The increased availability of contraception made a major difference, too. Money argued that teenagers in particular needed guidance about how to navigate this new world—but they weren’t getting it. “The established generation of adults has pretty much abdicated its responsibility toward youth,” he charged, adding that “parents look backward rather than forward.” In the meantime, young adults had already started devising updated rituals for sex and courtship. Money described a “new code of betrothal” that was slowly developing, “a relationship of recreational sex that is not promiscuous but that also is not a permanent commitment to procreation.”
In other words, teens were embracing a kind of serial monogamy in which they tested out potential mates—and sex partners—before finding one who they wanted to marry. While conservatives viewed this as a symptom of widespread moral breakdown, Money saw it as a distinctly positive development with the potential to lower the divorce rate, which had more than doubled between 1963 and 1975.
Money’s perspective was winning the culture wars. The public acceptance of recreational sex was happening on a national level, in the hallowed halls of the capital. Two recent Supreme Court decisions had revealed that as far as the American government was concerned, citizens were no longer required to limit their sexual experiences to the willful pursuit of pregnancy. When it came to straight couples at least, these decisions implied that people’s bedrooms were inherently private spaces. And that privacy yielded another entitlement—the right to experience pleasure.
For a real girl around Katherine’s age, the consequences of premarital sex were quite a bit less severe than they would have been for her grandmother or even her mother. Over the course of a century, virginity had gone from a physical status to a mostly symbolic one. Equally as important, pregnancy was no longer a foregone conclusion of heterosexual intercourse. The medical field had effectively severed the rope between the two—and in recent years, the government had tied off the knots.
The biggest development on this front was Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that allowed women in all fifty states the right to an abortion within the first three months of pregnancy. Roe was one of the feminist movement’s flashiest victories, representing years of grassroots activism and advocacy to shore up public support for the procedure. The decision was controversial, but not among the justices. The court ruled 7-2 that from a constitutional standpoint, a woman’s right to an abortion was justified by her well-established legal right to privacy.
Another landmark case, decided less than a year earlier, had a major impact, too. Eisenstadt v. Baird declared that unmarried people should have access to contraception. Until this ruling in 1972, the Pill—which came on the market in 1960—was only available to married women. Eisenstadt v. Baird changed sex for the Michaels and Katherines of the world. For the first time, a young woman could be completely in control of her fertility.
After Katherine makes the choice to have sex and receives guidance from Diana and Hallie, she calls Planned Parenthood in the city to schedule an appointment. She’s nervous, and when the medical receptionist on the other end of the line asks her age, she answers, “Does it matter?” The Planned Parenthood rep assures her that she doesn’t need parental permission to come in, but they have “special sessions” for teenagers. Katherine is just shy of eighteen, which qualifies her for a group chat with a doctor and social worker.
Blume devotes an entire chapter to Katherine’s Planned Parenthood visit, as if she’s making a point of showing readers how nonthreatening an appointment like this can be. After the group session, Katherine meets with a social worker for private counseling, during which she answers questions about her sex life and her menstrual cycle. Then it’s on to the exam, where the male gynecologist patiently walks her through the steps, showing her the speculum and letting her see her own cervix. She’s nervous but still confident enough to advocate for herself. When the social worker suggests that a diaphragm might be the best birth control method for her, Katherine firmly states her preference: “I’d rather take the Pill.”
The office respects her wishes and gives her a two-month supply of birth control pills, plus a prescription. She hasn’t yet told Michael about the Planned Parenthood visit and she can’t wait to surprise him with the news. For a girl like Katherine, there’s nothing wrong with indicating that she intends to have sex with him again. The dance is over—as is the phase in which Michael is clearly taking the lead. Unbeknownst to him, Katherine is setting the stage for a whole new act.
What’s amazing about Forever, Rachel Lotus said, is that it foregrounds Katherine’s enthusiastic consent. “Katherine absolutely wants it and is in touch with her own desire and feels ready,” Lotus said. “They both are going into this situation knowing that that’s what they want… and how refreshing. To have her take ownership of her own experience in that way.”
The next week, Michael invites Katherine to his house. Up until this point, she’s spent a lot of time around Michael’s older sister, but she hasn’t met his parents or even been to the family home. Michael describes his mom and dad as “a little stuffier” than Katherine’s, but “basically they’re good guys.” Still, she’s hesitant to come over, even though Michael assures her that his parents will be out until midnight. “We don’t have to do anything… we can just go there and talk,” Michael tells her. This time though, the charade has been dropped and Katherine isn’t even pretending to fall for it. “I think I’ve heard that before!” she jokes.
Once she’s through the door, Katherine is fascinated by what she sees. The furniture downstairs is “big, heavy and dark.” She has fun inspecting Michael’s bedroom, where he displays his team pennants and trophies. She even goes through his medicine cabinet, laughing that he “use[s] more junk” than she does and has “at least six different kinds of aftershave.” They banter back and forth about it until Katherine raises the stakes.
“Do you ever put it on your balls?” she asks.
Michael says no, and then wonders if she would like to do it for him. Katherine accepts the challenge, then boldly inspects Ralph in the light of the bathroom. They have sex right there, though Katherine remains unsatisfied. But an hour later, they try again, this time in Michael’s bed. For the first time, he’s able to last a little longer, giving Katherine a chance to get into it. “I grabbed his backside with both hands, trying to push him deeper and deeper into me,” Katherine says. “I spread my legs as far as I could—and I raised my hips off the bed—and I moved with him, again and again and again—and at last, I came.”
Katherine isn’t ashamed. Far from it—she’s celebratory. “I actually came,” she tells Michael afterward. “I’ve never felt so close to you before.” Then, “Can we do it again?” Michael says he needs to rest. They go out for hamburgers and Michael brings her home, where they sit in the den for a while. “I thought how nice it would be if we could go upstairs, to bed, together,” Katherine says. “I was hoping we’d make love again but Michael said he was kind of exhausted.”
By this point, Katherine’s sexuality has been fully awakened. In the logic of the novel she’s done everything right, and her reward is getting to enjoy her intimate experiences. The next time they have sex, after Michael’s high school graduation, she doesn’t just let herself go—she actively pursues pleasure.
Back in the den, Michael notes that she’s being “aggressive” as she kisses him all over his body. She straddles him and asks if it’s okay to do it “this way,” with her on top. “Any way you want,” Michael answers. Katherine describes finding the rhythm between their bodies and savoring every moment. “I couldn’t control myself anymore,” she says. “I came before he did. But I kept moving until he groaned and as he finished I came again, not caring about anything—anything but how good it felt.”
Michael isn’t threatened by Katherine’s newfound sexual confidence. The next generation of boys, Blume seems to be saying, should be able to meet empowered good girls where they are. While they’re holding each other, Katherine gets lost in her post-coital musing. “I thought, there are so many ways to love a person,” she says. “This is how it should be—forever.”
Although she never explicitly tells them so, Katherine’s parents are aware that she’s having sex with Michael. They also know that the young couple are actively plotting out how to stay connected through college, with the intention of being together for the rest of their lives. That’s what makes Diana and Roger’s next steps so unique from a historical perspective. For the parents of yesteryear, the only way to salvage a sexually active young woman’s future would be to persuade her gentleman caller to marry her. But the Danzigers don’t want their daughter to marry Michael, despite the fact that he’s traditionally suitable—smart, employable, and from a similar socioeconomic background—and also that they like him. Even with all that in mind, Diana and Roger set out to help Katherine understand that she should end the relationship.
To them, Katherine’s prospects are actually more promising if she gives herself time before settling down. This wouldn’t have been true at any other time in American history, but thanks to the sexual revolution and the women’s movement, an intelligent, levelheaded girl like Katherine had real options outside of just landing a decent man and getting pregnant. Much to Katherine’s disappointment, her parents arrange for her to take a job teaching tennis at Jamie’s sleepaway camp for the summer. “We both think you could use a change of scenery,” Diana says vaguely when Katherine accuses them of trying to keep her away from Michael. “Camp is just seven weeks,” Roger says firmly as her protest escalates.
Ultimately, they make it clear that Katherine doesn’t have a choice—she’s going to New Hampshire. She’s scared to tell Michael, but then finds out that his parents have decided to send him out of town, too. They’ve helped him get a job in North Carolina, with his uncle who owns a lumber yard. The pair vow to stay together, despite any geographical challenges. “So they’ll find out that separating us won’t change anything,” Michael tells Katherine. “Then maybe they’ll leave us alone.”
At the end of June, they both leave to start their new jobs, vowing to write each other every day. Their letters are mushy: “I miss you,” “Ralph misses you,” “Love forever,” etc. But slowly, Katherine finds her footing at camp. She starts spending time with Theo, the tanned, mustached, twenty-one-year-old head tennis counselor. One day, he asks her about her necklace. “What’s forever supposed to mean?” he says, flipping it over. When Katherine tells him, then asks him what he thinks, he’s honest: “I think forever’s a long time for a kid like you.”
Katherine takes issue with being called a kid, especially by a guy who’s not much older than she is. Over the next few weeks, their banter evolves into flirtation, and she’s startled when she wakes up from a vivid sex dream about him. Immediately, she writes Michael a four-page letter as penance. But soon, her letters to him start slowing down. When her grandfather dies, she turns to Theo for comfort.
Michael shows up at the camp to surprise her one afternoon, and Katherine immediately knows it’s over. They go to his motel room and start making out, but she can’t pretend that she’s into it.
“There’s another guy, isn’t there?” Michael says.
“In a way, I guess…” Katherine says—and Michael freaks out.
Remember: Boys can feel just as much pain, Blume said. Michael takes the breakup hard. He shuts himself in the bathroom and flushes the toilet over and over so Katherine can’t hear him crying. Then he drops her back off at camp, telling her it’s fine, actually he “screwed [his] way around North Carolina.” The statement has the ring of a lie, and Katherine calls him out. But it doesn’t matter. When she gets out of the car, Michael pulls away so fast that his tires “left marks on the road.”
It was important to Blume to show the depth of Michael’s suffering. Equally important: the fact that it’s Katherine, not Michael, whose intense feelings fade. The morality tale version would show Katherine being used; once she’s had sex, she’s no longer a conquest. But Forever doesn’t take that stance. It’s Michael, not Katherine, who is left behind.
They see each other once more back in New Jersey, in an awkward run-in. They exchange quick pleasantries and Katherine thinks to herself that she has no regrets. “I’ll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special,” she says. “Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently.” When she gets back home, her mother tells her that she missed a call from Theo.
Katherine isn’t miserable—she hasn’t been punished. She still has her whole life to look forward to. And for a surprising number of parents, that wasn’t acceptable.
Chapter Twelve Paperbacks
“We’d all whisper and certain pages would fall open.”
Even with Are You There God? and Deenie behind her, Forever wasn’t what readers expected of Judy Blume. Dick Jackson and Bob Verrone—who had moved Bradbury Press from northern New Jersey to the Westchester, New York, town of Scarsdale—knew as much. To protect themselves they created an entirely new division and released the novel as Blume’s “first book for adults.”
“Labeling it an adult book… was our way of saying that it didn’t belong on children’s shelves,” Jackson said years later, “and that we were not recommending this for every fourth grader.”
Judy herself disagreed with that decision. She told School Library Journal that seeing the book described that way right on the hardcover flap came as a “shock.” By then, Judy had clout and employees at Bradbury were told to do whatever it took to keep her happy. “Dick told me, ‘Judy Blume is our big author, Judy Blume is the person who keeps this business going, basically,’ ” Peter Silsbee remembered. “She kept the lights on.” But in this case, Jackson did what he thought was best to keep himself and his star writer out of hot water.
Blume had become wildly successful, thanks in part to a paperback deal with Dell. “The way Dick told the story was, they published her first books, all in hardcover, but then when they went to paperback… that’s when they really got into the hands of kids,” Silsbee said. A paperback at the time cost around $1.75, which was quite a bit less than the hardcovers. “They were on racks in the drug store. And that was it, it was all word of mouth. Like one kid would read it and pass it to their friend, pass it to their friend, and pretty soon you had this huge fan base.”
That huge fan base was ravenous for books by Blume. In August 1976, the New York Times reported that Dell had printed over 1.75 million copies of her titles, calling her “a kind of heroine to the kids who read and re-read her books.” She was a complicated figure for parents, who supported their kids in reading but weren’t always in love with Blume’s subject matter. The paper of record’s review of Forever, which had run the previous winter, called the novel “a convincing date-by-date account of first love.” It made no mention of the various sex scenes, but rumors of the book’s contents traveled swiftly from kid to kid, mother to mother.
“Rest assured the kids manage to wangle copies of ‘Forever,’ ” the Times wrote.
The trade magazines panned the novel. School Library Journal hated it, saying, “Obviously it’s not a quality book, but that fact won’t bother the many girls who will read it.” Kirkus was also dismissive. “Cath [sic] and Michael fall in love when both are high school seniors, and Blume leads up to It date by date and almost inch by inch (hand over sweater, hand under skirt),” the reviewer writes. “As usual with this immensely popular author, Forever has a lot of easy, empathic verity and very little heft.”
Forever had at least one powerful ally in its corner. Mary Calderone at SIECUS—with whom Judy would eventually develop a warm relationship—thought the book was excellent. In May 1977, SIECUS put out its monthly report with a front-page story devoted to the topic of sex in children’s literature. Writer Pamela D. Pollack, who worked as a book reviewer for School Library Journal, rounded up a series of recent titles that dared to tackle the carnal experiences of teens. Pollack did not include Forever in her story, and offered a fairly bleak assessment of the way these books portrayed premarital sex. “Not too long ago, if sexual matters were mentioned at all in children’s fiction, a single standard of abstinence-or-else was applied unilaterally to the unmarried and underage,” she wrote. Now, she said, writers acknowledged the existence of teen sex but often did so by presenting the “extreme repercussions” that Randy Blume had mentioned to her mother: unwanted pregnancy, plummeting self-esteem, rape. Even the gentler versions presented “boys at the mercy of their hormones and girls as being at the mercy of boys.” Pollack expressed the need for a novel that guided young adult readers toward a healthier, more humane view of sexuality: “What is necessary is some notion that sex should be a satisfying experience shared by people who care about each other,” she wrote.
