagues, and acquaintances to confirm events and timelines.”

In the prologue, Taddeo provided an introduction to Maggie's story where we learned that Maggie was being called a “whore and fat cunt” due to her: “[...] alleged relationship with her married high school teacher.” 

Interestingly, unlike the women who called Maggie a “whore and fat cunt”, but like Betsy Karasik and Petronella Wyatt, Taddeo appeared to condone the student-teacher relationship. Taddeo wrote:

[T]o experience such a relationship, and then have it abruptly end: I could easily imagine the gaping hole that would leave. 

And Taddeo wrote that Maggie’s: “[...] sexuality and sexual experiences were being denied in a horrific way.” Therefore, Taddeo decided to write the “narrative as seen through” Maggie’s eyes - not the version of the story the prosecutors put: “[...] before a jury who saw it differently.”

Interestingly, to the dismay of feminists, Maggie shared with Taddeo that she possessed: “A certain power, dictated by her age [i.e. the fact that she was a schoolgirl] and her former lover’s occupation.” 

Maggie’s chapter opened with the revelation that, although it’s been six years since their age-gap affair, Maggie’s still attracted to her (former) teacher. So much so that 23-year-old Maggie primped for court. For example, “A neutral, smokey eye. A heavy lash.” and “[...] leggings, and a sheer kimono top.” with the hope that her (former) teacher still wanted her and that Mr. Knodel would “[...] lament what he lost.” 

As a matter of fact, it’s implied that one of the reasons Maggie went to the police was to force Mr. Knodel to show his face to her again. 

You might even say one of the reasons you went to the police was to get him to show his face again. Because most people will agree - when a lover shuts down, refuses to meet you [...] it’s as though someone is freezing your organs. For six years, he stayed away. But he will come today, and he will come also to the trial, so in a way, it can be said that one of the reasons you’re doing this is because it means you’ll see him about six more times. This is an outlandish notion only if you don’t know how a person can destroy you by the simple act of disappearing.

Since the age-gap affair ended, Maggie had been “self-loathing” and “wallowing in otherworldly dread” but hoping that Mr. Knodel had been feeling the same way and hoping that the only reason he had chosen to “remain unhappy, without” her was due to his children - not his wife. 

In the courtroom, Maggie desired to hold her (former) teacher’s face and say: 

“Oh fuck I’m sorry for betraying you. I was terrifically angry [...] Look at me. I put this war paint on, but underneath I’m scarred and scared and horny and tired and love you.”

Unlike My Dark Vanessa’s Vanessa who had to be convinced that she was a victim in her student-teacher affair, Maggie admitted that she was not a victim but that she had: “[...] fully personified my victim costume.” 

Unsurprisingly, Maggie wasn’t the only schoolgirl attracted to Mr. Knodel whom was described as “hot”, “charming”, “the catch” and exciting. Taddeo wrote of Maggie:

She had only heard about him. Some of the girls were talking about how hot he was. Slick black hair with a little front wing, like it had been gelled into permanent place. Charming, dark eyes. The kind of teacher who makes you want to come to school even in cold North Dakota mornings. His name, in the hallways, had become the kind of name one whispers, because of how much excitement it conjured.

Oahu, Hawaii

And unsurprisingly, Mr. Knodel wasn’t Maggie’s only age-gap affair. Intriguingly, Dane, Maggie’s brother-in-law, purchased a plane ticket from North Dakota for Maggie to visit him and Melia, Maggie’s sister, in Oahu, Hawaii. One night, while Melia was home with her baby, Dane took: “[...] Maggie out with his friends.” Subsequently, the two attended a toga party where 16-year-old Maggie met 31-year-old married Mateo: “[...] originally from Cuba, broad-shouldered, charming.”

For some reason: “Melia and Dane don’t think it strange when, a couple of nights later, Mateo shows up at their place [...] to take Maggie out for dinner.”

Melia and Dane weren’t stressed and Maggie was impressed by Mateo’s dinner invitation to Appleebee’s, which they drove to in Mateo’s “man’s car”. Mateo looked “super nice”, unlike the boys back home, Mateo lit her cigarette, he opened the car door for her, and he cared that she was satiated. Maggie was: “[...] in Hawaii with a man, on a proper date.” After dinner, the age-gap couple went for a walk on the beach where Mateo informed Maggie, “I want to kiss you.” 

Mateo, who was: “[...] unlike a high school boy, [and] he wasn’t ashamed of his desire”, subsequently took Maggie, with her: “[...] long, wild hair. Her strong thighs and her soft breasts”, to his motorcycle club’s meet-up in verdant hills where they had potluck breakfast before going for a ride. Naturally, Maggie was the only nymphet present, and she felt “gloriously” out of place. After holding onto Mateo’s back for hours, they arrived at Mateo’s place where, despite being a virgin, Maggie “[...] wants it more than he does.” Consequently: “Maggie lies down on the bed first. They fuck for twenty minutes.” “After it’s over he doesn’t take her home right away. They lie in his bed and talk for a long time.”

Days later, naively: “[...] Melia drops Maggie off at Mateo’s house for a bonfire.”

Melia asks, What time should I pick you up? Maggie says she wants to stay over. I will sleep on the couch, Mateo tells Melia. Later, in bed, Maggie doesn't intend it, but the words fly out of her mouth. 

I think I love, she says. 

Shortly thereafter, the age-gap affair ended after Mateo and Maggie were seen kissing: “[...] at a barbecue and Dan and Melia’s house.” (The age of consent in Hawaii is 16, but it's 18 in North Dakota.) 

Back in North Dakota, via a letter that she passed to him after class, Maggie confided in Mr. Knodel about her age-gap affair with Mateo:

To just say, Hey, I had sex with this guy in Hawaii and it was fun and the ocean was fantastic [...] and I felt sex and pretty and like myself.”

After returning home, Maggie tells other schoolgirls about Mateo and: [...] she longs for the man to whom she lost her virginity.” 

*****

David Beckham

Maggie matriculated into Mr. Knodel’s English class at the beginning of the second semester of her freshman year while: “Maggie is in love with David Beckham.” (Note: No word on how Beckham [parasocially] groomed Maggie.) Consequently, Maggie and Mr. Knodel talked after class when he would look into her eyes and listen: “[...] like a good teacher.” Maggie would: “[...] linger after class, or he would ask her a question when she was on her way out the door.” For example:

He might say, Hey, everything okay at home? And Maggie would hang back and tell him whatever was new. He was a good teacher, and he cared. Sometimes there’s nothing better on earth than someone asking you a question. 

By her junior year, Maggie and Mr. Knodel had “become close” and during her senior year Christmas break, they communicated, “[...] into the late evening [...]”, while Maggie visited family in Colorado. “Her head gets light from the excitement of it [i.e. the text messages from her teacher]”

He writes, I’m a teacher and you’re a student, and we shouldn’t be talking like this. 

And she is like, Okay.

But she feels, already, his hands down her pants.

Since Maggie’s freshman year, “something” had been “building” between her and Mr. Knodel - “[...] a steady accumulation.” A (teacher) crush.

Like any young girl who has a crush on someone older, she doesn’t know what she wants to happen. She doesn’t know if she wants sex or no sex or to undress in her room while he watches from the sidewalk. Mostly she just wants a small suggestion of excitement. An anonymous bouquet on a doorstep. 

Maggie entered Mr. Knodel’s speech and debate class on the first day after Christmas break, and they look at eat other perfectly: 

She finds her seat and then she looks at him, and it’s perfect.

The way he looks at her is absolutely perfect.

He has this way of normalizing a situation while also acknowledging the spark. 

Although they met during Maggies’s freshman year, their first student-teacher date was at Barnes & Noble during her senior year. “It’s a really easy place to bump into each other without looking conspicuous.” Before entering the bookstore, Maggie reapplied her lip gloss while feeling important due to the “illicit” nature of the rendezvous. “She knows she has to be a child and a woman all at once [...]”

One of the reasons Maggie was attracted to her teacher was due to his power, but not the power he had over her as a teacher, but the power he had over himself (e.g. his emotions).

That he can keep other information in his brain beyond the Ahhhh of lovecrush he is already and forever the alpha of their arrangement. [...] he has brain space for reading books and raising children and interacting with employees in big box stores. That, she decides, is power.”

(That is a concept that feminists and teen boys deny. If a man possesses the characteristics of charisma such as possessing a high level of self-esteem, a high level of self-confidence, and he’s powerful (i.e. he possesses a high level of self-control), he’s going to be attractive - regardless of his age.)

After purchasing a copy of Freakonomics, Maggie goes for a ride in her teacher’s car where she comes to the realization that: “He’s top shelf. Being with him, she feels her own stock rise.” Consequently: “She would have eaten a roach to be able to hold his hand.” Subsequently: “The best part of her whole life happens next. He slows to a stop on a quiet street [...] and just looks at her [...] and she feels like a supermodel.”

As the date ends: “Maggie wants to cry [...] She’s hoping he will kiss her. It’s all she wants. She can’t remember a time when she ever wanted anything else.”

In terms of Marie, Mr. Knodel’s wife, Maggie is unbothered. “Maggie is the sun, Aaron is the moon, and Marie is Saturn, ever orbiting, ever home, ever watching.”

The student and teacher texted all day and talked all night - “[...] after the kids and Marie are in bed [...]”, but Maggie was prohibited from sending the first text, which Maggie conformed to because she wanted: “[...] to do everything to preserve the relationship,” and their “forbidden love”.

One night Mr. Knodel texted: “I think I am falling in love with you.” Maggie replied: “I want to tell you how I feel in person.” The next day, with his wife out of town, Maggie’s teacher invited her to his house - “[...] after the boys are in bed.”

Thirty minutes into Dan in Real Life (2007), the student and teacher kissed. 

Finally, she thinks, his mouth! She can’t believe it. Her heart pounds, her hands shake. His mouth! And just like that, she is inside it. 

I love you, she says.

He smiles and says, I love you, too.

Subsequently, they moved to a spare bedroom where Mr. Knodel slid two fingers into his student and performed oral sex on her, “Oh, Aaron! she says. She doesn’t moan too loud, because she is aware of his children upstairs.”  Consequently, Maggie had her first (non-mastabatory) orgasm. “He is the first man ever to do this, though two and half men came before him. He smiles proudly, emerging from between her thighs.”

Due to his wife not having any future trips planned, Mr. Knodel, “quietly”, set up a classroom lunch date with Maggie where they kissed: “[...] at the table by the cupboards.” Mr. Knodel placed his student’s young hand on his penis and said, “Feel how hard you make me.” 

On subsequent lunch dates, they only kissed, but during a pre-school rendezvous, Mr. Knodel “lightly” kissed Maggie’s neck, and he fingered the young blond while he: “[...] simultaneously grind[ed] himself against her backside. She casts her head back and moans. For seven minutes this goes on and she feels she might come at any moment. Then someone wiggles the knob of the [locked] door.” 

One night, Maggie retrieved her teacher from a TGI Friday’s. As Maggie drove her mother’s Taurus, Maggie’s teacher kissed her and put his hand down her pants. “She nearly clips a parked car.”

“Over the next month”, Maggie learned that Mr. Knodel wanted to eventually leave his wife, but in the meantime and despite their age-gap love for each other, Maggie must: “[...] immediately delete all texts. There were thousands by this time.” And Mr. Knodel gave Maggie his wife’s phone number: “[...] to program it into her phone so that she would never, ever [...] answer if that number showed up on her screen.”

Shortly before Valentine’s Day, Maggie gave Mr. Knodel her copy of Twilight. Taddeo wrote that Maggie was “moved” and “exalted” by the voluminous, detailed and self-scented Post-it notes that her teacher placed in Twilight. 

“She could hardly believe that the teacher she so deeply admired had read the whole book, let alone taken the time to write such insightful commentary [...]”

On Valentine’s Day, Mr. Knodel gave his student: “[...] a bag of Peanut Butter M&M’s, which were her favorite candies, and a typed letter. It is specific about why he loves her.” 

He has begun to call her Love [...] He says on her eighteenth birthday, they will skip school and make love. The whole day, they will be entwined.

Later, Maggie wrote that she wanted to: [...] commit herself to unconditional love.” She wrote that she knew that it was wrong to love her teacher, but she wondered how love could be wrong. Nonetheless, she wanted to commit.

On Mr. Knodel’s 30th birthday, Maggie forgot the rules, and she texted him first. The text arrived during the 7:00 A.M. hour while her teacher was in the shower but while his wife was near his phone. Consequently, the student-teacher affair ended abruptly, and Maggie: “[...] vomits violently in the toilet. [...] She tells her mother she’s sick and doesn’t come out of her room for the rest of the day.”

Maggie assumed that the last day of her senior year would be the last day she saw Mr. Knodel - “[...] the love her of life.” Ergo, she hugged him, contemplated kissing him, and cried and shook in his arms. 

However, a week later they communicated via MSN Messenger. “She says how much she misses him.” But: “The next day there is an MSN message.” 

She found you in my contacts again, your area code. We can never talk again. 

Almost three years later and at the age of 20, Maggie was: “[...] still not over [Mr.] Aaron [Knodel]” [Emphasis added]

A man like him was a hero, especially when you grow up among boys, with their small principles and their shallow field of vision, who watch porn and debate nothing. She thinks, daily, of Aaron’s body and face and words and the protection she felt in his arms. 

However, unsurprisingly and typically, Maggie’s turning point(s) arrived via jealousy. 

Maggie's first turning point came when she learned that Mr. Knodel had been named North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year. At the time, Maggie was depressed and was still “pining after” her “older, married teacher”; thus, she considered Mr. Knodel’s award a “cruel offense”, that he was “rubbing it in her face”, and that she didn’t: “[...] mean shit in the world of Aaron Knodel.” 

The second turning point came after Maggie shared the details of her illicit affair with Addison whom replied: “There’s no way you’re the first, which means no way you’ll be the last.” Subsequently, before Maggie walked into the police station, she informed her parents, “When I was a senior I had an inappropriate relationship with my teacher, Mr. Knodel.”

Among other accolades, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and was named A Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post.

Famous Teleiophile Lily Allen: Age-Gap Teen Sex in Hotel Rooms

Nika Shakhnazarova reported for Page Six that "Lily Allen [shared]: My dad called the cops on me when I lost my virginity at 'about 12'" (August 16, 2023)

Shakhnazarova posted that the British singer shared on Alan Carr's “Life’s a Beach” podcast that while on holiday with her family in Brazil, she "went missing" in the hotel room of "a guy called Fernando" where ≈12-year-old Lily lost her virginity. 

Lily spent the night with Fernando, consequently, her father: "[...] thought she had gone missing and swiftly called the police."

“I actually went missing,” she explained. “I lost my virginity to a guy called Fernando in Brazil. When I was about 12, no I am [not] joking.”

“They thought I actually went missing. I went to his hotel room, and I was on holiday with my dad and brother, and obviously didn’t come back to my room,” she added.

“I woke up [the next day] and there was police all over the hotel. They were literally combing the beach and had T-shirts [asking], ‘Is this what she was wearing?’ 

Teen Lily Allen (Source: My Thoughts Exactly)

On the podcast, Lily referred to Fernando as a guy and not a boy; thus, it's safe to assume that he was (much) older than Lily; however, in her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly (Blink Publishing, 2018), Lily elaborated that Fernando was 20, and she was 14.

I lost my virginity to a guy called Fernando. I met him in Brazil on holiday with Dad and Alfie when I was fourteen. There was a teen bar at the hotel where we were staying, and that’s where we met. Fernando was twenty, and I was flattered that he fancied me, so off I went, trailing after him when he suggested going back to his room. 

He [groomed] fancied me, so off I went, trailing after him when he suggested going back to his room. 

Fernando didn't get into any trouble with the police, because Lily said on the podcast, "I didn’t have the heart to say [to my family and the police], no, I was just losing my virginity.” 

As you can see, Lily said on the podcast that she was ≈12 when she lost her virginity, but in her memoir, she wrote that she was 14; however, 12 seems to be closer to the truth because Gemma Mullin reported for The Sun that "Lily Allen Claims She Dad Sex With Der Dad's Famous Pal When She Was Just 14" (22 September 2018), which Lily elaborated on in her memoir by writing that she had a date with a television star in a bar and after "a couple of drinks" he took her to his room where they had sex.

Teen Lily Allen (Source: My Thoughts Exactly)

[As for] [t]he second time I had sex was [...] I’d been watching my dad play a celebrity charity football game with a television star. After the match, the TV star left his football gear in my dad’s car, and I was dispatched to his hotel to return it. We arranged to meet in the bar there. He bought me a couple of drinks, then took me up to his room and had sex with me. I was fourteen. 

To the television star's dismay, Lily's father, the actor Keith Allen, found out about his daughter's age-gap sex. And how did Lily's father respond? Like Petronella Wyatt's father, he joked about his girl having sex with a man. Lily wrote: "[...] my dad turned me having sex with this guy I hardly knew into a joke between him and his mates."

Unsurprisingly, Lily is a teleiophile, but not only by her actions but by her words as well. In her memoir, she related that when she was a nymphet, she was "infatuated with older men", that having sex with older men was a kickstarter, and she wrote that older guys were more "equipped" than boys to teach her about sex.

It wasn’t a coincidence that my first sexual partners were older than me. [...] I was infatuated with older men because I felt that if I could prove to someone older that I could be mature too, then I was grown-up myself. I didn’t feel comfortable being a child (as I may have mentioned 800 times). Sleeping with older men was a way of trying to kickstart the next chapter of my life. 

I also thought that an older guy would be better equipped to show me what the whole sex thing was about, because I found it so mysterious myself.

Cosmo[politan] Confessays: A Daddy Girl Forever!

“For Your Eyes Only: Cosmo Confessays: The least-safe-for-work true sex stories we’ve ever published” were published in the July/August 2023 issue of Cosmopolitan. (Illustrations\Anna Rupprecht)

The first of the seven “true sex stories”, “The Night I Became a “Daddy” Girl Forever Altered the Course of My Sex Life”, was shared by “Stella St. Regis”.

St. Regis began her story by relating that, despite only being 22-years-old, she had sex with a “share of daddies” i.e., “[...] men who have literally fathered children as well as hot, dominant, sexy-older-man types.” However, she had never actually called any of her much older lovers ‘Daddy’.

You could say I’ve had sex with my share of daddies—by which I mean men who have literally fathered children as well as hot, dominant, sexy-older-man types. But actually calling any of these men “Daddy” out loud? [...]

However, things changed for the 22-year-old after a: “[...] night in bed at a 5-star hotel with yet another man old enough [...]” to be her father whom happened to be an irresistible married executive at her place of employment.

That is, of course, until my night in bed at a 5-star hotel with yet another man old enough to be my father. We were a workplace scandal waiting to happen, the most cliché of sordid clichés: the 22-year-old assistant and the married executive with a reputation [...] And because I have a somewhat unflattering, occasionally inconvenient, and often frowned-upon thing for the illicit, I couldn’t help myself.

The age-gap affair started via “innocuous work emails” but went from “maybe-unnecessary work phone calls” to “late-night texting” before the young lady received a request from the Big Shot with the sexy voice to “grab a drink and talk shop.”

It started the way it usually does—innocuous work emails that turn into maybe-unnecessary work phone calls (and holy shit, this guy’s voice is sexy) that turn into late-night texting [...] At around 2:30 a.m. one night, he let me know that he was going to be back in town [...] and said we should “grab a drink and talk shop.”

Consequently, the young lady put on her:  “[...] tiniest is-that-really-work-appropriate miniskirt and met him in a ritzy hotel bar [...]”

St. Regis confessed that Big Shot was superior to the other older men whom she had been with since her “daddy-fucking career” began, because he was: “[...] kind and warm, flattering but not sleazy, with the kind of understated confidence that we call Big Dick Energy.”

However, it was Big Shot’s voice that was his most attractive feature to the turned 22-year-old.

[...] his voice was the thing I was most attracted to. Like him, it was confident, not arrogant; deep but not booming; smooth—the way I imagine people who like whiskey think good bourbon tastes. When he asked the question I’d been waiting for:

“How old are you?”

I smiled and said, “I just turned 22.”

“You seem much wiser and more mature than 22,” he said. Checkmate.

[...]

“Do you want to raid the minibar upstairs?” he asked [...]

Subsequently, the age-gap couple: “[...] were making out frantically, tearing at each other’s clothes [...]” before Big Shot asked, “Do you like name-calling?”

“Like what?” I asked, feeling suddenly innocent.

“Like, I like to be called ‘Daddy.’”

“Yes, Daddy,” I said, the words slipping right off my tongue like I was born to say them.

“Good girl,” he said. I can still feel those words working their way down my body.

[...]

“Are you going to lie back and be a good little slut for Daddy?” he asked.

“Yes, Daddy.”

Later, the young lady masturbated while reminiscing about Big Shots dominating language, which made her feel, for the first time, “confident and secure” and ironically “authoritative” in her “submission”. Consequently, she proclaimed: “I was a Daddy Girl now.”

From HorseGasms to Oral in the Woods: Teen Summer Camp Sex Stories

On the "Postcards from Europe" episode of the Hot Girls Talks podcast (Aug 18, 2022), Carly shared with Halley and Jaz:

"If you went to camp, you'd know that you saw plenty of vaginas in a lifetime and probably the inside of them [...] because at camp you just are, like, crazy. Yeah, it's just a thing. I don't know, like, people that went to camp know. Just camp things."

After Carly related that she saw “plenty of vaginas”, “probably the inside of them”, during summer camp, I recalled some previous posts that I wrote on nymphets engaged in oral sex, lipstick lesbianism, and age-gap relationships - all during summer camps.

For example, I related that Dominique Sisley shared in a Mel Magazine post "Why Was Summer Camp Sex So Hot?" that camp: “[...] is a mythical, esteemed rite of passage in American culture” with over 14 million tweens and teens attending every summer for: “[...] fancy-free fucking under the stars.”

Sisley wrote that even the (older) teen counselors and apprentices: “[...] get a chance to have abundant, post-pubescent sex in a variety of sandy and/or mosquito-ridden locations.”

Sisley referenced the question “Camp counselors, what's the most NSFW thing you've caught CAMP COUNSELORS doing?” that was asked on r/AskReddit. Per users, u/cdncbn and u/Sandstar643, camp sex ranged from “Sex in the washroom back closet” to lipstick lesbian sex.

u/cdncbn

Sex in the washroom back closet

Sex in the dining room

Sex in the bus

Sex in the senior staff girls room

Sex at the Friday night campfire ceremony

etc

u/Sandstar643

Camper here, I was in grade 6 on a school camping trip when we walked into the cabin. Our cabin leader wasn't there, so we checked her room only to find her lying on her bed with another counselor going at it. They were both female. I'm a male.

In addition, Sisley related that Redditors posted: “[...] talk of lost virginity [...] and late-night lesbian erotica readings.” And that when Clarrisa was a 15-year-old apprentice counselor, she and her crush, and other campers: “[...] would make out and feel each other up at night” while some of the other campers had sex - in the woods.

“Me and the other [teen] apprentices were completely unsupervised at night,” she says. “I had one camp crush. We didn't end up having sex, but we would make out and feel each other up at night. I could always hear other people doing the same thing. Once or twice a couple of people would just go off into the woods together for more serious stuff. I felt like I got no sleep at all that summer.”

Of course, the teen sex wasn’t confined to the woods. In response to the question: “Camp counselors of reddit, what is the most nsfw thing that happened at camp? [NSFW]”, one Redditor and former camp counselor posted that during "campout night", he caught two 17-year-old campers “fucking like rabbits”:

We had a "campout night" where you would sleep in tents instead of the cabins. I was a rover one night and there was an unusual amount of movement coming from a tent that wasn't with the others. I shined my light on it and it still kept moving. I went over an [sic] announced myself and opened the tent. Two of my staff members were fucking like rabbits. I quickly told them to stop and I let them get dressed. They were both 17 and I had to fire them and call their parents. Very awkward.

In the end, in response to the question, “Camp counselers [sic], what are the worst, most outrageous, or NSFW things that happen at summer camp? [Serious]”, another Redditor and former New Hampshire camp counselor posted that (some) nymphet campers may felt pressured into preteen (oral) sex due to a desire for attention and acceptance.

Oh my god, I worked at this camp in New Hampshire for two summers. Three main things.

One: everyone fucks everyone [...]

Two: half the counselor a [sic] were high the whole summer [...].

Three: it is the worst place to send your preteen daughter. The pressure that 10-13 year olds are under to perform sex acts is unimaginable. Most of them give in and then end up crying about it later [...] I caught a 11 year old giving a blow job to 16 year old.

Moving away from Reddit to literature, 17-year-old Danielle confessed in “Reality Check From Young Voices”, a chapter in Katie Cappiello and Meg McInerney’s Cappiello’s Slut: A Play and Guidebook, that “lots of sexual firsts” happened at her “typical Jewish summer camp” like the filming (oral) sex tapes:

“I go to this, where promiscuous behavior is practically encouraged and cultivated [...] with no parental supervision, there are lots of sexual firsts for everyone [...] There is one girl in particular, Georgia, who is really petite and very pretty [...] Josh and another boy coerced - basically forced - Georgia to give them blow jobs, while others filmed it on their phones.”

Lena Dunham shared in her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, that when she was a teen summer camper she could not stop staring at her camp counselor’s: “[...] tits swing as she changed.” And Dunham wrote that she lusted after a college student, flirted with her Australian 'bunk uncle', and discovered her “truest love” in 22-year-old Johnny:

“[...] couldn't stop eyeing everyone else, staring at their round asses as they dressed, the dusky hairs emerging from the bathing suits. “You are so bicurious!” Lena's camp counselor said after she caught Lena “[...] watching her tits swing as she changed.” And Lena: “[...] lusted after a college student and flirted with her “Australian 'bunk uncle'”.

The following summer, at the age of fourteen, Dunham found her “truest love”. “[Johnny] was blond, from South Carolina, and just shy of twenty-two.” In her bunk, Lena fantasized about discarding her “[...] clothes, approaching Johnny, and letting him put his hands all over [...]” her body.

And in E.R. Frank's Friction, a novella, while on a camping trip, 13-year-old Alex accidentally saw her teacher’s penis. In other words, "[...] his rain-slicked wet thing above a jiggling sack of skin, and a nest of brown hair. Everything." Consequently, Alex couldn't get her science teacher's, "[...] thick-looking and sluggy [...]" thing out of her head.

Possibly taking a cue from Reddit, to commence The Cut’s 2014 Summer Sex Week, Maureen O'Connor posted, in the True Stories feature, “10 Awkward, Nostalgic Stories of Summer-Camp Sexual Awakenings” (July 7, 2014). Here are some of the stories of summer-camp sexual awakenings, which includes bestiality, age-gap making out, lipstick lesbianism, masturbation, kibbutz camp sex, and oral sex - all performed by tween and teen campers:

Fake Orgasms Sweep Horse Camp

When I was 11, there was a fake-orgasm craze at Camp Rim Rock’s horseback riding camp for girls. It started when Lauren Petersen asked if anyone else had “tickling feelings” while grinding on a Western saddle. Lauren was the alpha girl of my cabin. She was cool and tough and came from New York and had a Beastie Boys cassette [...] If Lauren Petersen felt tickles on horses, then feeling tickles on horses was cool. Soon everyone was feeling tickles, or trying to feel them, or faking them. It was like the Salem Witch Trials. I will never say whether my horsegasms were fake.

[Note: This is not the first time we’ve written about “horsegasms”. For example, on “They’re Just Not That Into You...” episode of the Hot Girls Talk podcast (August 4, 22), Halley shared with Carly and Jaz: “You can also pop your cherry by riding a fucking horse. One of my friends […] she literally told all of us when we were like 9-years-old, ‘Yeah I popped my cherry by riding this horse.’”

Cruel Intentions 2 (2000)

And in Cruel Intentions 2 (2000), Cherie Claymon, a prep school freshman, masturbated upon a horse in Central Park, which was all part of Kathryn's plot to turn Cherie into the "[...] premier slut of Manchester Prep."]

Camp Spirit or Furry Fetish?

All camp hookups, in my experience, were a little predator-prey. I was 15 when a 20-year-old counselor convinced me it would be hilarious if we stole full-body squirrel costumes from the drama supply closet (the squirrel was our camp mascot) and snuck through the woods to terrorize kids who were camping in tents that night. So we put on the costumes and hiked to the campsite — and ended up making out on a picnic table in full-body fur suits, squirrel heads perched beside us.

Sexual Shaving Rituals

We always shaved our 12-year-old legs outside where the boys could see, sitting on towels spread over the pavement that connected the girls’ camp to the boys’ camp. When I was 13, my counselor got me and another camper to shave her vag before she met up with her boyfriend. We did it outside on the porch, her lying down and us on either side of her, giggling [...] I think the counselor got a perverse kick out if it [sic], even though she is straight [...]

The Girl Who Discovered Orgasms

I had my first orgasm at Jewish summer camp, the result of dry-humping against a cabin. A few years later I lost my virginity at a summer camp on a kibbutz. I had sex five times that night, including in the shower, and came every time! Talk about getting off to a good (blessed?) start.

The Birth of a Teen Hussy

The summer after seventh grade, I went on a bike tour from Vermont and into Canada.

Somewhere around the border of Canada, we camped on a beach [...] I waited until the counselor fell asleep, then snuck out of our tent and walked toward the party. It was a big bonfire, loads of booze, local teens. I met a very cute, blond 16-year-old and told him I was 15. (I was 13.) He took me into the woods, and, chalk it up to boredom or my first taste of anonymous hooking up, but I decided that I would give this stranger my first ever blow job. I didn’t tell him. I just went for it.

When I returned to my tent [...] I was promptly kicked off the bike tour, sent alone by Greyhound bus back to Port Authority for my parents to retrieve me [...] It was the beginning of many years as a teen hussy.

First Kiss: A Tale of Minor Tragedy

I had my first kiss at summer camp. “Wanna blow me?” he asked a few seconds later. I didn’t know what “blow” meant so I didn’t respond, but after a few more seconds of kissing, I knew I would do anything for this boy. He was the love of my life. So that night I asked an older girl to explain “blowing.” I’d barely processed the information when I walked into the cafeteria the next morning and saw the older girl holding hands with the love of my life. She had somehow managed to track him down and blow him before breakfast.

*****

As was mentioned, it’s not uncommon in both fiction and non-fiction for sexual acts to occur on the bus to and from camp. For example, in the “Camp” chapter of James Franco’s Palo Alto: Stories, at the YMCA water-ski camp, some 12 and 13-year-old boys dared Howard to "make out" with Angela, a Black girl, in the back of the bus. Consequently, Howard kissed Angela, the other boys saw Howard feel Angela's "small breasts", and under the towel he felt her Angela’s vagina.

Per Franco, some teens even play camping. For instance, in "Part 1: Vietnam" of "Chinatown In Three Parts", after smoking "a lot of pot" at Tom's house, Roberto suggested to Pam, "Let's play 'Camping'!" Roberto shared what he did to Pam while “Camping”:

[...] I took her pants off. [...] Her ass was fantastic, very hard. And her tits were big for an Asian. I spit on my hand, and then I put my dick inside her. It was good [...]"

Vera Papisova's Teen Vogue post "23 Masturbation Stories: Girls Get Real About Self-Love" (AUGUST 4, 2020) is a compilation of preteen and teen masturbation stories. And, of course, teen masturbation at camp was mentioned by Lindsay who shared with Papisova that, other than her "freaky camp friend", she had to wait until college to learn "[...] that other girls masturbate, too!"

Kendall Jenner with Tonight I'm Someone Else

We were (indirectly) directed to Chelsea Hodson’s Tonight I'm Someone Else by none other than Kendall Jenner whom was spotted reading Hodson’s essays poolside. Hodson wrote that she met "effortlessly cool" Bianca, a blonde 13-year-old, at a beach camp on Catalina Island.

Bianca shared while laughing, "So then he [i.e. Brandon, a middle-school bully] says to her [i.e. 11-year-old Dawn], three o'clock, I'm gonna rape you."

And Bianca inquired empathetically, "What's under your towel anyway, Will? Chelsea's never seen a dick; let her see it."

But after camp ended, Hodson regretted not having a teen lipstick lesbian affair with Bianca: "I wish I could say Bianca and I traveled through the night and the tall grass, desire clearing our path, stronger than a machete. I wish I could say we held hands or kissed or touched in some way as soon as we were alone." (Interestingly, Welcome to the Dollhouse was Bianca’s favorite (age-gap) film.)

Hodson may not have gotten her teen lipstick lesbian fantasy fulfilled, but Liara Roux related in Whore of New York: A Confession that in fifth grade (≈ 10-years-old), she had (lipstick) lesbian sex with the "very beautiful" Melissa. Outdoors. In the woods. During a youth retreat slash camp in the Catskills. The nubile nymphets met by the bonfire before Melissa looked into Roux's and licked Roux's fingers:

One day, when we were walking to whatever activity was next, she asked me if I wanted to skip it [...] As we got further away from the camp, she stepped off the trail. I followed her. We wandered through the trees, and I tripped over a rock hidden under the snow.

We got to a clearing and she plopped on the ground, then started making a snow angel. “What about your pants?” I asked. “Won’t they get wet?” [...] “They already are.” I blushed at the implication. Seeing my flushed face, she stood up, walked to me, and kissed me [...] I couldn’t hold myself back. I kissed her, putting my hands around her neck, pulling her in.

[...] I pressed myself against her and we fell in the snow [...] I rolled on top of her, kissed her again [...] She wiggled, unzipping her coat, unzipping mine, and our hands were on each other’s chests, grasping at softness. I kissed her neck; she moaned and put my breast in her mouth [...] After much maneuvering, she pulled off her glove and stuck her hand down my pants. The chill of her fingertips pressing into me.

“We walked back to camp, our faces flushed.”

As we mentioned, shockingly, sexual shannangins at camp can happen among early preteens as well. For instance, E. Jean Carroll wrote in her New York magazine piece “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal” (June 24-July 7, 2019) that she was raped by President Trump in Bergdorf Goodman, but she also discussed that, while on a family camping trip, James, an approximately 7-year-old, 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.

Better Things

(Note: Carroll’s camp story reminded me of an episode of Better Things where, in a game of Truth or Dare, Duke dared another pre-teen, "Put four Monopoly pieces in your vagina." She did!)

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

On ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the schoolgirls were enthralled by Mr. Molina - the new Grant High School guidance counselor. Madison shared with Amy that Mr. Molina was new, single and delicious, but Amy shared with Madison and Lauren that she impregnated on the second day of band camp.

In Megan Abbott's Dare Me, nymphets shared shocking stories of "kissing their babysitters", but more relevantly, during the summer after seventh grade, Beth received a "ringlet of hickeys from a counselor".

And in the controversial National Bestseller The End of Alice, imprisoned Chappy shared a story about his teen penpal whom witnessed her cabin mates, “two little girls from Louisville, Kentucky” involved in some lipstick lesbian foreplay:

She writes of the memory of one particular afternoon [...] The story is of coming into the cabin to collect her tennis racket and finding the two little girls from Louisville, Kentucky [...] lying across the top bunk, head to toe, the brunette’s narrow foot sweeping back and forth across the strawberry blonde’s nipple, the blonde’s jumpsuit unzipped and parted to the waist. When the lovebirds sighted the girl and smiled at her, there was a flash of light like an explosion, as the sun, reflecting off the brunette’s metal tooth-braces [...]

While what I related are from recent sources, unsurprisingly, teen camp sex isn’t novel as Lolita’s Humbert noted about Lolita’s “sapphic diversions” during the late 1940s with a tent-mate:

Her astounding tale started with an introductory mention of her tent-mate of the previous summer, at another camp, a “very select” one as she put it. The tent-mate [...] instructed her in various manipulations. [...] I wanted to know if either mother learned of those sapphic diversions? “Gosh no,” exhaled limp Lo [...]

In the end, Sisley wrote that summer camp (pre) teen sex is simply a result of mixing of the sexes, which is something that orthodox Jews and Muslims have been proclaiming for centuries.

Communal sleeping, shared showers, and minimal supervision — often at the hands of slightly older and even hornier youths — add up to a pressure cooker of hormones, humiliation, awkward fumbling, and memorable discoveries.

*****

On Sale: The Allure of Nymphets: A Study of Man's Fascination with Young Girls 

(SECOND EDITION)