TEENAGERS ARE SUPPOSED to fuck Teenagers are supposed to ...

Teenagers are supposed to fuck. They're also supposed to gobble drugs, listen to loud music and hate their parents. The more interesting kids are generally depressed much of the time.

And why not? Hormones have turned their formerly dependable little bodies into chemistry experiments gone horribly awry. Suddenly they're too fat or skinny or zitty or just plain weird when fitting in is of paramount import. Sure, there are plenty of children who morph into perfect, well-adjusted teens with straight white teeth, good grades and enough dough to buy the right clothes. Then there are the rest of us.

I was a miserable 17-year-old when I finally rid myself of my virginity, and I couldn't have been happier to kiss it goodbye.

Which is why I was so amused to read a report released by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank (we're using the term "think" loosely here) that claims sexually active teens are more likely to be depressed than teenagers who aren't. If anyone had bothered to ask teenage-me if I was depressed, I would've laughed. Depression didn't begin to describe my mood. I was taking Librax for excruciating stress-related stomach pains, I was constantly hyperventilating, I drank like a fish, smoked pot, did coke and oh yeah, I fucked my boyfriend.

Punk rock and fucking were pretty much the only good things about my teenage experience. Fucking to punk rock was even better?two great tastes, whatnot. My home life was chaotic, so the Johnny Rotten lookalike (with the dubious distinction of being one of my town's few high school dropouts) offered me the escape I sought. I promptly fell madly in love. Emphasis on "madly." The boy turned out to be an abusive prick, but after getting the crap beat outta me for the first 16 years of my life, my brain was pretty much hardwired to accept that with love came a certain amount of pain.

When we were fucking, I could block out all the bad about him, my mom, my school, my brain, my life? We did it everywhere, all the time. It was fun and sexy, and his dick inside me made me feel loved like I'd never felt before. For the first time in my life, someone's hands on me were making me feel good instead of bad.

My school had a fairly enlightened approach to sex education. Along with the scare-tactic, open-sore slide shows, we were taught practical methods for avoiding pregnancy and disease. "Just say no" did not enter into the discussion?or if it did, it was only one of many methods reviewed. So when I decided to start getting busy, I was clever enough to get my ass to Planned Parenthood. The Heritage Foundation, which cites panicky sources such as Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids, is an advocate of abstinence education.

Despite the huge federal deficit, Bush's budget for 2003 was to increase funding for useless community-based abstinence education grants by 83 percent. Poking around in these programs is a lot of fun. My personal favorite is "Project Reality," an earmarked organization that pimps out has-been beauty contestants to speak on the topic. For example, Lisa Marie Miree, Miss Black America 2007, "shares her message of abstinence with teens by singing and reciting her poetry." Looking back, I have to wonder if a thoughtful poem from a pretty gal might've saved my tattered hymen.

The study?imaginatively titled "Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide"?is dubious from jump. Never mind that the researchers relied on self-reporting to diagnose depression, the study also ignores the fact that when authority figures ask kids about potentially troublesome topics (i.e. sex, drugs), they are far more likely to lie. And let's not even start on all the kids who consider themselves virgins even though they've been sucking little dicks since the sixth grade. Yet another factor that renders this study useless is that even if the data is correct, correlation does not imply causation. In other words, even if these rutting fuckmonkeys are more depressed than their frustrated, horny, not-gittin'-any peers, it doesn't mean that the beast with two backs has anything to do with the why of the matter.

The study glosses over seemingly important factors like drug/alcohol abuse, home situation and domestic violence. In a nod to the potentially causal role economics might play, the study compares kids of comparable race and income level?nice try, but $40,000 a year goes a lot further in Pigeon Holler than it does in Midtown.

The authors conclude that "sexual activity among teenagers is the major driving factor behind the well-publicized problems of the high incidence of teenage STDs and teen pregnancy." No, actually unprotected sex would be the reason for that. Hey, guess what?kids are gonna fuck. Not since Mary (ha!) has there been a virgin birth, but instead of recommending to us hip kids things like condoms, they instead advise telling young charges that "sexual activity in teen years is likely to substantially reduce their happiness and personal well-being."

I beg to differ.

(Research assistance kindly provided by Lou Serico and La Jules.)