The V-Word (14 page)

Lizard puts her arm around me, and when her skin meets my skin, I feel the earth open up and welcome me as part of all creation. I connect with stars and planets and space. When she kisses me, I'm equally sure that I will grow warts, turn green, and burn in hell.

That weekend she takes me to a hotel in town.

Continue braiding the three strands.

When we drive up to the hotel to get a room, Lizard tells me to duck in my seat so the manager can't see me. Two young women renting a room is suspect. Homosexuality in Arizona at the time is a crime. Two girls who are one planet, all body and Want, are in danger. She gets the room. We drive around back, and Lizard goes in without me.

Sneaking is part of the strand that was once in my left hand—
silence
.

When I go to the door and open it, smoke and sour carpet and Lysol hit me. Lizard's hands pull me in, and her hands and my hands fill with shirts and zippers and skin. My lips are full of lips and fingers and the sinew of her neck. The curtains are closed, and we draw the grimy cover off one bed and fall into it. We have no clothes. I have never felt the long, lean body of someone else on my long, lean body, skin-to-skin, hands all over. When her hand reaches into me, her fingers find spots I didn't know I had—places of silence and rumor and old-movie innuendo, the place my sister said tampons should go.

I'm sure I will go supernova.

We don't sleep. Her fingers are in me. My fingers are in her. My tongue tastes her salt. Her tongue tastes my salt. At times I'm not sure which breast is hers and which is mine, and I don't know what is happening. I have no frame of reference from book, movie, or rumor. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are black-and-white dancers, and this dance is color and grit and girl.

In the morning the edges of the smelly curtains let light in, and the wall-size mirror facing the bed shows bare legs and shoulders and messed-up hair. The room is full of smoke and sour carpet and Lysol and sex. The bathroom is across the room and to get there means crossing in front of the mirror and that means seeing my body so I crawl under the mirror to avoid it. My body is wrong.

In the bathroom I shut the door, and I sit on the toilet, and I think, “What is happening?” I have no answer. When I walk out of the bathroom, Lizard has the light on, and I ask her to turn it off. In the dark, our bodies are a little more right than wrong, and somehow skin touching skin soothes the friction of the sin I believe I'm committing. We spend the day in bed. By the time we return to camp that evening, I can barely walk I am so sore.

By the end of the summer, the camp counselors and the camp administration have split over the issue of counselors loving counselors. I am an outsider, an East Coast girl, and I am blamed for corrupting the camp. Lizard drives me from Arizona to Connecticut and drops me off.

Tie the braid tight.

Silence braids into shame and body.

It takes years to realize that I lost my virginity. All those long winters of growing up, with movie reels turning and the films clicking through the projector, I learned what virginity was and wasn't in black-and-white. I thought losing virginity required a penis and penetration and blood and the back seat of a Chevy, so I don't connect fingers and tongues and fists and clitoris and vagina to a summer of dark hotel rooms and secret meetings and sex between girls.

It takes years to recognize the loss and the gain, the rite of passage, the murky way my body expressed Want. It takes many more years before I untie that braid and finally stand in front of a mirror to see my long, lean body, naked.

Maybe you're the romantic type—

Sex is going to be magical, wild, fireworks! The two of us will be together forever.

Maybe you're more cynical—

It's going to hurt. This is the only way to keep my guy interested. Let's just get it over with.

Or maybe you're practical—

This sex thing is no big deal. It couldn't be harder than driving a car. I've got this.

Whatever your attitude, whether you're focused on having fun or deepening a relationship, what matters most is sexual agency. You get to decide what happens. It's up to you when you have sex and why you have sex. Every kiss, every touch, every time.

Justina thought about what she wanted. She laid down her ground rules. And when opportunity presented itself, she got down to business.

T
his 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.