The V-Word (2 page)

A few days later, his best friend asked me if we'd had sex. I didn't know what to say. Had we? There was no penetration. Nobody came. I shrugged, noncommittal. He smirked, and I felt dirty. My brain kicked back in and with it came shame and worry.

What kind of girl did that kind of thing? Was I a bad person? How could I have gone so far without even thinking about pregnancy or disease? What if Jason had been less tender and had pushed me beyond what I could do?

These were the thoughts that could have, and perhaps should have, accompanied the yearnings of my body.

My brain finally caught up with the rest of me.

Jason and I never did anything like that again. In fact, I didn't do anything sexual with anyone else for a long time, and I was seventeen before I went all the way through with penetration. But I often remember Jason and the lovely, rich pleasure we shared in each other's bodies. We were young, that's true, but was it really so wrong for us to kiss and touch and explore in a way that made both of us feel so good?

I don't think so.

Did it count?

I wasn't sure if my explorations with Jason counted as sex. I'd always thought that losing my virginity had to involve penetration. But what about two women? If they're intimate with mouths-hands-vulvas and it feels great, is that sex? What about the straight couples who decide that they don't want to go all the way but everything else—all the other ways we can be sexual with each other—is considered okay? Are they still virgins?

It's common to talk about sex like it's binary. You've had it or you haven't. But what if sex is a spectrum of behaviors? In that context, the idea of virginity doesn't make a lot of sense. We humans don't have a sex switch that gets flipped from off to on, where it stays for the rest of our lives. Being sexually active means just that—you're participating in sexual activities with someone else. Maybe that happens for a while—weeks, months, years—and then maybe you step back from sex and move into abstinence for a time.

All along the way you get to make choices about what you want to do and when you want to stop. Sex isn't all or nothing, and, as you will see from Carrie's story, first times can sometimes surprise you.

W
hen it happened the first time, we were looking directly into each other's eyes. His blue eyes above me, me looking up at him, my childhood bed, the middle of the day, the shade open to a blue sunny sky. It was late spring and we'd been together since fall.

When he pushed his dick into me, it didn't hurt. We had a condom. I wasn't surprised. He was slow. I was ready. We had agreed to do this.

It was a lot like I'd expected it to feel. The same kind of pressure with his hands and fingers, really, only this time his hands were on either of my shoulders.

But something was wrong. It felt merely okay, not as intense as his fingers had felt up there. Nothing within me ached in happiness, like I'd been led to believe. I didn't feel changed. I knew we were both crossing over, from being virgins to being . . . not virgins. Whatever you call it when you're on the other side.

It felt like the way you might say the word “oh” when someone says something you don't care about.

Like,
Oh. Hmm. Well.

Like,
Huh—that's what that space is for.

Like,
Never used those muscles in my thighs in quite that way before. Interesting.

Like,
Maybe it gets better, the longer it goes on?

Finally, he interrupted these thoughts.

“Can you move your hips, maybe?”

He sounded embarrassed for me, so I moved my hips.

Then he moved with me and it was a little . . . different. But not by much. And, unlike everyone always said about it being over quick? It wasn't. It just kept going. Moving. The same bland way.

I suspected this was because I wasn't doing it right. Or I wasn't sexy enough. Or I'd done something else wrong.

Yet, I didn't lie or pretend that it felt good. I couldn't fake a feeling I didn't have, because by this time I knew I loved him: that was real. We'd said the words to each other, many times.

Except, this sex was
also
real. Something we'd put off and waited for and worried about. And after all that, it still wasn't good. I'd told him the truth about so many things but I'd never thought to tell him that, in my mind, having sex with a guy meant his penis would push some magic button inside me. That it would all feel so good and overwhelming that I'd lose control. There'd be no wandering thoughts. No questions.

Instead, I was staring up at him, my face blank and still, wondering when the miracle would occur.

He finally pulled out and chucked the condom. Nobody came. It seemed clear to me that this was a bad, horrible thing. I must be a bad, horrible thing. What guy has sex with you and doesn't come? Again, this wasn't a possibility in the stories I had heard about first sex. I was disappointed afterward, but not in the way I'd imagined.

We broke up a few weeks later. I don't know if the relationship had run its course or the sex was as depressing for him as it was for me. Later I heard that he told people we'd never done it. That it didn't
count
.

The reason things ended was sadly dull: he stopped being in love with me. There wasn't anything wrong with me, he said. He thought I was beautiful and cool. The problem was that I was just one person. And he was young and the world was big and full of lots of other people.

After we broke up it took a while to disentangle ourselves. We had friends in common and we couldn't let go of the physical relationship, either. I missed hanging out with him, laughing with him. Finally, I had to cut it off completely for my sanity.

But when I was especially sad and missing him, the memory of that first sex wasn't what pulled me back. Though I didn't like how he phrased it, I knew what he meant when he said it didn't count.

Instead, the scene that made me feel his loss so keenly wasn't the
sex
at all. It was way back at the beginning of knowing him. Something that I didn't think would have
counted
in the first place.

It is November, one of those days when the dark comes on so quick. We are in my house, nobody there but us. A rare intersection of space and time and privacy. We can act like adults. We don't have to sneak or worry.

So we drink cherry brandy. We talk about whatever. But we know talking is a waste of time, so we go up to my bedroom.

“Let's get naked,” he says, which I think is so funny and wonderful! Because it's so honest. When someone suggests it this way—
Let's get naked!
—you can say
yes
or you can say
no
; there's no gray area, there's no language hiding intention.

This is how everything looks, then: We're both in my bed, tangled up together on top of the quilt. His jeans, T-shirt (white) and flannel shirt (blue) are tossed on the floor. His boxer shorts (white with green stripes) are pushed down a little. I'm in my bra (black satin) and my Levis are on the floor. My underwear are cotton bikinis, bought in a pack of six. My bed is a single and fits both of us, though his feet hang over the edge a bit. We're touching each other in places we've already touched (under the bra and boxers and undies) but because we're alone it feels gigantic and luxurious, like we're just discovering America.

Except, soon it's 9:26
PM
, according to the clock on my nightstand. He's still sixteen and his parents expect him home by ten.

I straighten my bra, put on my shirt, get up to go pee. When I come back he's sitting on my bed, wearing his jeans, putting on his T-shirt. Seeing him dress is unbearably sad but I pull on my own jeans, resigned to our night together being over.

Then, as he's putting his flannel back on, even though he needs to get home, I kiss him again. Reach down to feel if he's hard.

He's always hard. I think that's magical.

I push his flannel off his shoulders. Wrench his T-shirt off. Kneel down between his knees.

We don't say anything.

We pull his jeans down around his ankles. He's in his striped boxers again, his white tube socks pulled up his calves in that dorky boy way.

My hands are on his thighs, touching the blond hairs there that I think are almost pretty, feeling how flat and strong his muscles are. There is nothing on my body like that. I am soft and smooshy despite my efforts to be fit and pretty. But he works very hard to be strong and fit and athletic. Harder than I am willing to, actually, but he thinks nothing of it. I'm almost jealous that his body is so unlike mine. But not quite jealous, because I am touching his body as if it were mine, and being together means I can have it whenever I want now, like it belongs to me.

From where I kneel, I don't worry what I look like. My hair covers my shoulders and chest and the workings of my face. My body folds beneath him, shadowed. I don't look up so I don't know if he is watching or just feeling what I'm doing.

We pull down his boxers and a second later I feel him in my mouth. Under my palms his thighs are trembling, but what I'm doing is solid and clear. Honest. I hear the sound of him sucking in his breath, then a sighing noise from deep in his chest. Every sound he makes tells me how it feels.

I feel everything too, and not just with my brain, which is reeling with excitement and a kind of crazed curiosity. Physically, I am right there with him. Feeling through his body how good it feels. Tasting everything, smelling everything. These aren't tastes or smells I can name but they're familiar. Like I should have known them. Like I'd always known them.

Like things that are private and exclusive.

Like being an adult: an acquired taste.

Sweet, salty, sour, bitter. The way his body tenses. The way he breathes, soft, then hard. It's perfect. It feels like something I'm creating, not just a thing that's happening.

When he comes, which is just a few minutes into it, I swallow it all—the sweet, salty, sour, bitter. All of it.

For a little while, neither of us move. I don't say a word, I don't even look at him. I press my hands on his thighs like I'm going to stand up.

That's when he scoops me up and holds me tighter than anyone ever has before and he says, “God, you're so great. I just love you so much.”

Time stops in that moment. I am dizzy with victory and gratitude. The hallway light is on, the nightstand lamp is off. The bed and quilt, dark beneath us, and his thighs so strong, holding me on him, holding us both up as we press together. The words he's said between us. I don't say
I love you
back. I don't need to because I know that this is him thanking me. Spontaneously. The most genuine and vulnerable I've ever known a boy to be.

I've never made anyone happy like this. I've given him something that surprised him, and it surprised me as well: He liked it, he appreciated it, he made me feel valuable and precious. And competent, just as I am.

I've created a recipe to making his body feel good on the first try and I've witnessed the first time he enjoyed it. I know that I get to be in his memory forever. This also feels rare and lucky. Destined. Singular. Unreplaceable.