SW: You were still at your dad's at this point?
DO: Yeah. But my dad, he stayed out really late. He was really messed up emotionally, too. So finally, the fact that I had this tremendous crush on him just came out but he had feelings for one of my older friends... but she didn't like him.
SW: He shared this with you?
DO: Yeah... I mean, it was obvious. And I was so young too, and naïve... so he called me one night when he was really drunk and asked me to come pick him up to give him a ride... ugh, this is such an awful story. I really, really liked him and I picked him up and gave him a ride and then we decided to go to the beach. We were on the sand, near the ocean and we started making out and then we went to the lifeguard post and had sex on the lifeguard post and then went back to the car.
SW: Him sort of sitting down and you on top of him, I guess...
DO: No, no, no. Well it ended up we were standing and then it was just too painful so I had lay down and then he was on top.
SW: Was it just a chair or was it a large...
DO: No, it was the lifeguard post like the big structures they have on the beach. It was pitch dark, a little bit windy and the sand was uncomfortable and all that kind of stuff but... so we walked back to the car and that's when I realized how drunk he actually was. And then when we got back in the car, I remember it was a CD we listened to… Ginuwine, do you know which one I'm talking about, anyways it’s the ridiculous album with the song "So Anxious" on it*. So we made out for that whole album.
I dropped him off at his house and we made out for like a good 40 minutes. I remember the whole day afterwards wondering if he was going to call and he never did and he didn't call for a whole week. And then I saw him at one of the gatherings.
SW: At a house party?
DO: No, it was actually outside, it was a big keg party or something like that. He saw me and said, "Oh, hi," and he gave me a kiss on the cheek and then he went on to go flirt with other girls. Highly painful. And then when I talked to him about it later I said, "What's going on?" He goes, "What? I'm always nice to you. I always give you a kiss on the cheek." And I said, "Well, Orlando, you always give everybody a kiss on the cheek." And all he could do was laugh 'cause he was embarrassed because it was almost like I called him out and he had guilt about it... but not enough pride or not enough integrity as a man to even talk about it. But at the same time I knew that he wasn't mature enough to take responsibility for the fact that he was not sober and I was sober and I willingly, you know, gave my virginity away.
His friend gave me a call and asked me if I was a virgin anymore and I said, "No why?" And he goes, I was just wondering. I said, "Why would you ask me that?’ And he goes, "I was just wondering." ‘Cause they all knew that I was a virgin and then... so...
SW: Maybe he didn't remember it happening?
DO: No, I think Orlando was bragging about it. And that upset me. I realized that he may have been older than me but he was less mature and I just felt... 1) hurt, taken advantage of and 2) really, really naïve all at the same time and it changed my view on men and on relationships from then on.
SW: And plus your parents were divorced and your dad was remarried and he was getting divorced. Were you more hopeful about relationships in general before then?
DO: No. My stepmom was cheating on my father for like the whole ten years they were together. I just felt like there was betrayal everywhere I went. It wasn't that I wanted to have sex with him, I just wanted some sort of relationship. You know, some sort of love and then when I realized that that's not what sex was… it… really messed me up. I got depressed to the point that it affected my body because I no longer wanted anyone to find me attractive. So, looking back on it now I subconsciously started gaining weight and I stopped shaving my legs just because I didn't want to go through the same experience.
SW: Did he see you during this self-imposed unattractive phase?
DO: I removed myself from the crowd. I went back to my old high school... my father and I started going to therapy... I didn't speak with my stepmom anymore but my mom and I got in a relationship again and, well… on top of all that stuff happening I thought I had cancer.
SW: How did you think you had cancer?
DO: This was awful. I was under so much stress from my mom's house. I was a really good kid, I didn't deserve to get kicked out. I think she was menopausal and I was the typical emotional teenager, you know, anyway I was feeling so emotionally abused that I was bleeding rectally from the stress.
SW: I would think cancer too then.
DO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I had to get a colonoscopy... my like GI guy, my specialist told me that I needed a colonoscopy ‘cause he thought that I had cancer or something like that. And it ended up it was just stress. But I had to do all the medical appointments and everything by myself. I had emotional support. I had all the financial support I could want but all of it means shit... you know?
SW: Well there was a silver lining. You got your dad into therapy.
DO: Yeah. I was always the advocate to wait until marriage and then it was just ironic that once my dad and my stepmom who I had considered a perfect marriage, split up, that's when I lost my virginity. Now I don't believe in the institution of marriage whatsoever. My dad got remarried and now he has a baby. His new wife is manic-bipolar. I just have no fucking faith and it's awful and I think it's a product of how I was raised.
* 100% Ginuwine
A LOT OF MONEY BACK THEN
Bob, 42
Many moons ago I was 16, my girlfriend was 15, and we both decided to break our virginities together.
Maybe I had the condom on for too long, it was on the whole time during foreplay. But when I pulled it out the rubber was broken. She didn’t have a period for a while, then we went and got a test. Knocked her up – had to pay for an abortion. That cost $135 at the time. Paid for it with money I made working as a cart boy at Target.
We were both too young. I regret it, though of course by now I could be a grandpa, were my child to have made the same mistake.
Other than that it was fun.
THE AFTERMATH
Ed, 45
Junior year some of my friends and I struck up a friendship with our English teacher. She was fairly new; I think it was her first teaching experience right after college. She was a pretty cool teacher. She was newly divorced from her childhood sweetheart who was a heck of a high school athlete in his own right, and she was living in a trailer out in Lincoln. Various weekends she would invite us out to her trailer and we would drink and party with her and her new boyfriend.
This one night… during our Christmas vacation, I distinctly remember it was the Sunday night before we were to go back to school. I get home from pumping gas out on I-80 and my dad said there was a phone call for me but they didn’t leave a message. The phone rang again and it was a couple of my friends saying they were at our teacher’s trailer and they wanted me to stop over.
By the time I got there she was pretty liquored up. My friends were liquored up too but not as bad as she was. One thing led to another and we were in the hallway shooting beers, spraying each other. A few of the guys got their shirts wet and took them off and she started making out with us, going from guy to guy. Pretty soon her and one of my buddies went into her bedroom. They were in there quite a while and so we pop the door open and we could see the old white ass bouncing up and down. After he was done he came flying out and another buddy went in there. Then I was third, same thing. Went in there and it was my first time and all. As I’m going at it she’s yelling, "Nick! Nick!" the name of the first guy. After I was done the fourth guy went in. Evidently she sobered up because she cut him off.
The bad thing about it was the next day we go back to school expecting to face her but she’s not there. She didn’t show up until three days later and pretty bruised up. Turns out her boyfriend came back that night after we left, figured out what happened and beat the crap out of her.
Being from a small
town and stuff, you know, loose lips go flying and people hear about stuff. To this day, here I am in my 40s and whenever I go back to Nebraska I still get people coming up to me and asking me if that’s true.
***
Running home I jumped this three-bar wooden fence and as I stepped on the top plank it snapped, sending me down into the mud. Everything was against me after that horrible event, even nature.
Mack, 27
Sheffield, England
***
YOU FUCKED CATHY CAPPIZIOTTI.
Tom, 34
I had been distressed for the entire summer after I graduated high school because I wanted to get laid before I turned 18 and I was to turn 18 that November during my first semester in college. I figured there was no way I was going to get to college and in just two or three short months convince any of this new pool of women to sleep with me, so I needed to get laid before college.
I had a friend who tried to help me out that summer setting me up with various girls, all this nonsense. Nothing worked. He even tried to convince his own girlfriend to sleep with me. That poor girl had to say she was on her period for like three months straight. College starts, the 18th birthday comes and goes in early November, I go home for Thanksgiving break and I’m all down in the mouth about my big failure; I’m 18 and still a virgin.
I’m hanging out with some friends who were in the class behind me and there was one girl there: Cathy Cappiziotti. For my group of friends, Cathy had been the object of our abuse for the last six months of my senior year of high school ‘cause she had gotten this huge crush on a friend of mine. She sent him a letter saying how she was all crazy about him and included the lyric to The Eagles’ song "Desperado," "Come down from your fences," you know, "…let down your defenses." Like she was really trying to get to this guy by saying you’re so closed up but I know there’s a warm heart in there somewhere. And for this very earnest gesture she of course earned all this abuse from me and my friends, this totally callous group of asshole guys.
And so we were sitting around at this party, a bunch of nerdy guys and her. All the guys were bitching about how we couldn’t get any women. She was sashaying around the room talking about, "Well I have sex all the time. It’s great. I feel sorry for you." And we were just like, "Fuuuck you." Everyone started heaping abuse on her but it was all pretty weak because what could we say? For all the shit we were talking, she was getting it and we weren’t.
I just got disgusted with the whole affair and I went and I sat in the next room. Cathy came and sat down next to me. I had been so condescending and awful to this girl for so long that what happened next was completely beyond my grasp of psychology at the time. I don’t even understand it now but she asks me, "You’re lonely, aren’t you?" And in a moment of drunkenness I said, "Yeah… I’m fucking lonely and I’m sick of this." And she said, "Well, why don’t we?" I told myself, "Well I’m not gonna fuck her. She’s got great tits but she’s a little heavy for my taste," ‘cause like I’m such a fucking find. I’m this skinny guy, fucking big wimp and nerd and so I said, "Maybe I’ll play with your breasts." I was such a callous asshole.
Of course I do end up fucking her. It happened pretty suddenly and the other guys are banging on the door like, "What the fuck is going on in there?" And of course I didn’t have a condom but she said, "I’m on the pill. Don’t worry about it." I’m drunk, I’m 18, I’m like, "OK." I was like so wigged out about AIDS, this was 1989 and at that time we were brought up to believe everyone was going to die of AIDS within five years. So I walk out stark naked and go to the bathroom to wash my dick off in the sink. "Gotta get it off. Gotta get the shame off." Like I was Lady Macbeth, incarnadining the sink with blood.
I walk back in there, and I’m 18, of course I’m ready to go again in spite of my own fears. So I fuck her again and when I come out the guys had put all these kitchen products outside the door, like Saran Wrap and Ziploc bags and tinfoil. We had this friend named Chris who told us this story about some girl who wouldn’t let him fuck her because he didn’t have a condom, so he was like, "I used a plastic bag man, it worked perfect." In honor of Chris they threw all that stuff out there as a joke.
Obviously I had totally caved to this girl. I got dressed and I came out all pumped up. Everyone was like, "Way to go. Got the monkey off your back," except for my best friend who was all about principle and sticking to your guns and stuff. We left her there and we went out walking around the neighborhood trying to find beer somewhere. I said to him "Man I can’t believe I just fucked Cathy Cappiziotti." This was like my best friend but we were always competitive with one another. Now I was sort of one up on him a little bit, but he wasn’t congratulating me or anything. All he said was, "I’ll have four words for you in the morning." And the next morning I woke up out of my stupor and he’s standing over me and he says, "You – fucked – Cathy – Cappiziotti." That’s all he would say to me.
That next morning I regretted it, but in a way it was just like this perfect drunken stupid thing. I was supposed to be this big intellectual whatever and she was just like some average girl, but all that bullshit you connect with of finding the right girl, that magical connection, that doesn’t mean anything. Looking back now, if I saw her today I’d say "thank you".
A DAY OF INFAMY
Ryan, 23
It was 9/11, the 9/11. I was a freshman at Waldorf College in Forrest City, Iowa. There was this girl I really had a crush on and she kept crying because she had family in New York.
We were both theater students. She called me up because she was far from home and she needed a friend. I went over there and I was like, "Yeah, it’s really fucked up." This is really awful but I said to her, "I don’t want to die a virgin." But come on, I thought the whole world was coming to an end. So we fucked in her bunk bed with her roommate asleep right there on the top bunk. She was hot and one of the most sought-after girls in the school, but she was taken. She had a boyfriend of four years and they broke up after he found out.
I feel real bad that I used other people’s tragedy to get me laid, but I’m very thankful for it. Like in a way it’s wrong to thank the terrorists for a bad thing that happened but it got me laid. And now I’m a firefighter so that’s pretty fucked up too.
Chapter 11
"MEN CAN BE SUCH PIGS."
There is probably not a woman out there (or man for that matter) who has at some point held pretty low opinions of the "stronger" sex. Guys can be creeps. Some are even proud of it.
NOM DE PLUME
Phoebe, 21
I'm from Austin but moved to Minnesota for nine years then moved to Carson City, Nevada, to live with my grandparents for six years, where it happened. I had a perm and really pasty white skin. I was a freshman in high school and I had never known popularity but when I entered high school life I found out that this senior boy thought that I was cute. I hung out with all of his friends and we started dating.
It wasn't until later that I found out the senior guys had a top ten list of the "hottest" freshman girls. It was a deflowering list and I was number two behind two girls Jen and Haley, tied at number one. The boys were too indecisive, I guess, to settle on just ten.
So this guy came up to me after school one day and I had no idea who he was. I wasn't really concerning myself with any boys, and I was a good girl. He comes up to me and he goes, "Hi, my name's Luther," like nice to meet you kind of nonchalant. He gives me his number and we hang out a few times.
Luther comes over to my house and, mind you, I had never even seen a penis in my life except for either maybe my dad's or my grandpa's. We were watching American History X in my bedroom. My grandparents were out at choir rehearsal for our church.
We're doing the whole make out thing and he starts trying things, which I thought, "OK, I’ll go along with it." I was 14, almost 15 and when you’re that age you don't know too much about grooming, which leads to an embarrassing part of the story later on. But we're there watching American History X and the last sc
ene I remember was Edward Norton "curbing" some guy.
We're doing the whole rubbing on the clothes thing and he goes, "My dick is chafing, let's take our clothes off." Somehow I end up with my clothes off but he keeps all his clothes on. I'm naked, he’s fully dressed.
One of my girlfriends was over at the same time but she didn't like the guy so she was in the other room using the Internet. He got me naked so he's like, "Let's try it." Of course I freak out so I tell him I have to use the bathroom and I put on a t- shirt and leave the room to go ask my girlfriend, "What should I do? What should I do?" Little did I know she was a whore, she had been doing this for God knows how long, since she was like 12. She told me, "Yeah, do it. Go for it." I go back in there and we get back to the fondling phase and he says, "All right I'm going to do it now." I tell him, "If it hurts you have to stop and I don't want you to do it anymore." Of course he's not gentle in any way. He was literally with all his weight on me, shoving it right in. I start bawling. I'm screaming, "What are you doing?!" I'm freaking out and I look over at the TV and I can see Edward Norton getting raped in the ass.
How to Lose Your Virginity ...and how not to (Real Stories about the First Time) Page 17