It’s funny how sometimes some of the simplest of phrases can burn themselves onto your conscience forever.
People always say that the first time is something that you’ll always remember. Some remember it fondly. Most remember it with reluctance.
I consider myself pertaining to the latter.
More for habit rather than for respect, I will not mention the name of that unfortunate person who was propagator of said experience. He was someone who had lived in my hall in freshman year of college and coincidentally, four years later, we ended up living in the same apartment complex.
I was young, inexperienced, far from the savvy woman I imagined myself to be. He was not my ideal but I did not know that yet. I just decided that I was game. As a conservative student once told me, “If you’re hungry and he has food, why don’t you eat?”
Indeed.
And so I seduced him; it wasn’t hard.
But that phrase was soon to be understood in all senses of the word.
After having gone down on him, he got on top and started to jack off, seeing as that he still wasn’t hard enough to have sex. The lights were out in my room and I remembered looking at the analogue read-out on my clock blurt “2:01″ in a scandalous red. I lay there inert, he still on top, trying to bring something to life that probably wasn’t going to wake in a while. That did not apply to me.
I fell asleep.
When I woke, he was on top, pushing what little he had gotten up, to go in, as I formed the question in my mind: Are you in?
He was.
Pitiful. Especially for a virgin.
I broke up with said soul when he failed to call me on my birthday and when I presented him with the phone card bill (which he had stated that he would pay half of) he protested as to why I called him so much (I was living in another country by that time). That, added to the fact that his letters to me consisted of nothing more than box score cutouts and newspaper clippings and photos of Jerome Bettis from the Pittsburgh Steelers, was more than enough to help me realize that he was not apt for me.
The Second was a musician. Quite a bad choice. The condom had fallen onto the floor that night and it was my first time with a virgin. If I remember correctly, we did it twice: once on the floor and once in his parents’ bed (they were on vacation). That ended when I said that I liked to have something more serious with him. That scared him far enough away to find another girlfriend in a matter of weeks.
The Third was a friend of the Second’s. He turned out to be a dick and that also happens to be in all senses of the word. In comparison, he was much bigger and had certain fetishes I wasn’t sure of. Wearing my satin underwear was right up there in my list of uncertainties. I remember I had closed my eyes while the act was being consummated. Therefore, the surprise to see blood on his stomach took me off guard when it hit me: he broke my hymen.
Thinking about that now, I realize the magnitude of such a comment, especially for a man’s ego. The Second could assume that it was already broken but the First? I have learned much since those days and one is that if you want to hit a man where it hurts, size is the lowest blow you can probably throw.
In a way, I feel that writing this is revindication and on the other hand, a warning. We all remember and we all forget. My first times are now reduced to the relationship at hand, which means I’ve had many “first” times. Men, remember that we women never forget. What may have been a need one night, long ago, may end up being shouted to the four winds, bringing a shame that cannot easily be erased.
You decide.
