I’m not sure what bothers me so much about idealized stories of love and virginity. Maybe it’s because I think they’re fake; stories fabricated by our memories sewn together by the moments we want to believe are the whole truth as we allow the times too painful to remember decompose.
No one’s life is a Disney movie, and no one’s first experiences of love and sex and virginity and adolescence are seamless. Boobs and penises and vaginas—at least for the first time—are just awkward, messy and slightly traumatizing.
I never thought I would write this story down. Having pushed the memories to the farthest-reaching corner of my mind, it is not something I can still actively admit to myself, even after all these years.
I was fifteen, a sophomore in high school. We had been hanging out all summer, driving to the beach, meeting after parties and trying to remain a secret. That summer should have just been another innocent fling except for the tiny little fact that I was fifteen and he was five years older than me, and that by August I was in deep. My friends’ incessant warnings and the escalation of rumors when we were simply seen together should have been reason enough to turn around—and I tried to—but I couldn’t. When you are fifteen, your naïveté convinces you that you are capable of so much more and I had fallen for how mature he made me feel.
By the first day of that school year we had already been discovered. After all, how long does a scandal actually remain a secret in a small-town high school (or Columbia, for that matter)? Our relationship became public domain. After months of contesting rumors about our quite exaggerated sexcapades (I’m pretty sure my brother almost punched someone)—it seemed like there was no point in turning back.
November 28. The hot water in my house had turned off. I went to his, instead.
“Ready for this?”
“Yes.”
And that was it.
Sure, he told me he loved me. To this day I don’t know why I replied the same. Maybe I loved him, maybe I wanted to love him or maybe I just wanted to believe that this whole venture was actually worth something. Sex had always been part of our relationship. Sex is always part of every relationship – you’re either having it or you’re not but it’s ubiquitous and significant and in ours, it was inevitable. Though I’d like to believe it went down differently, he never reassured me that sex was meant to be between two people madly in love or that I would become immediately and inexplicably attached to him. It was “fun.”
People make a lot of promises in a relationship, but I only asked him to keep one secret. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. By the time we had done it, many more times, the rumor had become true. I was no longer attached to him in some mysterious, loved-crazed swell of infatuation. I became completely and utterly repulsed by the mention of his name. As fast as it happened, it was over.
This is going to sound melodramatic. By the turn of the year, I was left with rumors and memories. It wasn’t bad during the day, people stop caring before you even realize. It’s that moment at night, when you’re trying to fall asleep and all of the notions, emotions, memories and secrets you don’t want to feel become inescapable. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. He would come towards me, on top of me, inside of me. And there was no way I could get him off – it had happened.
I don’t believe you need to lose your virginity to someone you love nor do I believe that sex needs to be between two people in love. But sex is an act of agency. If you’re a virgin, a nymphomaniac, gay, lesbian, bi, if you’ve had sex with one person or one hundred people, it’s a medium through which we define ourselves. Prude, slut—it’s also a medium through which we define others.
And when you only have one first time, it needs to be your choice. It’s not about “saying yes” or “consenting”—it’s about being fifteen, him being twenty and not knowing that you should have said no.
In the months after I broke up with the man who took my first time, I went on a frat bro status rampage. I didn’t sleep with anyone – but I turned into an unpleasant bitch with the one main goal of breaking hearts and taking names. Who knows if I was successful, but I was desperate to find that sense of agency again. I decided that it had never happened, he didn’t exist, he didn’t take my virginity; I decided that reality is subjective and you can make of it what you want. Even as I denied it to everyone and to myself, I had one friend who could just tell and who I couldn’t lie to. She said that it would be fine. She’s been my best friend ever since.
Eventually, it was okay. Soon the memories disappeared, and to this day, I cannot replay any one of those intimate moments. They’re present in my memory, but completely black and untraceable. Years later, I’ve only had sex with three other people besides my oh-so-romantic and completely not-traumatic first time. Two of those three are probably the most absurd d-bags I have ever come across (I told them not to call me or text me after; it was their cockiness that I had been insanely and immediately attracted to). Maybe, I’m still searching for that feeling of agency only found when mounting a man (preferably one I kind of hate) and rocking his world. Yeah, I know you know what I’m talking about.
I don’t know if taking the time to write down and reflecting on meaningful experiences is necessary to understand the woman you are becoming. The memories are there, the ones you want to be present and the ones that make you cringe involuntarily; sometimes its better to just let it be and trust that you will somehow rationalize every bad decision you’ve made. Everything happens for a reason, right? Here’s my attempt: the last one of those other three guys was the only man I have ever actually loved, and in the year that I ran in the opposite direction of my virginity, he was the first one I kissed.