Illustration by Thomas Pitilli

Female • 17 years old • Dakotas

The summer before my senior year of high school, I started dating a guy from a rival high school's debate team. I refused to have sex with him, because I thought it might somehow hurt my academic performance or make it too weird to debate him at competitions. (Yeah, I was a nerd like that.) It was easier because he lived quite far away. After five months of increasing sexual tension, he drove over to my side of the state one balmy weekend in early October — which just happened to be the weekend I had to take the SAT IIs. In a break between math and history tests, I thought to myself, "Goddamn it, my GPA is perfect, my SATs are great, I don't drink, I'm friends with my parents, I go to debate camp all summer, for Chrissakes. I'm going to lose my virginity tonight."

So I stole a Trojan out of my dad's dresser — too lame to buy my own, but smart enough to steal one! — and told my parents I was staying over at a girlfriend's house. A big group of friends were there after midnight watching some horrible movies. But instead of staying with them, I left with the guy, in his shitty pickup truck, to get a room at a Days Inn on the other side of town.

By the time we got into the room it was after two a.m. — not my normal hours back in those days — and I was both electrified and absolutely exhausted. He was a virgin too. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing. It took maybe fifteen minutes to figure out how to get his dick inside of me, and I nearly gave up because I wanted to go to sleep so much.

But once it was in, I remember thinking, alternately, "Wow, this is sex?" and "That's all there is?" and then eventually focusing on keeping my eyes closed and not looking like I was enjoying it "too much." (So absurd in retrospect.)

But the most amazing part is, against all odds, I actually got off! I don't know how — I think it was out of sheer horny pervy excitement and the fact that he kind of accidentally bumped me in the right place once or twice. It took me another year and another partner to get off again, but that's a story for a different day.

The next morning we woke up to discover I'd been caught — my parents had figured out I wasn't at my friend's house. Oops.