"But I don't think that teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It's because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time o

"But I don't think that teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It's because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time on their hands and yet are very impatient to get on with their lives." "And that's kind of where you are right now?" "It's exactly where I am." "Horniness too." "Yeah. But there are ways to deal with that." "Don't look at me that way," Avi says. "I don't masturbate." "Never?" "Never. Formally gave it up. Swore off it." "Even when you're on the road for a month?" "Even then." "Why on earth would you do such a thing, Avi?" "Enhances my devotion to Devorah. Makes our sex better. Gives me an incentive to get back home." "Well, that's very touching," Randy says, "and it might even be a good idea." "I'm quite certain that it is." "But it's more masochism than I'm really willing to shoulder at this point in my life." "Why? Are you afraid that it would push you into " "Irrational behavior? Definitely." ... ... He could very easily take care of the Hunk of Burning Love problem now that he has privacy, but astonishes himself by electing not to. This may be perverse; he's not sure. The last month and a half of total celibacy, relieved only by nocturnal emissions at roughly two week intervals, has definitely got him in a mental space he has never been to before, or come near, or even heard about. When he was in jail he had to develop a fierce mental discipline in order not to be distracted by thoughts of sex. He got alarmingly good at it after a while. It's a highly unnatural approach to the mind/body problem, pretty much the antithesis of every sixties and seventies tinged philosophy that he ever imbibed from his Baby Boomer elders. It is the kind of thing he associates with scary hardasses: Spartans, Victorians, and mid twentieth century American military heroes. It has turned Randy into something of a hardass in his approach to hacking, and meanwhile, he suspects, it has got him into a much more intense and passionate head space than he's ever known when it comes to matters of the heart. He won't really know that until he comes face to face with Amy, which looks like it's going to be a while, since he's just been kicked out of the country where she lives and works. Just as an experiment, he decides he's going to keep his hands off of himself for now. If it makes him a little tense and volatile compared to his pathologically mellow West Coast self, then so be it. It's not like anyone ever died from being horny.