yes, I see what you mean (and apologies for left-out words in my post, which doesn't quite make sense now after earlier editing). And I think that is kind of what I'd initially assumed on first readings, but then had second thoughts that parents of teenagers wouldn't have been encouraging them to experiment with sex, especially not back then - except maybe my assumptions that of course things were more conservative 40-some years ago isn't actually true, and there might have been quite a different culture and expectations for boys in his situation/class, Catholic or not. And quite possibly the Merrick parents weren't as much a stickler about Catholic rules as Patrick seems to want to be (wasn't there some suggestion in a thread once that perhaps they even used contraception, hence Patrick being an only child).