The first time

I was 15 when I lost my virginity.

I honestly don’t even really know why I did it, other than curiosity and the desire to fit in. One of my best friends was having sex with her boyfriend and I was just fascinated by the whole thing. She was with an older, experienced boy, so their relationship seemed incredibly adult and the variety of their positions, locations, and actions blew my mind. What were some of these things?!

I had never really had a boyfriend. I was consumed by crushes, but also chose boys who wouldn’t like me back so that I could stay at arm’s length. Truthfully, I was terrified. In sixth grade, I liked a boy named Matt, and he actually liked me back! We were “dating” and the one time that we hugged between classes, my face turned bright red and I ran away. That’s where I’m coming from going into this less than three years later.

But I did receive male attention, which was new for me as a child who was never the cute one. In eighth grade, my tits came in hot, I dyed my hair its now signature red color, and I was part of this trio of hot girls. This made me a new target of boys’ affections.

Though, of course, it wasn’t really affection. It was sexual harassment that you had to laugh off and accept graciously in lieu of sonnets and poetry. The more abuse you endorsed, the more time they spent on you; and that was all any of us wanted, unfortunately. So, obviously, having sex was a logical next step.

My first sexual partner was a boy named Jordan. He was cute, quiet, and dabbled in the stoner and punk culture. Looking back, I’m not totally sure what drew me to him. I think I figured he wouldn’t be mean to me if he found out I liked him. And he wasn’t. At least not in the straight-forward way.

We planned our sex like an actual event. We had a date and time set and my mom dropped me off at his house. She knew what was up, but she has been good about letting me make mistakes on my own. I should’ve stayed in the car. He answered the door in sweatpants! But my self-esteem was pretty low and I’d already made the commitment, so I stayed.

That’s a thing I’ve noticed in my sexual history: I feel compelled to continue no matter what if I’ve already gone so far. It’s like that perpetual need to for women to be polite, don’t make waves, stick to your commitments. And because I had literally no background knowledge or experience, I did not have any confidence to speak up for myself. How do you know alternatives if you don’t know any of the options?

We went into his house and he had a couple of friends over. I didn’t know that that was part of the plan (again, we literally scheduled this shit). I waved hello as they were people I knew and followed Jordan down the hall to his bedroom.

The walls were filled with posters of Kotton Mouth Kings and similar groups and strings of lights that gave the room a green glow. The TV was on, playing (you guessed it) Kotton Mouth Kings, providing more light and the soundtrack to the loss of my virginity. He led me to his sloppily made bed.

We didn’t say much. We both knew why I was there. He kissed me for a minute and laid me down onto the bed. His hand moved up under my shirt to my braless nipple and he pinched it until it hardened. I enjoyed that feeling.

Slowly, our clothes came off. I was so nervous for him to see me naked as the first person to do so, but he gave no indication of his opinions on my body. At least he didn’t recoil, I guess. He grabbed a condom, unwrapped it, and stretched it down his penis. I was fascinated: I’d never seen a condom or how it was used. I noticed the ring at the tip of penis and vaguely recalled a conversation long ago where his friend mentioned he had a pierced dick. What a wild thing for a 16 year old to have.

He asked if I was ready and I nodded. I was so nervous that I couldn’t speak. He got on top of me and penetrated my vagina. I was no longer a virgin. This was sex.

And then he started pulling it out and then back in. I was confused. I thought sex was just inserting a penis into a vagina and sitting there for fifteen minutes. That’s what random conversations in movies had taught me at least.

I had never seen porn or even watched a sex scene in a movie. My parents were very quick to fast forward anything as soon as something started. And because my formal sexual education focused on NOT having sex, I actually knew nothing about it.

I knew sex involved putting the penis into the vagina; and it was a huge movie / TV show trope to talk about sex being 15 minutes, so … sex is putting the penis into the vagina for 15 minutes. THIS IS WHY WE NEED ACTUAL EDUCATION!

While I was confused by what was happening, I was also paying attention to the feelings around it. It didn’t necessarily feel good, but it didn’t hurt like everyone said it would. I lied there, experiencing everything, without moving a muscle. I had no idea what I should have been doing, but it seemed like it was fine. Jordan eventually finished (in less time than 15 minutes), and he pulled out. I saw the condom now included white liquid at the tip as he removed it.

He got off the bed and brought me back a towel. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with it, so I just took it and held it. “Do you want to go to the bathroom?” He asked.

“Yeah, I can do that.” I got up and put my clothes back on. He pointed to the door across the hall and I left the room. The bathroom lights were bright and harsh on my eyes. I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled. I did it! I had sex.

After peeing, I wiped and found that things were fairly slippery. I was quite lubricated from the experience. Fascinating. There was no blood, though. I had heard that there would be, so again, I was confused. Did I do something wrong? When I went back into the room, I made sure to tell him that there was a lot of blood.

We hung out for a bit after that. I awkwardly lied on his chest while we watched more KMK videos. And then it was time for me to go. We kissed goodbye and I explained to my mom, defensively, that we just hung out and watched movies. Not a full lie, but obviously not the truth.

This was a Saturday evening. We hadn’t really discussed anything about our relationship, but I assumed that since we had sex, I would now be like my friend and I would try different positions and actions with Jordan. But on Monday, I found out that he had asked out another girl. That was a pretty shitty and unexpected blow.

So I figured out how to handle it and I decided that I would disassociate myself from it and treat sex as something insignificant so that it couldn’t hurt me. It was something that I was to do without feeling and without requiring a relationship. I was the cool girl who didn’t need anything in return while I gave away what they wanted.

And this is because I didn’t have any other information. Was it normal to have sex with someone and then they end up with someone else? Maybe, maybe not. Was this a possible outcome that I could have prepped better for? Absolutely, but I didn’t know about it. I just assumed my situation would end up exactly like my friend’s, or exactly like I’ve seen in the movies. And this was not something I saw in the movies.

I learned a lot of hard lessons about sex and relationships in my younger years, which allowed me to grow and improve faster than maybe others; but it did cut me off from understanding and enjoying intimacy for a long time. Sex without emotions, or at least pretending that you don’t have any, just led me to feeling empty, useless, and hurt.

I was so naive going into sex that I allowed things to happen to me that I could have easily prevented. But I wanted to know about sex and no one was telling me in a healthy, responsible way, so I figured it out for myself. I feel like this is the case for a lot of women. They’re led into sex by boys / men who are aware of and know how to take advantage of our gullibility and we have no baseline of what is actually okay.

After this event, school was weird. I had to pretend to be okay with Jordan dating someone else, with so many people knowing that I’ve now had sex, and with this new persona that I had to build as someone who has meaningless sex and has to hide that she actually knows nothing about it.

This major shift change led to some seriously shitty situations, including my first rape.