Could use a few ideas

Since everyone here has given me such great advice and ideas in the past, I have a scenario for you from my WIP:

The protagonist is a 15-yr-old boy named Tyson. He has two adult half-brothers who tend to look out for him, since their mom (whom he lives with) isn't very good at being a mom. She loves them all, but has substance abuse issues; none of her three children were planned.

Within the first chapter, Ty has an opportunity to sleep with a girl who is trying to convince him that she can't get pregnant because her period just ended two days ago, but he declines because he's not sure she's right. He later reveals to his brother that he actually did have a condom with him, but that it kind of freaked him out that he's only known her for three weeks and she wants to sleep with him. This is all to give the reader some indication of how carefully Ty makes the decisions in his life based on all the mistakes he's seen his mother make.

So, what I'm looking for is a realistic comment for him to make about his previous girlfriend, as a comparison to this girl. Here is the sentence I'm working with:

"[FONT=&quot]It had taken X weeks of dating for Ellen Paxton to be okay with me doing Y, so it kind of freaked me out that Jenna was so gung-ho to jump in the sack."

I'm looking for something realistic to insert in X and Y that won't sound like we're in the 50's, but that isn't crude (any time period for X is fine - days, weeks, months). Though he's being careful about not messing up his life, Ty isn't innocent, and is not necessarily a virgin.

Thanks for any input!

Liz
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Okay, good, these suggestions are exactly along the lines I was thinking, but I didn't want to sound way off the mark.

Erinmiller77 - As far as crude, I was speaking more about how he worded what had happened rather than what had actually happened. Later on in the story Ty is having an argument with his previously-estranged father about how naive Ty's 12-yr-old half-sister is, and Ty comments that she doesn't even know what a blow job is.

That's interesting what you said, though, about girls that age thinking the guy will pee in her mouth. I actually remember sitting outside before school in 7th grade one morning when one of my friends started recounting a movie she'd come across (back when cable was the new thing, lol) where the guy was performing oral sex on the woman. Everyone was laughing and kind of disgusted, and the girl said, "I mean, what if she had to pee or something?" I totally forgot that until now! Man, we were so innocent back then...

I know things are a lot different now, though, so the choices I was debating between were:
- French kissing
- sliding a hand up her shirt
- a hand job

Thanks again, you all are awesome!

Liz

Esopha said:

I'd think that the MC's last girlfriend would be a little more conservative, if he's so freaked out that his current one wants to get it on.

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That's what I was thinking, since he tends to be more attracted to girls who aren't too much like his mother (i.e. more conservative). At the same time, I'm trying to gauge what falls under "mostly conservative" these days. My sister lives in the small town we grew up in, and recently told me that her sister-in-law's son had friends who were engaging in oral sex at 13 and 14 years old. One of them was caught with the local dentist's niece (by the dentist himself, in his own attic) when nobody was supposed to be home and she was supposed to be at a friend's house.

My character lives in populated area on the outskirts of a city, so he's been exposed to a lot (not to mention the fact that his brothers had a big influence on the things he was exposed to; as mid-to-late teens when he was young, they weren't as discriminating as a parent would be with respect to what they said and did around him).

I'll probably go with the hand-up-the-shirt maneuver.

Stijn Hommes said:

I'd assume the half brothers would know his previous girlfriend, so I don't see any reason for Tyson to use her last name.

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Sorry for the confusion; the sentence I put in quotes in my OP is not a quote in the story. It's not something Ty says out loud. These are the two paragraphs (with the completed sentence from my OP), to give a bit more context:

It was so quiet for the next few minutes that I started thinking Cray had fallen asleep, so I actually jumped when his voice cut through the darkness. “Do I need to lay here all night wondering what you would have done if you’d had a rubber on you?”

I bit my top lip and let it slide back out from under my teeth. “She’s okay, but not my type. You know? Plus, I mean, we just met and all.” It had taken three weeks of dating for Ellen Paxton to be okay with me sliding my hand up the front of her shirt, so it kind of freaked me out that Jenna was so gung-ho to jump in the sack. I tossed Cray’s pillow back up onto the bed. “Anyway, I did have one with me.”