My First Time

Male • 17 years old • Pennsylvania

I worked with this girl — let's call her Anne — at a grocery store in the small town where I grew up. One day, while we were standing at our cash registers, she (rather aggressively) gave me her phone number and told me we should go out. And so, for that whole summer after my junior year of high school, I would pick Anne up in my Ford Focus and we'd drive places where no one could see us and roll around in the grass or in the backseat. It was revelatory. Making out, petting, and good ol' fashioned marathon dry-humping sessions. This went on for months, and although Anne was not a virgin (and I was), there was still no sex. I wanted it bad. And she knew it.
 

Illustration by Thomas Pitilli

Then Anne went away to North Carolina for a couple weeks. When she came back, she told me some crazy party stories — including one about her getting drunk and sleeping with another guy. This did not upset me. Anne and I weren't dating, and I didn't want to date her. During the school year, she went to a prep school an hour away, while I went to the public one in town. We were just having some summer fun. If anything, her story made me want her more. And then she said, "You're probably wondering why I slept with him and I haven't slept with you, huh?" I said yes.

"Well," she said, "I think that's a good point. Let's do it tonight." We drove to one of our usual spots next to a park and hopped in the backseat and just as I was inside her and had become a man, a car drove by us, its headlights flashing. We got scared and decided to drive somewhere else. 

So, technically no longer a virgin, I drove us to my dentist's office outside town, where there was a small, vacant parking lot. There, we finished what we had started. I was very excited, and at one point she told me to slow down and relax. Afterwards, I stepped out of the Focus and tossed the used condom onto the grass next to Dr. Flinner's office. Anne and I saw each other a couple more times that summer and then never again.

Male • 17 years old years old • Bronx

"We were poorly socialized geeks from two different outer boroughs..."

Female • 18 years old • New England

"My first ideas about sex stemmed mostly from poetry and movies..."

Female • 17 years old years old • England

"From my vantage point, I watched the weekend barista at work..."