Cupid's Broken Arrow

"I said to him, 'Your partners want to be with you because you're a man, not a machine.' He said, 'But I want to be more of a machine.' Talk about rip your heart out."

She continues, "When men worry about erections, the worry takes the place of any pleasure they could possibly feel. It's as if they're hearing that terrifying music behind the Wicked Witch of the West from 'The Wizard of Oz' -- you know, that 'dunh dunh dunh dunh' -- and thinking, 'What if? What if? She's going to leave me.' "

Stacy Shadrick, a senior woman at Maryland, sympathizes with the terror that guys can feel. "If a girl isn't turned on, the guy doesn't necessarily know it. With a guy, it's very clear," she says. While some young women may react negatively in that situation, "most girls I know are respectful." In part that's because they fear that the guy doesn't enjoy having sex with them, she says. That worry can be there even if you're having sex with your boyfriend, agrees Lauren Faust, a recent GW graduate. "You worry you've become boring."

To avoid such trauma, a young man may try to fake an orgasm if at all possible, says Earl Fitzhugh, a senior at Howard University. "You want to be able to say, 'Oh, man, I'm the pimp.' " And, he says, you don't want rumors spreading about your capabilities.

"Your partner will tell her friends, who will tell your friends, who will tell you. The worst thing is, you could have just been having a bad day, but it might ruin your chances with the next girl."

Power being largely a matter of perception, the last thing a guy wants are girls, and other guys, knowing he couldn't handle business.

Who Bats 1.000?

From his perch as psychiatry professor, then as Duke's president, and now solely in private practice, Keith Brodie has had plenty of opportunity to observe the demons that chase older adolescent males. One of those is the idea of sex as a Division 1 sport. Sawyer at Maryland says his male students talk about the same competition. Sex should be, at the very least, about pleasure, but "they're more concerned with how they compared to the last guy."

Primal insecurities, for sure, but heightened, both men believe, by the quick liaisons known on campus as hookups.

A hookup, or sexual act ostensibly divorced from feeling or relationship, can set a man up for disappointment. Partners think of it usually as a single event, a "pass-fail test," says Barry McCarthy, a Bethesda psychiatrist and co-author of the book "Coping With Erectile Dysfunction." "If they fail, it's a disaster. Even the best basketball player, if he gets 19 out of 22 free throws, thinks he's doing a pretty good job. Men think their success in bed should be 100 percent."

Consider all the things that may be going through a guy's head as the clothes come off. Maybe he wants to impress his partner and knows that she expects the sex to last until the sun comes up. Maybe she's not taking birth control pills or he doesn't know if she is and is afraid to ask. Maybe he or his partner or both of them have decided he shouldn't use a condom and he's worried about disease or pregnancy. Maybe someone will walk in the room. Maybe he has an exam the next morning and in truth would rather be studying but can't admit it because he's a guy and guys are supposed to want sex all the time, right? Maybe he worries that if he doesn't do it now with her, he'll never get another chance and she'll be infuriated.

You have to wonder sometimes how sex at this tender age happens at all. Even with someone you care about.

Peter Schneider, a sophomore at GW, had been sleeping with a girlfriend for several weeks freshman year when, one night, he failed to respond. The next night, the same thing happened. The morning after that, he woke up thinking, "This better not happen again." But it did.

Schneider, who lost his virginity at 15, was bewildered and upset. Almost two weeks passed until one afternoon, he plopped down on his bed, "torn up inside," and began thinking about his lifestyle. He was smoking cigarettes and marijuana, popping Adderall in order to work through the night to finish his econ papers. He was drinking a lot and not getting any regular exercise. His body was simply worn out.

He decided to drop his bad habits for a while, start taking walks outside and working out at the gym. He sat down with his best friend, Josh Rolf, and spilled his guts. Rolf told him no one is a stud every time. Almost immediately, his talents returned.

"The day after I talked to Josh, everything went back to normal," he says. He also credits his girlfriend. They had been dating a year, and "I didn't think she'd walk out on me. That was incredibly helpful."

Helen Czapary, the Maryland junior, has been in a couple of similar situations, and suspects she knows what Skrodzki's partner thought: "It was my fault. Maybe I was, like, pressuring him."

Skrodzki, the bench-pressing man's man, let his partner of last fall think these things after his malfunction. He's not particularly proud of that.

"She didn't know what to do," he recalls. "She said something like, 'I can't please you.' I let her think that to conceal my reputation."

Now, several successes later, with this girl and others, "I'll take my share of the blame."