Once upon a time — and by “once” I mean the 70s, 80s, any bar bathroom before Giuliani ruined New York, and my post-divorce forties — America was a land of abundance. Not of wealth or civility, mind you, but of action. Sex action. A nation where a man could walk into a Times Square peep booth with a pocketful of quarters and leave dehydrated. Where teenagers lost their virginity in the back seat of a rusted Buick the minute that joint was done, or that bottle of peach schnapps empty, and the radio played that slow song. Where “hooking up” didn’t require apps, algorithms, personality tests, emotional disclaimers, or lighting that made you look good on TikTok.
Then one day — poof.
Like Blockbuster Video, phone sex lines, or affordable rent — it all just vanished.
Welcome, dear reader, to America’s Great Sex Recession. A drought of dicks and deserts of clits. A barren wasteland where Gen Z wanders the earth like horny nomads, armed with ring lights, antidepressants, and a WiFi connection strong enough to stream six hours of porn but not strong enough to form an actual human connection.
THEY CALL IT PROGRESS.
WE CALL IT ABSTINENCE WITH BETTER GRAPHICS.
Don’t get me wrong — these kids aren’t prudes. They’re just tired. Exhausted.
Mentally fried like a dollar-store burner phone. You try maintaining a libido when the world keeps ending every nine minutes on the news.
Back in my day, we had problems too. Nuclear war, serial killers, AIDS, the Mets.
We still managed to find time to get laid. Repeatedly. Sometimes by people whose names we never learned and whose perfume is still ferminating in the cushions of that couch, in that basement somewhere. You know that couch — the one with the wood. Everyone had it.
Gen Z, meanwhile, is too busy doomscrolling to doom-fucking.
DATING APPS: THE DIGITAL CHASTITY BELT
Yes, dating apps. The world’s greatest invention for somehow preventing sex while advertising it.
Swipe, swipe, swipe — an endless parade of people who all “love travel,” all “hate drama,” and all have “really great vibes,” whatever the fuck that means. None of them actually meet. They just orbit each other like horny satellites until one gets bored and ghosts.
It’s not a dating scene. It’s a museum exhibit about dating.
Even porn bots get more action.
THE PORN GLUT IS THE NEW PROHIBITION
Here’s the big one nobody wants to say out loud:
Why go through the trouble of meeting a warm, breathing human when you can get immediate, customizable gratification from Pornhub? (Better yet, from ScrewVideo.com!)
We didn’t have that luxury. We had magazines, VHS tapes, and whatever channel the scrambled cable would occasionally flash a nipple on. We had to work for it. Sacrifice for it. Possibly adjust the antenna with our foot mid-stroke.
Now? The world’s most depraved sexual buffet is available on a screen smaller than a Pop-Tart. And guess what? Unlimited options can actually kill your appetite.
Human intimacy is dropping faster than Trump’s approval rating at a gay pride parade.
THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT — THEY’RE LONELY
Gen Z didn’t choose celibacy. Celibacy chose them — wrapped in anxiety, student debt, shitty wages, and a world where eye contact feels like a war crime.
They’re not stupid. They saw their parents fight, cheat, divorce, and weaponize Facebook memes. They’re opting out of the mess altogether.
It turns out that if you scare an entire generation enough, they stop fucking long before they stop voting.
SO WHERE HAS ALL THE FUCKING GONE?
It didn’t disappear.
It didn’t “die.”
It didn’t run off to Florida to retire next to a golf cart and a failing crypto coin.
It simply moved.
It migrated.
Like a flock of horny geese, it flew south — away from the kids glued to screens, away from the apps that sterilize chemistry, away from a generation so medicated it could stare down a hurricane without blinking.
It lives in the margins now. In the dive bars. In the after-hours. In the messy, imperfect, analog places where two people still take the risk of touching each other without a filter.
And if you’re reading SCREW, you’re one of the last believers — the last defenders of the messy, sweaty, uncurated, all-natural human experience that kept this species going long before WiFi and self-checkout lanes.
So don’t worry.
Fucking isn’t gone.
It’s just hiding — waiting for someone brave enough to rediscover it.
Preferably someone who doesn’t need to ask, “Are you vaccinated, emotionally available, or allergic to gluten?”
But even if they are…
It’s still worth fucking trying.
—P
Featured Image: British artist Tracey Emin’s 1998 artpiece, entitled ‘My Bed’ sold for $4.4 million at a London auction house in 2014.
