She continued making small talk with her co-worker. Neither seemed to even notice me, and I liked that. I was doing my best to avoid eye contact and remain as nondescript as possible. I just wanted to get done with my purchase and be on my way. Remarkably, at first it seemed as simple as any other transaction I’d partaken in before that extremely terrifying one. I pushed my money across the counter, and she pushed back my change, along with a crinkly white paper bag that held a box containing my first three prophylactics. Simple as that. In and out.

Burt I was wrong. The woman behind the counter did in fact take notice of me. 

As I walked out of the pharmacy, when she assumed I was out of earshot (she clearly hadn’t taken into account my adrenaline-fueled hyper-senses), she made a simple statement that tore me to pieces. 

“He ain’t ready.”

She declared it to her friend, off-handedly. “He ain’t ready.”

I heard it, and I bolted.

Outside, I sat in my car and cried because I knew she was right.

In the remaining days before the big night, I did my best to get damn well get ready. In my little blue box, I had three condoms. I would need one for the act. I’d need a second one in case the first one broke.

This left me with one condom to practice with.

Late that night, when my parents had gone to sleep, I sat on the couch in our basement trembling with fear. I removed one of the condoms from the box. I opened it, looked at it, and unrolled it. It wasn’t as difficult to put on as I thought it would be.

Now, to practice something like this isn’t what weird. In fact, it’s sort of responsible. But it’s hard to decided if what I did next was more gross or bizarre.

I took the condom off and held it in my palm. In my panic-fueled obsession, I’d decided that I needed to practice putting it on as many times as possible. So instead of tossing it I rolled it back onto my dick and pulled it back off three or four times. 

Then I decided I should practice more tomorrow.

I went into our basement bathroom, which no one really used, and wrapped it in toilet paper. I opened the cabinet under the sink and placed it in the far back corner.

For the next three nights, I retrieved the that condom and placed it back on my dick close to three dozen times. 

I have since realized how bizarre these practice runs were, but when you’re as stressed as I was, you’ll do funny things. Or unsanitary, gross things, as was the case with that rehearsal rubber. Gross or not, though, it did the trick. By the time Saturday night came, I was mentally prepared to get a condom on when it counted.

Veronica came over to my house late that night. She looked beautiful. We went swimming in the above-ground pool next to the garage in my backyard.

 “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked her as we floated quietly on the surface of the water.

“Of course I do,” she answered. She took my hand in hers. “It’s you.”

When she said that, for the first time in a week I stopped feeling nervous. She was right. I pulled her toward me and we made out.

There, in what was basically a big backyard bucket, where any of my neighbors could have looked out of their windows and seen, I received a delicate half of a handjob and I dispensed my very fumbly, awkward fingers to her genital regions as well. Veronica was aggressive, and I was going with it. I could tell that she’d spent the week mulling over this decision as well. And we’d both come to the same conclusion: tonight was the night our mutual virginity would be lost. We were nervous, we were turned on, and we were going for it. 

We got out of the pool. I dried her off and then toweled myself down. We climbed up the wooden steps of my back porch, and I held open the aluminum door for her. Inside, we quickly went downstairs to the basement. 

There, on a grey checker-patterned couch, set against the fake-pine paneling of the wall and enveloped in the glow of my basement’s aquarium, we lost our virginity to each other in perhaps the most suburban way possible.

Practice paid off. The condom went on without incident.

When we were done, we lay next to one another for a while. I thought about speaking, but there was nothing to say. We remained still, our two naked bodies crammed awkwardly next to each other on the thin couch. I listened to Veronica breathing. I tried to take a moment to think about what had just happened, but I couldn’t. In a good way. For possibly the first time in my life, my mind was totally clear. 

Eventually, I got up and went to bathroom in the corner of the basement. When I headed back to the couch I knelt down next to Veronica.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Are you?”

She nodded at me and smiled. Then, with my trademark wisdom and great timing, I blurted out, “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh,” she said, her smile fading.

“Did you know that?” I asked. “You’re bleeding. I can tell, because when I took off the condom, there was blood, and — ”

“Chris,” she interrupted me, sternly. “Stop talking. I’ll take care of it.” She shook her head and then laughed. It was the first time I realized that in order to date me, you have to find social awkwardness funny. To this day, I have never had a relationship work if that rule wasn’t quickly realized and understood. 

When she got up and went to the bathroom to check on herself, I sat down on the couch. I was still holding the used condom in my hand. I picked up the wrapper it came in. I balled up the condom and its foil sheath, and walked over the garbage can. I shoved all of the evidence of my entrance into manhood into the hole of a discarded can of Diet Dr. Pepper. 

There, I knew, my mother would never find it. 

From the book A BAD IDEA I’M ABOUT TO DO: True Tales of Seriously Poor Judgment and Stunningly Awkward Adventures by Chris Gethard. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group.  Copyright © 2012.

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