We weren’t aware until afterwards that our friends were watching the whole time through the porch window. Our heads were towards the window but I was on my back so couldn’t see anything anyway. Tommy could tell, but I doubt he was paying attention to anyone watching. Our other friend Albert, who was gay and had a bit of a crush on my boyfriend, came out and said to him, "Yeah, um… nice butt."
A couple hours later someone else sprayed me down with perfume ‘cause she said we "smelled like sex." My dad picked me up and when I got in the car he said I looked real tired. I just said, "Yeah. I didn’t get any sleep last night." Then I just pulled out my CDs, put Poe in my CD player, put on my headphones, and listened to their song "Not a Virgin" over and over again.
THE SUMMER OF LOVE
Hazel, 25
William. It’s strange, I still think of him whenever I’m going through rough times. I just dreamt about him the other night.
My first love and I started dating when we were 16. We dated for years and I’m still in love with him, but that’s a whole other story. I was a really rebellious teenager, not just rebellious against authority, but also my cohorts. Therefore I wasn’t particularly interested in partying the typical way high schoolers are supposed to. My boyfriend was the same way. We were kind of punk rock kids who did our own thing, independent from our friends.
This was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it was one of the greatest adolescences ever. We had a lot of adventures there. We were really kind of like each other’s first sexual explorations or whatever. We dated for a couple years and then we broke up and it was this really horrible epic breakup and we spent a year getting back together and breaking up and getting back together and breaking up. I kind of dated other people in the meantime but nothing serious. I mean, with William and I, we’re talking epic first love here. And I always thought it would be right for us to lose our virginity together. It seemed right in a way I can’t explain.
We were just a couple weeks apart in age so this was the summer we were both about to turn 19. We were getting up there in age and just had one of those intense reconciliations. We got back together and I remember really clearly, it was the night before he turned 19 and we were about to leave on a freight train hopping and hitchhiking trip.
Although it was incredibly painful and not particularly good, it felt really monumental that we could be together and it was really nice because he was the love of my life. It’s kind of funny, I always slept with a nightlight because I was scared of the dark and afterwards he got up to inspect the condom by the nightlight to make sure it hadn’t broken. He started freaking out and crying saying, "There’s blood." He was worried that I was hurt. It was really intense and I was like, "It’s OK." Then we both cried a little bit and just held each other all night long under the glow of the nightlight; a relic of my childhood years. It couldn’t have been more poignant.
The train-hopping journey was cut short; it lasted only about a week. I was leaving the country for the rest of the summer so we had to get back in time for me to go overseas. We dated for a little bit more that summer. Then we broke up and I moved away. That all happened six, seven, eight years ago? I don’t know. I feel real lucky. No regrets whatsoever. Regrets later on, you know. But I was his first as well and it was very special. We’re still in touch every now and then and hopefully we’ll get married someday.
BEAUTÉ AMÉRICAINE
Lane, 29
When I was in high school, this foreign exchange student moved in down the street from me. I’m from Aurora, Colorado, originally – it’s a suburb of Denver. I was a junior in high school and she was a sophomore, or the equivalent thereof, from France. My family knew the host family who invited me over to meet Monique Junot. Monique’s father was a fairly prominent French journalist. I was the first American boy she met and we became very close.
The relationship was platonic but there was an intimacy that was undeniable. She made me chocolate cake for my birthday. After her year in America I went to visit her for a month in France. Her family lived in this beautiful neighborhood called Le Larose – The Lay of Roses. There was a neighborhood ordinance that everyone had to maintain a rosary in their front and backyards, so it was a neighborhood of rosebushes. There was also a town square with rosebushes and pavilions and a little garden in the center. It was beautiful.
One night I told her that I was pretty sure that I was in love with her and she said in her French accent, "I have something to tell you." "What?" And she said, "I am too shy and I am not sure how you are going to feel about it." I got scared, I said, "Why don’t you write it down." I got myself ready for the big rejection. She passed me the paper, I read it, and she had written down that she loved me too.
We were together, upstairs in the loft of her beautiful home, which was her room growing up that had since been turned into a guest room, the room where I was staying. We made out and then we decided, or I decided, or one of us decided… I decided… that we would have sex.
That next day we went to her neighborhood pharmacy where I would not only be purchasing condoms for the first time in my life, but I was ordering them in a different language. She taught me how to ask for condoms in French so she wouldn’t have to go inside because the pharmacist knew her dad.
I said, "Bonjour. Une boîte de condoms satisfont." To which he replied, "Grand ou petit?" Large or small. So I said, "Large… actually, I’ll get both," because I wasn’t sure. Anyway I ordered the condoms and went back to her house. That night we made sweet, sweet, beautiful and yes, very awkward love.
The details of the actual lovemaking are… private, ‘cause the sex… that was between her and I. But I will say that this first time happened within the first couple days of my month-long trip. Then I had a hard on for the next three weeks. As far as I know, her parents weren’t aware of it. They may have guessed, but we never talked about it.
After heading back to America I felt a sense of loyalty to this woman and turned down or sidestepped other opportunities where sex could have taken place. I tried to remain loyal to her because I was so convinced that we would be married and live our lives together. Thus was the manner in which I was raised, but with Monique and myself it was not meant to be.
BLAM!
Will, 26
I’m from Canarsie, Brooklyn. She was from Brooklyn. I never thought it was going to happen with her, but it did.
We first met at a high school assembly. I saw her from the other side of the room and dipped through the entire crowd looking for her. After making my way through hundreds of people to find her I was too nervous to say shit to her. Later I was in class, her friend was sitting next to me and she said, "Oh, I saw you with my home girl. Yo, you should talk to her. She liked you." I was like, "Oh, shit. That’s great." Next time I saw her I wasn’t as nervous. We wound up hooking up, smoked some blunts, we hung out a few times.
The time I had sex with her was I was in my room and my boy was in the living room waiting for his girl to take the train and then we were going to pick her up as soon as she got to the train station. In the meantime, me and her were alone in my room, and I couldn’t get hard because I was nervous. I was laying in bed with her and I couldn’t get hard so basically I gave up. I was so fucking pissed off. I sat down and started watching TV and then after awhile I forgot we were supposed to have sex and I started making out with her again. And then I got mad hard and the second I got hard it was a wrap. She put the condom on me and I’ll never forget this – I was laying down and she kind of like swooped down on top of me and grabbed my shit and put it inside of her.
I was like, "Oh, shit I’m inside of a girl." But it was numb. I had this condom on, there was this barrier between us and I couldn’t feel anything so it wasn’t very pleasurable. We were only doing it for a minute and a half and then my boy pounds on the door and he’s all, "Yo, we gotta pick up my girl, she’s at the train station." I jumped up and pulled my pants up real quick. She got dressed and we bounced.
We pick up
his girl, we’re all in the car, and we hang out for the rest of the night. No one said anything about what went down earlier in my room. After the night was over I dropped off my boy and his girl and then it was just me and her again. Before I dropped her off home we were like, "Let’s go park somewhere and go finish our business." So we did. She was a Spanish girl with a thin waist, beautiful brown Hershey nipples and hair like Slash from Guns n’ Roses. Thick, curly hair and she looked like a model. She had a tattoo in between her tits of a star and like a sun with some bursts of sunrays that shot out squiggling over her tits. It was beautiful.
We finished and after I pulled out I realized I was using the condom I had on from hours and hours before. I still had it on that whole time.
Basically it was a minute and a half the first time and the second time was two and a half hours. You know people exaggerate after years and years, it may have actually been an hour and a half, but the second time was still a very, very long time. It was incredible, I’m talking multiple orgasms. It was my first and she got blammed out.
GIRLS LIKE TROUBLE
Naomi, 45
When I was in, I think, eighth grade I came out of the auditorium after lunch and there was this guy, oh my god, this cute guy standing there on the side of the building and I thought, "Where’s he from? He's not from our school." He wasn’t a student. He was just some high school-aged bad guy hanging out and checking out chicks at the junior high. He had long hair and he was really cute. And I was like, "Oh my god. Who is that?" I just got this feeling of complete lust.
I went out one night with a girlfriend and she fixed me up with some boy. I didn’t really like my date, but I planned on kissing him because I figured I needed the practice but then I saw that same bad guy from outside the auditorium at the movie theater. I dropped the guy I was with, and that’s when I first officially met Wayne. I could tell he was really into me so I lost the other guy and spent time with Wayne. He was from San Jose, but he had gotten into trouble with drugs so he was staying in some boys’ home up where I was from in Sacramento.
So we were dating for awhile and my friend Ashley was dating some other tough guy from the same boys’ home and it became this pressure point of like, when you can do it or when should you do it. So there was a night she and I decided we were going to go to the boys’ home and sleep with our boyfriends.
We snuck in the window around 11 o'clock and I went into Wayne’s room and she went into the other guy’s room. There were girls probably sneaking in all the time because that’s where all the cute, bad guys lived in the neighborhood.
I was in Wayne’s room and it was scary in there because there were other guys in the room. We were on the floor in the corner and I was thinking, "Oh my god, there’s other people in these beds. I can’t believe I’m doing this." But I was so enamored with him. I was so in love with him that I wanted to do it so bad in spite of the less-than-perfect setting.
My girlfriend and I both did it for the first time, we snuck back out the window, got back on our bicycles and pedaled for home. Then it was the weirdest thing. We were riding our bikes, it was about midnight and we crossed paths with this guy we knew from junior high, some big meathead dude who was riding around on his bike all drunk and he was like, "What are you girls doing out this way?" I said, "Oh my god, Ashley don't talk to him. Pedal faster." But she blurts out, "We were just over at the boys’ home." Sure enough he pedaled after us ‘cause he’s thinking "The boys’ home? Sluts. I'm gonna get some too." He started coming after us and next thing you know it was a big race to get home and away from this meathead. We're beating up on our bikes, going really fast trying to ditch him and luckily he was drunk so he couldn’t keep up.
The next morning there was all this talk about how Ashley had bled on her boyfriend’s sheets and Wayne was wondering why I didn't have any blood. And I'm like, "Well I really already lost my virginity shoving a tampon up there." That's really how I lost my virginity. It was a weird, romantic story, but he eventually had to go back to San Jose and we were just kids.
He was into drugs, he used to smoke angel dust and PCP and I didn't know this until I actually went to visit him one time. I lied to my mom and I said I was going on a field trip to San Jose. Me and Ashley again, she was my partner in crime, she went with me. We went to visit him in San Jose and I got to see what his life was like, where he actually lived. He lived with these two grandmas, like a foster home, and he was just a drug guy, I mean he like rolled this joint and I just thought it was a regular joint so I smoked some of it. Next thing you know I felt like I was 2 ft. tall, then I felt big, then I felt like I shrunk again. The stuff was wacko and laced with something and I realized that he really had a drug problem. After that I was like, "Yeah, I don't know if I'm crazy about Wayne.
But my first time was with somebody I really did love and I do still think of him sometimes to this day and wonder what ever happened to him, because we did have a relationship. We were even talking about getting married. Years later after I did marry and had a couple of kids I got this love letter from him, like a, "You were the best I ever had. Best girlfriend I ever had," type of letter. And I still have it.
***
It was good. After that I ran back up to the school for basketball practice... and I dunked that day. I had tried before but I kept on kinda getting hung on the rim. But that day I dunked on my first attempt. On my first try after the experience. I just focused on it and did it.
More dunks. Way more ladies after that.
Warner, 27
Mobile, Alabama
***
Chapter 15
"GOING TO THE CHAPEL AND WE’RE GOING TO GET MARRIED"
The small number of people I met who waited for marriage I feel speaks not only on the shift of our times, but points to a generational change as well. Very few older people I spoke with who had waited for marriage were willing to openly share their story, as opposed to the hundreds of people closer to my age who didn't blink when asked about their sexual pasts by a complete stranger.
Of the married people I spoke with who did not lose their virginity to their spouse, some shared while their unamused significant other looked on, arms folded. Many of these couples were even unaware of how one another lost their virginity.
These next three stories were the only people I encountered in my travels who saved it for the honeymoon, and in one case, had to wait until some time after.
ORTHODOX
Chaim, 26
Losing your virginity is a very special thing. It is a time when two physical people combine, unite and become one special person. Therefore, we waited until the night of our wedding to create this special bond between us.
We got married a month ago in Montreal, the city she is from. Her brother introduced us. Part of the celebration, the newly married couple goes into a room to be alone together. But the sex doesn’t happen there and it doesn’t happen five minutes after you leave the wedding.
The Jewish community as a whole, I cannot tell you, but I would say that 90 to 95 percent of the religious community waits until marriage. Most of my friends, I’d say 97 out of 100 have actually waited.
I think older people in the Jewish community give a better example. We look at sex as a special, emotional union between a man and a woman. It’s not an animalistic urge to get over with. It’s a special time in our lives, a special time for a man and a woman on an emotional level. It has nothing to do necessarily with religion.
It’s not the popular opinion but in the Jewish community, most of the time you’ll find that families are more open about sex. They do discuss it with the kids and they do explain to them the need to wait until marriage, how special it is if you wait. That has a big impact on the child. My parents explained this to me and it made sense. It’s just about parents having an open dialogue, an open relationship with their kids, not to instill fear in their kids.
TALK DIRTY TO ME
Carol, 58
1967, I was 19. He was my high
school sweetheart and everything, going together since the ninth grade. Back in the ‘60s it was just natural to wait until the wedding night. We got married on a Saturday and my husband was registered to start college in Albuquerque on Monday so we really didn’t have time for a proper honeymoon. Late Saturday night we were on the road headed for our first real apartment a few blocks away from the college campus. It was raining real bad, the roads were starting to flood so we pulled over and got a room.
The bathroom window was busted out. We had two double beds because it was the last room in the hotel. After I lost my virginity we changed beds. My husband asked me, "Well, how was it?" I said, "It was like 7-Up." "What do you mean?" I said, "Because it was kind of wet and wild."
THERE’S NO INSTRUCTIONS ON THIS MARRIAGE LICENSE
Giancarlo, 59
My wife and I waited until we were married and we couldn’t have sex on the honeymoon night because, well, my wife was too small. She had to be stretched. We had to wait three or four weeks.
The next day, after we tried, she called her sister because she thought maybe there was a problem. But her sister suggested she talk to her gynecologist. Then after our honeymoon in the Poconos, she called her doctor and made an appointment. After he examined her, after she… it was a female doctor, she examined her and then had a talk with us about sexual intercourse in case we have been doing something wrong. But we weren’t.
My wife thought that I was a saint for waiting so long after the honeymoon. I waited that long, might as well wait a couple more weeks. But it was still tough the first time. It wasn’t easy because of the situation. She had to be stretched and the doctor showed me what I had to do (makes gesture) …two fingers and… (spread).
How to Lose Your Virginity ...and how not to (Real Stories about the First Time) Page 25