My First Time

Female • 17 years old • Georgia

I lost my virginity to my boss's live-in boyfriend. It wasn't exactly a proud moment, and it's not a fond memory. In high school, I was a wallflower with no boyfriend and a kink for Jonathan Davis. Much to my chagrin, my best friend was happily involved in a long-term relationship and was enjoying a full, healthy sex life. My senior year, I decided to do joint enrollment at the local community college, which meant a lot more freedom. When I decided to blossom, it was not a slow, delicate process. I raced to rack up as much experience as possible. I had a job at the mall, classes that no one noticed I wasn't attending, and a new slew of much older friends.

Illustration by Thomas Pitilli

I had met Ro at a run-down, shady apartment complex that everyone called "The Idiot Box." The Idiot Box was an older complex, all one-level, brick, probably built in the 1970s. It was there I learned how to shotgun a beer, smoke a bowl, and walk with the cocky strut of all girls trying to pass for worldly. Being there meant being in a constant state of inebriation. More often than not, I'd wake up to someone strumming Sublime on a battered guitar in the morning.

I don't remember how it started, and I wish I could say that I felt guilty for stealing my boss's boyfriend, but, unfortunately, at the time I was a ball of raging hormones and emotions, eager and careless. Soon after I met Ro, we started sneaking off whenever we felt we could get away with it before Ro's girlfriend got home, or woke up. He was Mexican, tall, muscular, almost a decade older than me, and very much the dangerous type of man I was attracted to. He also wore black bandanas and worshipped Kurt Cobain, which is like Spanish fly to a certain kind of seventeen-year-old girl. The night we did have sex, he was high on meth, "I Like the Way You Move" was playing on the stereo, I was drunk, terrified, and he had no idea I was a virgin. It was horrible. The passion was completely lost and it was stunted and awkward in a way that I would never again (thankfully) experience.

It's odd, I can still remember the taste of his mouth and the smell of his shirt, and feel almost nostalgic about it. But I remember that one night with his huge void eyes and I shudder. Needless to say, things fizzled. Last I heard, he had knocked a girl up and was doing time for running drugs. As for myself, I've grown up, no longer steal other ladies' trash, and thoroughly dislike all things involving pot. I still drink, but haven't shotgunned a beer in years.

Female • 21 years old • British Columbia

"I grew up in a socially conservative family; sex was never a topic of discussion..."

Male • 20 years old • Honolulu, HI

"I had an epically cool facade and no knowledge of how to make it work for me..."

Female • 18 years old • Washington, DC

"Between my shyness, low self-esteem, and identity as 'the smart one,' I'd never even been kissed..."