“Hello, welcome to the Virgin Vault. How may I direct your call?”
When the communal phone rang in my all-girls boarding school dorm, we sometimes answered with the snarky name kids from other schools teased us with at sporting events. Peals of laughter would reverberate through the halls of the so-called Virgin Vault as we frustrated callers attempting to reach their sister, daughter, or friend.
When we weren’t in class, this sort of innocent mischief imbued our days with a sense of rebellion. Joyful defiance was a way to temper our highly structured schedules, rigorous academic load, and extracurricular commitments.
Most days, deeply diving into my coursework, writing, and singing thrilled me. But sometimes, gripped with cabin fever, I would wonder why I was living with one hundred and twenty teen girls instead of following Lenny Kravitz’s band on tour.
At the end of junior year, my friend Maureena (aka Mo) sauntered by me in study hall, interrupting business as usual at my desk. I welcomed the distraction. Using her long blond hair as a shield, she dropped a tiny folded note in my lap.
Risking demerits by reading her message, I pretended to be immersed in a close reading of The Awakening while attempting to avoid the proctor’s gaze.
While reading Chopin’s novel about a young woman’s sexual discovery would have usually been a highlight during study hours, the contents of Mo’s note were more intriguing. I devoured her artful scrawl without a clue that it would lead to my very own awakening a month later.
When Mo wasn’t at school, she lived with her grandfather at the beach. She often went home for weekends while I was stuck at school because my parents lived in Saudi Arabia. We’d been talking for months about me going home with her some weekend, and I couldn’t wait.
As I suspected, Mo’s letter was about our trip. Her note instructed me to request a letter from my parents authorizing the sleepover. She said our trip would be low-key. We’d stay at her grandpa’s home, hang out with her friends at the beach, and I’d finally get to meet the cute college-aged boyfriend she kept gushing about.
In compliance with school policy, Mo’s grandfather wrote a letter to our dean stating that he would be hosting us for a weekend break in the beginning of May. He left the note open-ended, welcoming me any time. We finally received the permission form from my parents and we were ready to go!
The day finally came and I eagerly waited for Mo’s grandfather to retrieve us from campus. Adorned in her uniform plaid kilt and gray cardigan, Mo epitomized boarding school chic as she ran up to meet me at the main building. Her lean frame, strong jaw, and long blond hair reminded me of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.
“There’s been a change of plans,” she said. Mo indicated a tall forty-something brunette standing next to a car. “Grandpa’s tied up and running late. Jodie’s mom is going to give us a ride instead.”
I looked at the main office nervously and asked Mo if we needed new paperwork authorizing us to be driven by another adult. She grabbed my hand and said, “Don’t worry. Everything is taken care of.”
Two hours later, Jodie’s mom left us at a Walmart near the beach. According to Mo, her grandfather wanted us to wait there for him to arrive. After assuring Jodie’s mom that we would call her once we reached home, our chaperone departed.
Ten minutes later, Mo’s boyfriend, Ben, and his friend, Steven, pulled up in an early-90s jalopy and whisked us off to what looked like a ramshackle frat house. When I asked when her grandfather was coming, Mo and her punk-rock paramour laughed in unison. “Sweetie,” she said, “My grandpa is in Europe. I knew you wouldn’t come if I told you what was up. It’s just us, Ben, and his boys.”
My gut churned with fear. We’d already violated school policy by riding in a car with unauthorized boys. Now we would be spending the weekend without parental guidance.
One by one, I visualized the privileges that would be taken away at school if our prefect or worse, the headmistress, learned that we broke the rules. I imagined sitting in a disciplinary council meeting and being punished for violating the honor code. If I got kicked out of school, I would spend the remainder of my life at a soul-sucking retail job. There was no way out without calling school, blaming Mo, and losing a friend. None of the options were appealing. We were in too deep by school standards already.
So I took a breath, and we entered the house. After all, I was almost a “grown-ass woman.” I often proclaimed this phrase while posturing with my girlfriends about how we deserved more freedom at school, but now, facing a weekend of potential debauchery that could get me in huge trouble, I felt like a scared child.
In preparation for our arrival, Ben had organized a small gathering with pizzas, beer, tequila, and bro-punk music blaring throughout the house. I was sitting in one of those party atmospheres I’d seen a lot on television but wasn’t entirely used to since the dynamics of the social scene in Saudi Arabia were very different.
For the first hour, I sat silently on a dusty couch as Mo chatted with friends from home.
As soon as I digested the fact that I had nowhere to go without getting Mo and possibly myself suspended—or even expelled—I decided to mingle. I learned that Steven was in college about twenty miles from our school, and Mo’s boyfriend was working and applying to art school. Mostly, I observed aspects of ’90s American teenage culture that I’d missed due to my expat lifestyle. Flip-cup and beer pong hadn’t made it to the Middle East.
After most of the guests cleared out around midnight Mo began playing Hacky-Sack with Ben and Steven while I watched. My panic rose again. Not only was I violating policy before college applications and recommendations were complete, but I was also putting myself in a position where my lack of coordination was about to be revealed in front of handsome college boys.
Steven, who was tall with short brown curls and a kindly grin, kicked the Hacky Sack in the air toward me and winked. I summoned every ounce of dexterity I had to ensure that the darn little beanbag never hit the ground. To my amazement and triumph I grabbed it in midair, and then stood in awkward silence when I realized that I had ended the game.
As if on cue, Mo yawned and said it was time for her and Ben to go to bed. She wrapped her arms around his bony waist and led him toward the bedroom. Panicked, I asked where I should sleep, and she said Steven would show me where to go. Before I realized that the only other bed in the house was in Steven’s room, he led me to the kitchen.
“Mia,” he said. “Do you want something to drink? I noticed you haven’t had anything since you’ve been here.”
The last thing I wanted was to break more rules so I stammered, “I’m fine. Thank you. I don’t really drink. Um, alcohol that is.”
I added to the awkwardness by saying, “By the way, Mia is only what people I’m close to call me, you know like my best friends and my family. By the way, why do white people always want to shorten my name without permission? Jamia is phonetic. It’s not that hard.”
Laughing nervously, Steven asked me if I was okay with him drinking, and when I said I was, he helped himself to some tequila. I was sure his interest in me would evaporate, but instead he set his glass down and said, “Well, I hope to become one of those people who earns the right to call you by your nickname someday.”
I feigned indifference. “Um . . . sure, do what you want. I mean, about the drinking, not the name.”
The next twenty minutes seemed like an hour of awkward small talk until we both realized how quiet the house had become. The music stopped playing. Raindrops pounded on the roof. Sheet lighting cut the sky.
In silence, we watched the storm swirl past the kitchen window. Steven drank his tequila, and I prepared mint tea that I’d brought in my purse.
I sat on the washing machine in the kitchen because it was the only clean surface left after the party. Steven pushed a discarded pizza box over to make room for himself beside me.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “I really like that you’re kind of a hippie girl even though you don’t really look the part. It’s cute that you brought your own tea, Jamia. And please note, I’m no longer calling you Mia.”
Feeling like myself for the first time that night, I said, “Yep, mint tea is my thing. It reminds me of being in Saudi Arabia where I grew up. It’s kind of my comfort zone.”
As I bent my head down to take another sip, he put his tequila down and grabbed my cup. Before I could protest, he removed it from my lips and placed it at his own.
I studied his face as he closed his eyes, took in the aroma and then allowed his face to be bathed by steam. He sipped my tea slowly and nodded with appreciation. His eyelashes were gorgeous and his lips were luscious. I realized that I’d just begun to see him clearly and wondered how he was seeing me.
He handed back my tea, apologizing for drinking so much of it. As I assured him that there was more than enough for us both, I leaned in to have another sip. Then he reached for my hair and tucked a loose curl behind my ear before it could fall into the hot water. As he stroked my face, I shivered and shifted in my seat, unsure how to deal with my increasing attraction.
Steven lifted my chin and gazed into my eyes until I blinked. I don’t really remember exactly what happened next except that he slowly leaned in and kissed me behind my neck, and the tension that had been welling up inside me melted away. We kissed tenderly for what felt like hours. We knocked over the now-cold tea and soaked our clothes.
Steven asked if he could pour the rest of his tequila over me since we were already soaked from the tea. It was funny and, admittedly, somewhat awkward. It seemed so cliché, but I went with it as a rite of passage.
Steven poured the tequila slowly and proceeded to lick it off my neck and chest. My toes curled tightly as he trailed a salt-soaked finger down the sides of my neck and licked that off with a slow and sensuous pace. This set off a chain reaction of deep kissing and electrifying biting that left both of our necks looking like a red map of erogenous evidence.
Before this moment, I had been kissed twice, and once someone had touched my breast under my shirt for five seconds at a middle school party. This was a whole new frontier with fresh terrain to navigate and negotiate. I was testing my limits, and they felt and tasted like freedom.
I was far away from the daily ennui of study hall at the Virgin Vault. Always one to find a way back to my Protestant guilt, I shuddered a bit about what the chaplain and headmistress would say if my indiscretion got out and I prayed for forgiveness.
But while in the throes of passion. . . .
When Steven unbuttoned my jeans and took off my favorite purple shirt, my spine tingled. I wanted more and I chose to embrace it. Instead of showering myself in shame, I decided to give in to my desires despite my fear of punishment. I shoved away thoughts of the headmistress and turned down the volume of the voice of external authority in my head. I was in command now, and I sure as hell didn’t want to stop.
Our make-out session progressed into the night, and our amorous movements accidentally turned on the washing machine. Laughing, we scrambled to turn it off before we woke up Mo and Ben. The kitchen really wasn’t working for us.
Steven suggested that we head to his room. He must have seen the apprehension in my eyes because he said, “You’re in charge of everything that happens in there. Nothing will happen that you don’t want.”
Relieved that I could continue with our exploration without committing to going all the way, I retreated into his room with him. Before the door closed, I told him that I wasn’t ready to have sex but that I wanted to explore each other’s bodies completely.
He asked me what I wanted, and I said that I wished to be kissed all over from head-to-toe with no expectations of anything coming of it, unless of course, it did.
He was happy to comply. The entire next day we lay in bed discovering each other and, most of all, discovering ourselves. The tightrope between our distance and our closeness led to a vulnerability that set the stage for me to experience my first (and explosively remarkable) orgasm.
And my second.
And my third.
This was not how I imagined my first sexual experience would be or with whom I thought it would be. There’s no way I could have anticipated that I’d end up sharing everything from scar stories to sweaty embraces with a dude-bro on a tiny twin bed, with trip-hop music on in the background, and the scent of patchouli and mint tea in the air.
For one of the first times in my overthinking life, I felt fully embodied. I had skin. I had a body. I was giving in to cravings and I was devouring the succulence of release.
Emboldened by the insistence of my own sexual energy, I felt powerful rather than fearful or sinful like I’d been conditioned to believe in church and school.
Mo and I never ended up going to the beach. We were too nervous we would be spotted by people from school who might report our whereabouts to the administration. But the heavens were in on our little conspiracy of desire because rain soaked the town for the entire weekend.
We were confined to a house with two cute guys and nothing but music, pizza, and hormones to focus on. So that’s what we did. And we never got caught.
Steven and I went our separate ways a few months later. I cut him off after hearing that he’d had sex with a girl from my high school during another one of Mo’s sleepovers. He continued to pursue me but I realized that I was no longer interested in a college dude that hooked up with high school girls in the first place.
What’s more, I wasn’t ready to go all the way yet and was perfectly content waiting to go full throttle with someone I could truly trust. Even though my friends didn’t believe me when I said it, I wasn’t that upset when it didn’t work out between Steven and me. The experience was never about him, it was about me learning to embrace my sexuality without fear. It was about being present in my body and enjoying the delicious fire of my humanity, my femininity, and my spirituality all at once.
I read that Judy Blume was inspired to write Forever, a candid and controversial novel about teen sexuality, because she had heard from teen girls who wanted to read a book about two teens who have sex and nothing bad happens to them. Even though Steven and I didn’t “seal the deal,” he will always be a part of my “Forever” story because I learned that I could express healthy sexuality without damnation or losing myself. I was grateful for his gentle touch, his affirmation of my idiosyncrasies, and for helping me to learn to receive pleasure without guilt—okay, with minimal guilt.
Years later, I studied abroad in Italy, and over cappuccinos in Campo Dei Fiori, I met a girl from Mo’s small town. My mouth dropped open.
“Small world. Do you know Steven S—, by chance?” I inquired, innocently.
When she exclaimed that he was, in fact, her best friend from high school, I couldn’t believe it. I tried to play it cool because I didn’t want to risk her asking him about me.
As I contemplated what to say next, she said, “Oh, wait! You’re Mia! Mia? Wow! I heard you had a special experience together. Weren’t you also the one who wouldn’t let him call you by your nickname?”
I flashed her a sly smile.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s me.”