This is the story of the first time I had sex in all of its awkward, poorly planned glory. But before I tell you about it I should probably tell you this: I never thought my first time would be special.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. When I was younger, too young to really get the sexy scenes in R-rated movies but too old for Disney princesses, I did believe my first times would be special: first date, first kiss, first whatever came next. Can you blame me? When you think there are faraway lands filled with talking animals, it’s easy to believe that some special guy will rescue you from your craptastic life.
As I got older, reality chipped away at the fantasy. My first kiss was from a guy that had just smoked his weight in marijuana and tasted like Doritos and cotton mouth. My first date was walking around the mall with a guy who was just using me to get close to my friend, since everyone knew she was a sure thing. And even though I hadn’t had sex, I’d heard about plenty of terrible, awful, heartbreaking first times.
All of my friends seemed to be having sex and their secondhand accounts didn’t exactly make me want to declare myself open for business, so to speak. If their story wasn’t about someone walking in, then it was about how much it hurt, felt weird, or just generally sucked, especially when they found out they’d gotten the gift that keeps on giving (herpes!). Sex was generally terrifying, first-time sex even more so.
And the girls who did have a wonderful first time weren’t convincing me to get naked with some guy, either. Their stories reeked of self-delusion. Experience had taught me that teenage boys did not have the sensitivity and consideration I’d come to expect from a life spent reading romance novels. No boy was going to suddenly turn into Prince Charming once his pants were down, no matter what some girls would tell you.
So when it came to sex I was pretty cynical about the whole thing. Expectations of rose petals and soft music changed to a bed and a condom. That’s right. My ground rules for my sexual debut were:
Rule #1: It had to happen in a bed. No cars, no bathrooms, no couches. I wanted a bedroom and a locked door, dammit. No one’s little brother was going to walk in while I was sprawled on a bed with my hooty-hoo bared to the world.
Rule #2: I was not getting knocked up, and chlamydia just sounded gross, so that meant there had to be protection. I wasn’t going to go on birth control pills because they were expensive, and besides, the thought of oozing sores (oozing sores!) on my muffin was mentally paralyzing. That meant the guy had to have a condom. If I was going to invite someone into my lady business, the least they could do was wrap it up. No exceptions. I was not going to end up a statistic.
And that was it. It had to be clean and private. I didn’t think that was too much to ask.
But . . . it was. My ground rules were a little too ambitious, it seemed. And it’s really hard to expect too much after your best friend tells you about losing her virginity in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant.
Even if my standards were low they were still standards. I was putting myself first, in a way. However, I wasn’t holding out for having my world rocked or really much fun at all. I’d explored my hidden valley often enough that I knew what felt good, and none of the fumbly-handed interactions I’d had with boys came close. If I wasn’t going to end up with an orgasm I definitely wasn’t going to end up someone’s mommy or a viral incubator. Boys who wanted in my pants had to meet my standards. Otherwise I was out.
I made it through high school and into the United States Army a card-carrying member of the V club. It wasn’t something I really thought much about, to be honest. I mean, I thought about sex, but any sexy daydreams were quickly ruined by the thought of the guys that usually liked me: broke, shiftless, selfish. These guys didn’t work and called every girl they knew a bitch or a slut. There were some real peaches playing in my league and I’d found every single one of them.
Daydreams were only safe if I thought about having sex with someone I didn’t know and would never meet, like movie stars. I can’t tell you how many times I surrendered to passion in Leonardo DiCaprio’s capable arms. Or, you know, Kate Winslet’s. My fantasies weren’t picky. But that just made the reality of sex seem even further away. It was a catch-22: I didn’t have sex because I couldn’t find a decent guy, but I didn’t find a decent guy because I wasn’t really all that concerned about having sex.
But all of that was before I went to language school at the Defense Language Institute, DLI for short, in beautiful Monterey, California.
Monterey was the first place where I was really on my own. No curfew, no mom asking prying questions, no anyone. There were no rules at DLI save the ones the Army enforced, and those were flexible enough that I was finally able to feel alive. If I wanted to eat my weight in chocolate cake (and I did, who wouldn’t?) then I could. I could stay up all night watching bad television and roll out to class early the next morning, bleary-eyed and rumpled. There was no one to influence my choices, and no one to warn me about bad decisions. The only person responsible for me was me, and I was more intent on having fun than using good judgment.
It was a great time to have some ill-advised nooky.
Although sex was not my first thought when I arrived in Monterey it quickly became a priority. In a place where random hookups were the norm, being a virgin was a hassle. It was the social equivalent of having a nine o’clock curfew. People I was serving with were either college graduates or had lived on their own before joining the military. They’d had sex. Lots of sex. Cringe-worthy and swoon-worthy and just plain worthy sex. They had funny stories about sex gone wrong and horror stories of why you never want to have sex in the Atlantic Ocean at night (jellyfish!). I laughed at these stories and I nodded when appropriate but I never shared any of my own escapades.
Um, because I didn’t have any.
I was the youngest in my platoon and underage, so I was already excluded from the barhopping that comprised most social outings. I didn’t have a college degree and I had no stories about “the one that got away” to wistfully recall.
But being a virgin?
That marked me as a kid like nothing else.
When sex talk came up and it was revealed, usually by someone else, that I’d never had sex, that’s when the head pats began. I was an adorable little kitten to be sheltered and protected. Being a virgin became an indicator of just how much I hadn’t lived, that I was completely inexperienced.
And it was annoying as fuck.
So I set out to get laid because somehow I figured that was going to fix the Oh, aren’t you just adorable? attitude people took toward me. I could be one of those girls or I could be a child, and being one of those girls was preferable. But I was going to be one of those girls in a room with a locked door, a bed, and protection. Those were still nonnegotiable.
I learned quickly that guys are not necessarily eager to do it with everyone’s favorite little sister, which is what I’d become. No one wanted to deflower me because they liked me too much. They respected me too much.
Mostly they were terrified of my expectations.
“Virgins are a hassle,” one male friend told me. “They want flowers and special moments, and none of the other girls are expecting that kind of thing. They already know the deal. No one has to worry about them falling in love after hooking up, you know?”
But I didn’t know. Because no one would have sex with me!
I had a couple of close calls, but there was always something to ruin it (roommates walking in, lack of a condom). After nearly a year I’d given up on ever doing it. Life seemed determined to keep me celibate forever.
I started to formulate these insane plans for how I was going to get laid. They were just as sad as they were impossible. I imagined approaching a male prostitute, assuming I could find one, and shoving a handful of dollars at him. Once I told him what I wanted he’d say, “Wait, you’re a virgin? Oh sweetie, no. Just . . . no.” Then he’d pat me on the shoulder, the kind of awkward tap you give someone when they’ve just had an elderly relative die, before he walked away.
Even in my imagination I was trapped in virginhood.
So, after nearly a year of trying to find a coconspirator, I stopped looking for one. And I focused on having fun. Meaning I started smoking and drinking heavily because that is how you spell fun when you’re nineteen and not having sex.
And being deliriously, gloriously drunk is how I finally got laid.
I was at a house party where I was supposed to hook up with some guy who liked me but that I didn’t know that well. Instead he decided to go after someone blonder and cuter, and I was a little crushed. Mostly because he’d been described as a sure thing, and even though I wasn’t looking, I still wanted to chuck my V card out the window.
Rejection stinks, especially when you think you’re going to get some sex and it doesn’t happen. So once the sure thing started making out with the blond girl, I headed outside to babysit the keg.
If you’re socially awkward and don’t know anyone and are slightly embarrassed because a boy you sort of like is making out with a girl you don’t know in the living room while everyone watches, the keg is the absolute best place to be. First, there’s beer. Unlimited beer. Second, it’s the social hub of any party. Everyone comes to visit the keg. Everyone. Even the people who prefer to pickle their liver with bottom shelf vodka that could double as paint remover.
Everyone visits the keg.
So I hung out and drank and laughed and drank and smoked and drank and joked around with people I didn’t know while drinking some more. This was not the best idea I’ve ever had, because in general getting very, very drunk at a party is a recipe for disaster. I knew this firsthand from an incident at a previous party that had almost ended very badly for me. Due to a friend’s timely intervention I didn’t get raped, but unfortunately I was not so good at learning my lesson the first time.
So I started drinking more beer than I could handle. I was awkward and lonely and maybe just a little heartsore at being rejected. Not good reasons to drink to annihilation, but my reasons all the same.
In a stupidly short amount of time I was absolutely wasted.
Since I was too young to be drinking and too drunk to stand, I casually leaned myself against the side of the house, like I was cool and nonchalant and not completely shit-faced. I had just about convinced myself that I was not going to puke when a guy whose name I can’t remember (It started with an M. Morgan? Morris? Mitch? Let’s just go with Mitch.) came up and started talking about something (Music? Movies?). I nodded and laughed at the appropriate pauses, and he refilled my beer for me like a fine gentleman bartender. After a beer and a half he asked me if I wanted to go back to his place and watch movies.
I said, “Sure.” Or, at least, I think I said sure. I’m positive whatever I slurred out was a pale imitation of English.
Now, on any other night I probably would’ve declined. After all, I still had my two rules (Bed! Condom!) and I’d arrived with a friend. It felt weird to leave with someone besides the people I came with, like it was a sordid tryst or a drug deal. More importantly, I would’ve realized that “going back to his room to watch movies” was code for having sex, and I would’ve been so freaked out about it that I would’ve stammered out some excuse and bolted.
And maybe I would’ve realized that a guy who gets a girl drunk before trying to nail her is a complete and utter shitbag.
But I didn’t. I was drunk, my inhibitions were gone, and my decision-making skills were terrible. Besides, he was cute. I think. I was pretty much seeing double.
After waving off my concerned friend—Yes, I’m good. I’m fine. Everything is fine.—we went back to his room and locked the door. (Rule #1? Check.) He let me pick the movie and I chose Army of Darkness. Not just because I really like that movie but because his DVD collection was alphabetized and it was just too hard to keep reading past the As.
As Bruce Campbell, the star of the movie, drove his car through a portal into the past, the guy I was with reached up under my shirt. It wasn’t the first time I’d imagined Ash, Bruce Campbell’s character in the movie, reaching up under my shirt. But this time, it was really happening. Only, not with Ash, but with Mitch. I laughed at the silliness of making out to a movie that had fueled my own sordid daydreams.
But Mitch didn’t know any of this, and he thought I was giggling at him. When he asked me if I was ticklish I told him the sad, sad truth: I was a virgin, untried and unproven. Instead of that turning him off, it actually turned him on.
Because he was a dirtbag.
I have to interject a note of caution here: Guys that are completely okay screwing girls too drunk to give enthusiastic consent are the lowest of the low. There is something loathsome about a guy that hits on a girl who is leaning against a house because she is too inebriated to stand. Those guys should be avoided at all costs.
Especially if the idea of being your first makes them hard.
But I was drunk, lonely, and a little desperate to have sex. I doubt any earnest warning would have been enough to scare off my nineteen-year-old self. I wanted to have sex even if the guy I’d picked wasn’t really worth my time.
My sexual debut, with the movie playing in the background and me trying not to puke up a pony keg’s worth of light beer while I fucked a complete stranger, was not my finest moment. But I’m glad I did it, even if I do have one regret.
I was totally off my game that night.
Anything worth doing should be done well, especially sex. Alcohol may lower inhibitions but it sure as hell doesn’t increase coordination. My kissing technique had devolved into something between a garter snake doing an interpretive dance and a sea anemone slap fight. I had no idea what to do with my mouth. I pretty much totally forgot I even had hands. It all just seemed like too much effort to even try. By the time Mitch went down on me I really just wanted him to take off his pants and get down to business so I could pass out properly.
You know, because I was shit-faced.
He slid a condom on. (Rule #2? Check.)
And, dammit, I was finally doing it.
And it, the sex, well, it was pretty uninspired. Definitely less interesting than Army of Darkness.
Eventually he finished (I didn’t. No surprise there.) and pulled me into his arms while he murmured bullshit platitudes for my newly deflowered benefit. I fell asleep. (Passed out. Whatever.)
The next morning I woke up at the ass crack of dawn. I’ve always been an early riser and sharing a twin bed with a guy I barely knew was not my idea of romantic. I used the bathroom, noted the soreness in my lady bits, and gave myself a high five.
Yay me. I’d done it!
As I was searching for my other shoe, Mitch woke up and asked me if I wanted to go to breakfast. No, I didn’t. I wanted a hot shower and another twelve hours of sleep in my own bed. Besides, he was a lot less cute when I was mostly sober and it was light out. He asked for my number, and I gave it to him out of some strange sense of misplaced guilt. He called me the next weekend so that we could hook up again. But it was pretty terrible and I was glad I’d been so very drunk the first time. I was relieved when I saw him making out with someone else a month later, ending our awkward, half-hearted courtship.
And that is the somewhat sordid story of my forgettable first time.
I like to think I used Mitch as much as he used me. I’m not really sure. Because what I remember is being really, really drunk. And horny. And more than a little desperate to have sex.
But I also remember 1990s Bruce Campbell, the star of Army of Darkness.
He was hot.