He smells rough, of dancing sweat, of boots pounding floor grime at the sizzling Fifth Column club in Washington, D.C. He’s a hard 21; he goes by the nickname “Crotch.”
Midway down his chest there’s something swinging. It’s a clear plastic baby bottle with a pink nipple.
“I wear it for fun,” shouts Crotch over music so loud it vibrates the arteries. “A psychologist would say we missed our oral stage.”
What is the message in his baby bottle? It’s worth deciphering, because young adults everywhere are flaunting the props of childhood. Spot the teen- age girl drinking juice from a baby bottle, dudes buying pacifiers from the ice cream man. High school girls tote Flintstone lunch boxes as purses, and college men dance with Bugs Bunny dolls to techno mixes of the Sesame Street theme song.
“Stuff you’d think 7- to 8-year-olds like are popular with 15- to 25- year-olds,” says Wendy Red, an accessory buyer for the trendy Commander Salamander in Georgetown. “Seems innocent, but who knows?”
Who knows, because though some dub it a meaningless fad, some say playthings complement drug use, and others say toys are the wail of a generation.
“We grew up too fast,” says Rob Haynes, 22. “Toys express an innocence we lost too early.”
Haynes is a data processor. But at raves, popular all-night dance parties, he’s “Rob Rave,” with a backpack full of yo-yos, rubber balls and ray guns. He says they make him feel secure.
“We’re under greater pressure than any other generation,” says Haynes. “Our way of reacting is abandonment. We react by embracing childhood.”
Ask psychologists about the pacifier and baby bottle fad rippling through the country’s cities, about the toy craze at raves, and they say pretty much the same thing as Haynes.
Jeanne Murrone, an adolescent psychologist in New York: “We have a generation of adolescents who didn’t get enough nurturing.” Murrone says kids are constantly bombarded with frightening, unfiltered images of violence, sex, drugs and AIDS. They are growing up with the decay of the environment, education, the economy and family unity.
Result: They retreat into the safety of childhood.
“They’re under pressure from all ends,” says Murrone. “If I were in their place, I’d want to go back to Barney and Betty Rubble myself.”
Besides, being outrageous has its own intrinsic appeal. A secretary in Cincinnati says she has forbidden her teen-age son to wear his pacifier. The principal at Miami Beach’s Nautilus Middle School has banned pacifier use because it distracts students. A New York father says he’s worried his 6-year- old will regress because he has a teen-age, pacifier-sucking babysitter.
Some dentists say that sucking on the plastic knobs can damage teeth or alter the bite. But teen-agers deadpan that it’s safer than smoking or indulging in other forms of oral gratification and risking AIDS.
The pacifier trend came out of the English club scene, emigrated to New York clubs and then spread to the streets. Pop suckers such as Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Kurt Cobain of the rock group Nirvana, and the rap group TLC helped popularize them in videos. Ice Cube’s pal in Boyz N the Hood pulled on a pacifier as he whizzed around in a wheelchair.
And then there’s drugs. No psychobabble from Michelle, 20, when you ask her why she brings toys to raves: “‘Cause you’re on drugs.”
How fun to play with these bright, colorful objects when you’re hallucinating. “Acid and X” — LSD and Ecstasy, a euphoria-inducing drug — are the most popular, Michelle says.
They play with Hula-Hoops, lighted yo-yos, fluorescent water pistols, Tigger dolls.
They call the stuff “trip toys.”
“Toy ray guns sound cool if you’re on Ecstasy,” says Tony Carver, 18.
“I had no interest in toys before my exposure to Ecstasy or acid,” says a 21-year-old woman who asked not to be named. “Now I go to toy stores all the time.”
Pacifiers, teething rings and lollipops also are linked to drugs, for some. They keep you from grinding your teeth when on Ecstasy, from getting cotton mouth when on acid, ravers say.
“I don’t take drugs normally, but when I do, I like to have something in my mouth,” says Carver.
What about toys symbolizing innocence, a retreat to childhood?
“It’s a 50-50 thing,” he says. “Half about drugs. Half about kindergarten.”
