My First Time

Female • 17 years old • Pennsylvania

I celebrated the end of my junior year of high school with my ultra-cool, apartment-renting, punk-rock-music-educating, twenty-one-year-old boyfriend dumping me. Later, I found out the reason — I didn't put out.

So when I ended up at a local punk-rock show he was also attending a scant few months later, I decided jealousy was the best weapon. Using my sweet-ass vintage Wonder Woman t-shirt and the kind of perky boobs only a girl of seventeen can possess, I zeroed my sights in on Dan, a bassist who spastically jumped and thrashed through his band's set of three-chord, throat-punishing songs. He was also shirtless, except for three pages torn from Hustler, adhered to him by his surprisingly sticky sweat.

Illustration by Thomas Pitilli

But what made him perfect, despite the fact he only topped a hundred pounds when holding his bass, was the fact that he was friends with my ex. I'll show you who's frigid.

I don't think Dan and I ever went on any outing you could actually classify as a date, but if we had, I approximate I gave it up on date three. We were in the cinderblock basement of his mom's house, in a room made tough with liberal use of duct tape, band stickers and the central placement of his bass. Of course, his mother and still-elementary-school-aged sister could easily be heard moving through the rooms above us.

After making out moved us from recliner to mattress, we conveyed to each other through a series of head movements and meaningful glances that tonight was the night — no more V-card. While he fumbled around looking for a condom, I pulled my jeans and panties down, but left on my tank top, half because I was still so shy about my body and half because the chilly basement temperature.

Then he was on top of me... and then I think he was inside of me? My virginity, the last of its kind in my circle of friends, had been lost in under thirty seconds. Still above me, Dan leaned back and whispered, "It gets better than this."

I stumbled to the bathroom to clean myself. I came back to find Dan lounging in the recliner, staring blankly at the TV. We spent the rest of the night watching a marathon of the dating show Change of Heart. It would take weeks — weeks curiously void of any other attempt at intercourse — for the irony of that entertainment choice to sink in. I've never tried to make a man who dumped me jealous by trying to fuck his friend again.

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..."