How to Lose Your Virginity ...And How Not To (9 page)

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The next morning we had sex and she said the most flattering thing she could have possibly said and it has continued to give me confidence throughout the years. She looked at me and said, "Are you sure you've never had sex before?"
Russell, 20
Land O' Lakes, FL

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THE CALL OF THE WILD
Julie, 30
I was absolutely not considered in a sexual way by any male in high school. I begged six of the dorkiest guys to take me to prom and they all said, "No." So I was one of those girls who was accidentally forced to wait.
After high school I found out about this job up in Bethel, Alaska, rebuilding troughs that led up the side of waterfalls for salmon to swim up and get back to their breeding territory. My dad’s dead and my mother’s crazy so I had no trouble uprooting myself and traveling up north. I saved up money and I was as pure as a virgin snow when I arrived up there like Sam McGee from Tennessee*. I journeyed to Alaska intending to save the fish but I instead found out that more money was to be made in actually gutting and canning them, tending them from a boat off the Kuskokwim River.
On this fish boat of maybe three females and 86 males there was a baker named Mack. I was 19, he was 27 and Mack the Baker, in my 19-year-old sentimental mind, somewhat reminded me of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway I let it slip to Noreen the Cook who had lost like 90% of her arm in a cutlery accident, I accidentally let it slip to this untrustworthy cook Noreen that I thought Mack the Baker should be the man who devirginizes me. I thought it was time and I was in Alaska, the land of men. We were on a boat killing fish, it was a very primal setting. He was a Capricorn just like my dad.
Rumors spread and he caught wind of my yearning loins and cornered me one evening at the back end of the boat. He came up on me as I was gazing out at this beautiful sunset, like a backdrop from the movie musical Oklahoma. I was having a private, whimsical, weighted 19-year-old moment looking out at the sunset, all this beauty, and Mack the Baker cavalierly waltzes up and the first thing he ever said to me, which was the first thing he said to me in the six months I was there was, "So, I hear you want me to take your virginity." An enormous red blemish erupted on my cheeks as I tried to pretend that that utterance had not been uttered. It felt that at least 3,000 seconds had passed before he stated, "I don't think it's such a good idea."
Now I was a woman of integrity, even at 19. So I ignored the entire scenario. I had pretended none of it had ever happened. I conjured up in my mind that he was quite the asshole for coming up with this fantasy all on his own, even though I was the source of the saucy rumor to begin with.
Two weeks passed. I was working up in a box loft with Vera, an ex-prima ballerina from the Bolshoi Ballet. She said, "Mack is a dirty man. Mack is a dirty, dark, dirty man." I said to her, "I can't help it. He is the one to take my virginity and there's nothing that will stand in the way," except for time. And it took another whole two weeks before Mack the Baker showed up while I was on kitchen duty and blithely requested that I shave his head. I knew this was like my golden hour so I obliged. I shaved him like Curly from The Three Stooges, and then I got fucked in one of the sleeping niches in the boat quarters. It was great and I came. Somehow, somewhere that 19-year-old girl knew that he was the man to do it and it may have been the best sex I have ever had and I never spoke to him again.
*from the poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service
THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST
Gary, 45
My dad and I were traveling in Europe with his mother. We had planned to get her through at least Germany and my dad figured it was only $120 more to go to his hometown with his mother, so we continued on to Beirut. I ended up going to school there because I had stayed past the time when my school started back in Texas.
I'm 15 and they started me in the seventh grade and then they backed me up to the third grade, then they backed me up to first grade, then they said, "You need to learn the alphabet," so they put me in kindergarten.
I’m 15 in a Beirut kindergarten and then I met Ahisma. She lived around the corner, two blocks from us and we would ride the bus together. We rode the bus together every day. After we had ridden together for about six months she began tutoring me in Arabic. I would go to her place after school and study with her and after a few lessons we had our first kiss. She decided that she liked me enough that we became better neighbors. And one thing led to another and… let me tell you… I miss her. She's dead now; she got killed by a car bomb back in 1978. Yeah, it's just one of those horrible things.
But she was my tutor, it had nothing to do with school. It had to do with the fact that we were neighbors, and we just got along. She was three years older than I was and I was proud because I was dating an 18-year-old. My grandmother would look at me and say, "Where are you going?" "I'm going to my teacher's house." "Oh, OK." Grandma thought everything was innocent and cool. Yeah right, I was really studying anatomy by Braille. It was just a natural passage.
She was a great teacher. Let me tell you, she was a great teacher. She taught me some things I ain't forgotten yet. And let me tell you, I ain't had no complaints.
We kept in touch until the day that she got killed. And unfortunately, like I said... the son of a bitches turned a parked car into a bomb. She was walking by, heading for the bus stop and the damn thing went off and she's gone. But she'll always be in my heart. I couldn’t go for the funeral but I got to go in 1980 and '81 with the National Guard, I was a translator. And 249 of my friends are gone because of the time we spent over there. But you know, I'm here. And I have the memories and... Ahisma, I miss you.

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In high school a friend of ours set it up for me to watch one of his wrestling tournaments... and I watched him and there was just like a connection – instant connection. Don't know what it was. If I believe in destiny, or soul mates... I'd say it's there.
Angela, 37
Dayton, Oregon

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THE SOUVENIR
Cindy, 48
The first time I saw him I was probably 12. I’ve always had a fascination with cars because I grew up in a car family. My uncles raced cars, my brothers raced cars so I had a thing for fast cars; I’m still that way. I would see this guy driving up and down the street in his yellow Camaro. That’s how I met him, by seeing him in that car.
When I was 15 I was with my girlfriends and he drove by my house on his way to pick up his fiancé. He made a u-turn, came back and picked us up and he bought beer for us. After that he started just coming over, calling on me, taking me out and we started dating.
Here I am a 15-year-old girl dating a 20-year-old man. He had a really good job so while my girlfriends were lucky if they were even taken to a McDonald’s, he was taking me out to really nice restaurants every Friday night. We were going out to movies, dancing, I mean I was madly in love.
My father was deceased at the time so I just had my mom. She knew I was seeing an older guy and she was not pleased to say the least. My mother grew up in a different era, she was 42 when she had me, I had brothers who were 20 years older than me. Nowadays that’s kind of like the norm having children later in life, but back then it was rare. So she was not happy about it but unsure how to deal with it.
But I was crazy in love with this guy because he had a canary yellow 1970 Camaro… and he was hot. He kept telling me, "I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna get you." I was like, "No. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this." But you’re a 15-year-old girl, you still have those feelings and you want to do it. At the same time I had my mother telling me what I should do, what I shouldn’t do, who I needed to be. I was trying to be a good person but after five months of this conflict, we were at the drive-in one night and… we did it.
I can’t remember the movie that was playing, but I do know we were at the Skyway Drive-In near Warren, Ohio. We did it in the backseat of his car there was some blood. He had this t-shirt on so he took off his shirt and cleaned up the business with it. This is pretty creepy and gross but I still have the shirt. My present husband doesn’t know this but it’s in my underwear drawer.
Anyway we had sex three times that night and I had heard from girlfriends that it’s terrible the first time. I didn’t feel that way at all. It was unbelievable. We had sex three times, it was just amazing to me.
What ended up happening though, because I was so much younger than him, I couldn’t go to bars because the legal age in Ohio was 18. I couldn’t go to bars so I couldn’t compete, but he could go out and meet lots of girls. It got so I couldn’t handle that anymore, even though he wanted to continue dating, so we broke up. I actually ended up marrying somebody else. That didn’t work out, it broke up so I did end up getting back together with him, the first boyfriend and we did get married. Then, unfortunately, after nine years of marriage for whatever reason we couldn’t make it last.
But looking back, it was very enthralling, very exciting and I’ll never forget that. I’ll end up forgetting a lot of things but I’ll never forget that. It was a life-changing event and I still remember it like it was last night. I still think about being in the back seat of his Camaro, the one I first saw him driving, at the Skyway Drive-In each time I pull his shirt out of my underwear drawer.
THE NERD AND THE BULLY
Devin, 34
I'm from Dayton, Oregon, which is a small town, little farming town outside Portland. I was kind of a geeky kid in high school – a little guy. Didn't get a lot of attention from girls, but that's OK. Then I started dating a girl when I was a sophomore in high school who was a little bit more wild than I was.
We went to school together, obviously, and the first time I met her was in fifth grade and even though right now she's five feet tall, she was five feet tall back then too. She was the big kid in school, and the bully. She became the cute little thing later. We started dating in high school and I guess I was a little surprised by how sexually aggressive she was. Not that she had a lot of experience either but I guess she knew what she liked and luckily it happened to be me.
I think it was, well OK, I know it was June 14th, 1986. Almost 20 years ago. Four months and 16 days after we started dating. We were in the basement of my parents’ house, with my parents home of course. And yeah, it lasted for maybe a minute. The build-up lasted for about two hours, but the whole thing lasted for about a minute. And she was understanding of that because then it happened again another 15 minutes later and it lasted a little longer that time.
I guess it was a weird situation. It was, you know… it was scary. I know women talk about losing their virginity as a big deal but I guess for me it was a big deal as well.
We didn't have plans to do it. I knew we were working towards that. In fact she offered that up to me a couple weeks before and I had, embarrassed to say now, turned it down because I was scared. But I have to be honest, it changed my life. It changed the way everybody thought about me at school, how I saw myself. Everything.
I really knew that I liked her a lot. I knew we had a definite connection but I didn’t know we’d eventually get married. All through high school and college, I got lots of pressure from my friends to be with somebody else but I guess I just knew. I knew she was the one. I guess I got lucky that the first one was the one. Some people might say I got unlucky because I haven't been able to sleep with a bunch of women, but I know I don't need to.
We got married when I was 21. We've got two kids now, one is 7, one is 2. But as far as when I have to talk to them about sex… I don't really believe in waiting for marriage. I think being married to someone who you are sexually incompatible with would be a huge mistake. So, you know, they need to know something about that. I guess that makes me a liberal father. I'm not sure. I think one thing I’ll always want to tell both my son and my daughter is that sex is a serious thing and because it is so serious you should make sure it works before you make that commitment.
But looking back… my first time was exciting and quick and scary. And everything I’d heard that it was emotionally, for girls, that’s the way it was for me.
I SLIPPED INSIDE HER
Ben, 19
I’m from Mankato. It’s a rural town in south central Minnesota. I started dating this girl when I was 15 years old and we were together for like a year and a half total. For the last nine months of it, she moved an hour and a half away to go to college in the Twin Cities.
It was actually kind of interesting because it was a slow development over months and months and months. Every other weekend or so she would either come down and visit me or I would go up to visit her. The very first weekend after she started school was the very first time I touched her breasts. Then like two weekends later it was the first time one of us took our shirts off. Two weeks after that we took a shower together in the common bathroom of her dorm. No one was awake so it was a slow time for showering when we wouldn’t be bothered. We were naked but we didn’t have sex. That’s very hard to do after you’ve lost your virginity but before – it’s a lot easier. Plus we were accustomed to the slow build of things.
Finally one weekend she came down to visit me at home. I had a fireplace in our basement and luckily it was kind of cold that night so we built a fire. One of our big things was giving massages to each other and she had surprised me with massage oils.There was massaging going on for probably an hour and a half or two hours. Then it was kind of funny how easily it happened.
Usually when you see things in the movies "just happening" or there’s a talk about how it’s all some weird moral dilemma you’re like, "Oh that’s total bullshit." But it actually did turn out to be the idyllic sort of thing. One minute she was on her stomach without any clothes on and I was massaging her, and then the next moment she rolled over and looked into my eyes and… no words, it was just kind of understood. We had sex on my basement floor.
Before I even started dating her, one of my friends had told me that even if you’re not going to use it, you should always have a condom on you in case anyone else should need it. Like if you’re at a party or anything it’s good to have protection on hand for somebody. That had become my policy for a really long time so I had a condom.
It was really good. We were just two really curious, oiled up, yet strangely responsible teenagers.
MY BUDDY LIST
Dennis, 27
When I was 19, I met another man in an AOL chat room about game shows because as long as I’ve been alive I’ve been absolutely obsessed with game shows – things like The Price is Right and the old Match Game and whatever else. Well this man flew in from Austin, Texas, to Maryland where we spent the weekend at a Red Roof Inn and he gave me a blowjob and that’s all.
So that was the first guy who sucked on my dick. Losing your virginity is a lot like losing your innocence. So that episode was losing my innocence. That was me breaking into the gay scene and becoming myself. But to be perfectly honest, I lost my full virginity at 26 with my husband. That was the first time that I really got fucked.
I met my husband at this very bar. I had met him on my birthday and like three months after that we decided that we were going to buy a house together. All of my friends and family were very much opposed to it because they had never met him and they thought I was making a rash decision. I was making a rash decision absolutely but I was thinking with my heart and so I went with it. I have no regrets. None. And it’s all worked out very well.
First came the anal sex, then the house. But yeah, when I met him I had never been fucked or fucked. Never had sex with a woman, never had any interest in having sex with a woman.
He is actually three years younger than me and he’s had a lot of experiences. He studied acting in New York and he slept with everyone under the sun. I thought I was a whore until I met him. Luckily neither of us were unfortunate enough to contract any diseases. But he was very much more experienced than me and he totally eased me into it. He eased me into anal sex with one finger at a time and he even made me a mix CD with songs pertinent to us back then and he titled it "One Finger at a Time." I had never had anyone else put his dick inside me and I've never put my dick inside of anyone else and I have to say that I am very, very, very happy and not looking to stray.
Having someone who knew what to do certainly helped with the physical aspect of it. He was very understanding and very patient. I can't emphasize that enough – very patient. Because... when you put things in your butt... it hurts. Eventually you grow to get used to that sort of thing but it takes lots of work.
He was living at a repertory theatre and that was the first time I had sex was in his bed that he was renting backstage and it was amazing. The fireworks were there.
THE VELVET REVOLUTION
Lienhart, 38
I'm from the Czech Republic and this happened back in 1989. At that time there was this huge change that began to happen that resulted in the ultimate removal of the Communist Party as the only source of power, the holder of power. The whole event started as a wave of public disagreement that was sparked by the university students.
I was a senior studying biology at Purkyne University in Brno which is a central city in Moravia in the eastern part of the Czech Republic, or what used to be the central part of Czechoslovakia. I was about to finish my undergraduate degree when all of the students went on strike, occupational strike. Suddenly we went from simply studying at this institution of learning to being in charge and we were doing political activism. It was an exciting time to be there. And it just so happened that one of my closest friends had brought his girlfriend into our midst and she became a member of our core group, about a dozen people or so and myself who helped to organize protests and marches and walkouts. She and I had kind of struck this relationship, an interest in each other. We had this sudden outpouring of emotion and closeness and you have to realize that to go out and put your entire life and prospects on the line for the future – it was a pretty heavy deal. And to find somebody who's going to just sort of carry you through that to the next state for our country, or even the next morning was an incredible thing in its own right. This girl, Věra was the one I have given my virginity.
Really it was just a fling for her although I had wished and wanted it to be more than that. I still think back on losing my virginity in what essentially had been a lecture hall for organic chemistry. It was during the occupational strike at a time when me and my friends were helping to decide the future of our country. No matter how cynical you might be looking at that era or even the current state of the world, looking back at that specific moment, it was a grand thing.
The truth is, is that she and my friend got together later again. And later still she left him and went back to a man who had been her high school sweetheart and the last thing I knew before I left the country and moved to America was that she got married to that man and had a child. I last saw my friend the summer before last. He's gone on with his life; we're still good friends.
To put it in his words, and I will never really be certain whether he knew what really happened at that time with me and Věra, but later on when we were reminiscing, he said very simply and succinctly, "The revolution taught Europe how to handle women." And that may not have really been the whole truth but it certainly took away some of our naïveté, individually and as a society. I don't think it made me less of a romantic but I think it made me, at the cost of some pain, a wiser man. And if that's not an achievement then nothing is.
POETRY IN MOTION
Julius, 41
When did I lose my virginity? It happened so fast. Mmm... trying to think back through my sex life. It started I guess... before my puberty. So then... yeah, the official one would have been this lovely girl. Her father was the headmaster at the local school. We were both in the same school... and... oh, it was wonderful. We took the whole day off... you know, little kiddie stories. We just were off playing in the fields of Ireland. Got off school for the summer and spent the whole summer making love. But school didn’t end, I guess. She taught me how to make love.
We... we... we gaffed off school… got in her car, and then got out of the city and into the country... and I was shaking like an idiot. She was like the leader... beautiful, voluptuous girl. And... I couldn't get out of her breasts. She went down on me... it was all over. It was very embarrassing. And then... after another while... awkwardly I mounted her... and I... slipped into her. It was warm... gorgeous... ah, it's coming all back now. And it was over like that, snap.