He could tell I was a desperate teenage boy, ready for him to be
my first. It was a weekday afternoon, and instead of unpacking
Citizen Kane with classmates I found myself a player in that great cliché:
two strangers in a toilet stall. Just him and me: hands given
places to grope, lips given reasons to part. Then, when he suggested
we take things further, I followed him to a secluded spot
deep in the cemetery, the chattering headstones still visible through
the trees. Just him and me: his eyes too welcoming, too eager
to take me into his gaze. As I pulled myself into him, I thought: this is
my life from now on, a parade of nameless encounters, unprepared
for how alone I could feel when entangled with another. Why did I
mark an otherwise unremarkable day with skin on skin and
a tasteless man? Because my best friend had beaten me to it with ease
many years ago and had called after the event to give me the details.
Because I needed to know whether what they said about me was true.
‘How can this be your first time?’ the First Man asked. Later, picking
dead leaves from my hair and lying about my absence to my friends,
I knew exactly how: I had learned to turn my body into my greatest
disguise. I could be anyone and every man could be my first time
if I threw my voice just so—just me, slipping out of mise-en-scene.