I am really lucky ‘Teenage Lust‘ was on the stereo the first time a boy made me come. Not least because the album the song is on had been out for years and was outwardly considered passé, by then a species of the previous generation. In this way, in their culturally ossified ways, goths and their hangers-on will always have something very special to offer their teenage peers.

I remember thinking, or rather, fearing, as I suppose many teenagers do, that I would never have sex. As stupid as it seems now, because of how obvious, inevitable, routinely inescapable sex is to the adult, this fear adds a particular zest to the first time one does it. An impossible psychosocial, sexual impasse is crossed, the ravine of infinite self-doubt suddenly snaps shut, and in its place an arc of bliss invites you to ride. An arc, or rainbow, if you will, coloured by pleasure, confusion, momentary recognition; unexpected mastery is born of chance and opportunity, the sudden proximity to another body, the animal charge, timidity and hubris, the interchangeability of act and truth, and so on.

But what about the last time one has sex? How many people are aware this is happening, when it happens?

Because the last time is as inevitable as the first time. And like the disbelief that precedes the first time, the sexual being does not quite believe that they will cross back into the realm of those others, the chaste-again, the not-having-sex. Whom may we count among this legion? Who will tell me, what I today would dearly love to know, what music was playing the last time they had sex? Not the most recent time. The last time, the last time ever.

But perhaps, by the end of their sexual careers, people stop, have stopped, listening to music when they make out. Perhaps no music is even on before such entanglements begin. Perhaps there is no longer any need to play the other anything. Perhaps there is no longer any pretext of a shared aesthetic experience. It seems to be the case that at some point, after the extended adolescence that characterises those who came of age at the turn of the century, music ceased to function in the unconscious seduction method, or at least, with the same zest.

What happened to those goths?

And more importantly: how gross is JAMC?