Chill has several meanings, depending on the context and who's saying it. They're actually not that far off, though. "Netflix and chill" actually means "Netflix and relax and whatever happens happens." So, a reasonable expectation, but no guarantee.
I think context is the ruling factor here. For example I have a character that uses direct and crude terms to describe his relationship with his first wife and cheesy cliche terms to describe his relationship with his second 'wife' (though they aren't actually married for legal reasons.) His relationship with his first wife was semi-consensual at best and more about conforming to his family's wishes than attraction or love so the terms used tend to remove any implication of attraction or emotional connection. For his character using terms like screw or fuck would imply some level of disgust on his part while terms like making love would be used to emphasize emotional intimacy and desire. He actually likes and is attracted to his second wife and so he uses over the top cheesy descriptors to differentiate the two relationships and make sure that she knows that he likes her. Now you can with the right context make the term making love creepy, but you kind of have to go out of your way to do so. Like if a sixty year old guy in the park talks about how he wants to make love to some hot young thing, that's creepy. If someone you don't like or don't know uses cheesy terms of endearment (in general), that's creepy. But if a character is in an emotionally intimate relationship and uses those terms with the intent of being romantic that's not creepy or I think particularly dated. Granted, younger people tend to use more creative or funny euphemisms but if your character isn't the kind of person that uses funny euphemisms and it's in character for them to be cheesy, go for it. The second wife in my story prefers to use weird, off-putting euphemisms because she likes getting a reaction and thinks making people uncomfortable is peak comedy. So meaning varies from character to character. I'd worry less about what the youth think and more about what makes sense for the character in question.
I expect men and women might approach this a bit differently, since they often bring different sexual agendas to the table (or, more appropriately, the bed.) In your writing, there's something else to consider: it's not only the terms that the main characters might use, but the narrator as well. By your selection of words, you're conveying how the narrator feels about what the main characters are doing, which may not be how the MCs feel.
1st person here, my narrator is my main character. He's a pretty sensitive guy, so love-making is what he's all about. I love the mixed bag of responses. It's like some of us are all serious and upright when talking about our naughty naked activities, and others are all giddy like we're in the 5th grade
I may be one of this youth that you speak of and yeah, I do actually use the term making love, but its for something very specific. Its the sort for me where you're showing love rather than the intense sexual need to ram this person. Its just another way of showing love for me like kissing, going on a date. Its slow and loving. That might be TMI but yeahh. (I may regret this dunno, I've had this post saved as a draft for a day XD)
Or couch, or chair, or bathtub/pool, or counter, or washer/dryer, or desk, or car, or plane, or boat, or...
Making love is good. Fucking can be good as well...although in the WF context I might expect her to smash my face in, also, and wear her armour, and plunge a sword through my chest, and tell me she's never having children, and why am I wearing her boots in the bed? 'Call me Derek,' she says. I would appreciate her point obviously re stereotypes, and offer [over] my unicorn - to screw. With first person prose, I suggest some kind of begging sequence-preamble? 'I have an erection, honey, what am I going to do with it?' And 'don't you love me, baby?' Or even threaten cunnilingus? That is most often effective, technically...
Thank you for writing that. I was thinking that exact thing but was on my phone when I was in this thread.
Ah, the man who always knows if the carpet matches the drapes and has laid more of it than all the rest of us put together....
I... Threaten? LOL... And to continue the juvenile side of things, I had a friend one time tell me that he was going to take his girlfriend in the other room and "play split the kitty" with her....
I think the sex act should be referred to as what your character would say. If your character is a mobster, I doubt he would say 'make love.'
As Volcanic Duck pointed out, like everything else, stay in character with the current voice, whether it be an explicit character or the narrator. It can be as subtle as a old-style TV hint ("He led her into the bedroom, and turned off the light: <end of scene>) or crude ("He fucked her until they were raw and the neighbors starting pounding on the walls"), or somewhere in between, but how you express it is also character-centric and also shapes the tone of the scene
How about telling the act through the characters' action? I've read my share of nasty sex-heavy novels and the best ones, in my opinion, heavily focuses on the couple's body language. Make em' look thirsty af and the rest should organically flow along. Or if you don't want to go through such details you can have your narrator or character say things along the line of "I will never forget" or "I never had" or "Finally I have something"
Heard somewhere that the Secret Service calls it "barbecuing" when the president is intimately engaged. Clinton must have gone through several grills.
