Last night was all about sex on the Gossip Girl! Last night we saw self-pleasure, the brassiere of a 15-year-old, and smoldering looks between artists and socialites, queen bees and queen... bros? The swirling eddy tossed these Burberry-shelled hermit crabs around and around, and at times, yes, they did manage to bump into one another. Tentative eyes bulging, well-sharpened pincers opening and closing, opening and closing, and um.. I don't know. More tide pool/ocean current metaphors. On with the recap after the jump. Blair! Was taking a taxi to tingle town last night! You know, a solo ride. There was a joke about "coming" and "arriving" and oh dear, poor shamed Dorota murmured that "God is always watching," which is true. And also sort of sad, because it means that Dorota learned English by sitting in her little muddy house in whatever Shtetl she crawled out of, listening to Bette Midler records over and over again. Dorota would also like to tell Blair that love, it is a flower. And she, its only seed. Anyway! Yes, Blair still lusted after Chuckles but would not say those three irritating words and so it was lonely lingers down lone lover's lane for her. Meanwhile Jenny, with a haircut that makes her look even more like Janice from the Muppets than usual, was toiling away at her job in fashions. Wicked old Eleanor was being mean and not letting the 15-year-old girl sit in on the big buyers meetings. So, spurned by Caitlin Cooper from The OC, Jenny decided to take back the night and reclaim the two party frocks that Elie had decided to pass off as her own. Girl powerz! But trouble lurked on the too-bright horizon, as Caitlin Cooper's eyes glowed dangerously and our young filly trotted off dumbly behind her. Dan and Serena were trying to help Blair with her boy business problem, Dan because he wanted to help Serena out and Serena because... eh. Who cares. What's important is that Dan helped B at first, because why not, but eventually the relationship started to sour. Don't you kind of want them to get together? Wouldn't it be kind of amazing? Maybe (probably) someday. While lurking around Pa Humphrey's silly little art gallery, Serena met Aaron Rose, a laboriously be-scarfed young lad from Rhode Island who did weird art with microphones and various stuff. There was an instant attraction and an instant note of displeasure from my roommate, who correctly asserted that Aaron Rose, in the books, is supposed to be Blair's attractive step brother, not some dinky poor man's Lou Taylor Pucci artist. Ah well. Young Nathaniel Archibald was shirtlessly at the Humphreys' crash mansion, sending shivers of sex lightning to Jenny's (and Dan's) flowery loins. At one point Dan and Serena were chatting about Nate and Dan kept saying "I never knew how much Nate—" and then he would get cut off by Serena's phone. I can finish that here: "I never knew how much Nate loved to wake up early and stare out the window, thinking private thoughts. I never knew that he liked cranberry juice and those little toaster cake things for breakfast. I never knew that when laughs, his eyes crinkle in this way that makes him seem kind but sad, like someone much older than he is. I never knew that when he sleeps he makes these little sighing noises that break my heart, every time I hear them. I never knew how much he makes me feel good and brand new and like the world might just be OK after all. I never knew all that about Nate. I never did. But I'm glad I do now. I'm so, so glad." Which is to say, they're in love. Nate and Dan are in love. Except, sigh, Nate seemed to have eyes for young Jenny in this episode, as evidenced by him acting all concerned and, ick, brotherly when she went traipsing off with Caitlin Cooper and her suspiciously aracial photographer friend. Thus began the "holy shit, that 15-year-old girl is dancing around on national television in her delicates" portion of the evening, which came to a swift, floppy, gay end when Natalie Nate swept in and ended the affair. Oh Jenny was so mad! So mad she could suck face with Nate on the sidewalk. It's weird that she went in for the kiss first. Weird because it made no sense given the story and the context, but whatever. Nate never would have made the first move. Because he's in love with her brother. Deeply, deeply in love (see above.) But before this happened, Dan gave Serena the ol' go-ahead to sex it with Scarf Garfunkel, but too late! He motorcycled off with some other lassie. Sad things. Then Blair and Charles Bass met on the roof and moaned endlessly about Brooklyn and then realized they couldn't be together because they just like the thrill of the hunt too much. They're not daters, they're sexual pirates. And they'll always be that way, sunrise, sunset, forever and ever. And gosh darnnit if these aren't the saddest 17-year-olds you've ever seen, I don't want to live in your town. So many complex adult feelings, so many worries and tangled moral philosophies to contend with. None of that "this goes in that hole" and "I like you, you like me, no? Boo hoo" simplicity that colors most teenage interactions. (Which isn't to say that kids aren't deep wells of tortured emotion, they are! But they kind of keep it inside, I think. I think? Maybe not anymore. Maybe we're in some new era of well-articulated emotional disclosure. Who the hell knows.) Anyway, these poor kids. Doomed to languish within the fences of their own designs. The Cookie Monster girl boxed in by her own sweetness, the blonde socialite limited by her tiresome fairness, the British sad clown ruined by his rakishness, the bitchy brunette too cold to thaw out, the uptown boy Greco-Roman wrestling with some unseemly longings, and the Brooklyn lad who loves an Uptown boy, his heart stretching out across rooms and rivers, while an unseen God watches it all from a distance. He watches for the pleasure. He watches for the pain. He watches For the Boys.