My First Time

Female • 16 • New Jersey

I'd always been a sexually charged child, and had been masturbating as far back as I could remember, long before I had any clue what I was doing. Perhaps stemming from a lack of self-confidence, I'd always been one of the more promiscuous girls in my class. I confused boys' hormonal lust with actual interest in me. Any attention was better than no attention, and I sought as much of it as possible.

I was the first girl in sixth grade to French kiss a boy. This involved notes passed in the hallway and an agreement to meet at the flagpole after school, followed by approximately seven awkward seconds of sloppy, fruity-gum-filled tonguing. In seventh grade, I was also among the first girls in my class to have a boy feel under my shirt and down my pants; in eighth grade, I was one of the first to perform oral sex. These were all with my "boyfriends," though for the most part they seemed to come and go in a matter of weeks or even days.

High school changed everything, or everyone. Suddenly, the girls who called me a slut in middle school were losing their virginities left and right. I made a pact with my best friend that we would lose ours before the age of sixteen. She kept her end of the pact, in a friend's bedroom at a party, with an older guy who'd supplied us with pot. I was a month younger than her, but I wasn't able to uphold my end of the pact. Fate would have it that for the first time since sixth grade, I didn't have a boyfriend.

When I turned sixteen, I joined a ska band. I was the only girl, and the youngest by five years. The lead singer was the hottest guy I'd ever seen, and I soon crushed hard for him. My parents wouldn't let me hang out with him outside of practice, because in their infinite wisdom they knew it was a bad idea for their sixteen-year-old daughter to hang out with a twenty-one-year-old man. But we flirted during practice, and he would call occasionally.

One night, I'd had it. I was the only one of my tight circle of friends to remain a virgin. I had absolutely no glorified fantasies about what my first time would be like. I was very practical about it. I thought it might be physically uncomfortable, and I knew it would be super-awkward in every sense of the word. I didn't expect candles or poetry or long embraces. So I knew he was perfect. He didn't love me at all, nor I him, crush aside. I figured, "Let me get this shitty experience over with once and for all."

On this particular night I called him and we flirted a little bit. I then blurted out, "So are you going to sneak me out or not?" He wasn't as eager as you might imagine, possibly thanks to the thought of my six-foot-four-inch father catching him stealing me away. I actually had to coerce him. I seduced him. But he finally agreed.

I crept out of my house and down the long driveway. Once at the bottom, I packed a bowl and smoked it, partially out of nervousness and maybe partially for him to think I was more grown up. ('Cause, you know, weed makes you grown up.) He picked me up, and I found it very difficult to muster any conversation because I was so completely stoned. My mouth was dry and all I could do was concentrate on "acting normal."

We had to sneak into his house because he still lived with his parents. In my state, I had trouble being quiet, and I remember him hushing me a couple times. Once we were inside his room, he didn't turn on the lights. I sat on the bed, there was some disrobing on both our parts, he put on a condom, and the next thing I knew, he was inside me. It neither hurt nor felt amazing. I just remember thinking, "So this is what it feels like."

Two minutes later, it was over, and he was getting dressed. Again, I had expected no romance, but the speed with which he got dressed — keys in hand, ready to take me home — annoyed me a little bit. It was really no different than my awkward first French kiss by the flagpole — although at least that boy still spoke to me afterwards.