December 20, 2013
Boston, Massachusetts
I was 20 years old
Almost had sex last weekend. And how tragically comical is that sentence? There’s this guy Jack* on the cross country team. Friends with Mickey*, the Ken doll who I’ve lusted from afar for a while now. I’ve never paid Jack much mind but he lives in the dorm right next to mine this year. And back in August, during the first weekend back on campus, Mickey and Jack came into my room, drunk, to run their fingers through my hair. Jack introduced himself that night and was flirty about it. Ever since, I’ve made the effort to say hello to him. But that was months ago.
These final few weekends of the semester were fun. I was back in Boston from Jillian and Scott’s wedding early enough on a Saturday night to go out with everyone and it was easily one of the most fun nights of college so far. Party-hopped, got wine-drunk, was offered hits off joints, etcetera. Then around midnight, I got a text from Jack. I had texted him the weekend before, asking what he was up to. We almost met up but he had a drunk friend to take care of. I thought that was his subtle way of letting me down easy but this “What are you doing later?” text suggested otherwise. We met up at his room where we talked for a little bit before the lights got turned off and he told me, “Take your pants off.”
But, of course, radio silence from him all week long after that. The occasional little “hi” whenever we crossed paths on campus. He never texted me but, then again, neither did I. Then it was the final Saturday of the semester and he texted me (first!) (very petty/Gen Y of me, I know). Once again, we went through the usual “What are you doing later?” thing. I was at a party with Meg, Cory, and all his girlfriends at the time. It was SNOWING. The initial plan was to go to Allston but that was not about to happen. Meg and I went to a City View party before making our way back to St. Joe’s, where everyone was assembled in me and Cory’s dorm (it feels good to have the party room). But, per our ongoing text exchange, Jack’s roommate was bringing back a girl that night and I was not about to kick everyone out of my dorm. So: I thought on my feet.
I brought a set of clean sheets to Sarah and Dany’s now-empty dorm room. They’d both already left for winter break and I knew the passcode for their door. So, I tell Jack where I am and I get ready to take fullest advantage of this makeshift sex dungeon. I am literally half-staff, listening to Beyoncé’s “Partition,” pictures of Sarah’s mom tacked onto the wall staring down at me, all alone in a dorm room that wasn’t even MINE. And time keeps ticking. So I text him for an update and he responds, “Drama…”
Next thing I know, I’m waking up to an 8 a.m. alarm with no new texts from him. Jack eventually sends a lame response. I told him it was fine and he responded, “Have fun abroad”—without any punctuation even! What? I don’t know—I guess I shouldn’t have that kind of reaction. It just left me feeling unfulfilled. And a virgin. But I suppose it makes for a funnier story in my book one day. We’ll see what awaits next year with Jack.
*Names have been (kind of) changed to protect the innocent.
November 17, 2021
Brooklyn, New York
I am 27 years old
I was something of a pervert when I was little. And television is to blame, I’m sure. Not only did I have a TV set in my bedroom by age 5, it was connected to cable. I knew that HBO was channel 81 before I could count to 81. And while my parents, supervising this lack of supervision, might be the healthier subject of blame than my 9-inch Panasonic, I’ll resist that urge. Because while I could easily have been scarred by Real Sex or Taxicab Confessions or The Larry Sanders Show any night of the week, I was more often tucking myself into bed with some still too-old-for-me teen programming on The WB. But even TV-14 can get sexy. The rapport between, say, Buffy and Angel libidinally charged enough for a child to—if not understand—at least pick up on. And not knowing any better, it was a proto-horniness I’d take right to school with me. So when I got called down to the principal’s office one day in the second grade for asking girls predictably perverted questions on the school bus, my parents hit me where it hurt: they took away my television. In a manner that even my arguably-Catholic upbringing couldn’t achieve, I understood, and suddenly, that sex equaled bad.
I’ve never been one to write about my sex life because, for the most part, I never had one. A shortcoming (so to speak) that always felt voluntary. Or so I convinced myself. Because I did have opportunities. My freshman year of high school, I was basically boyfriends with this very cute senior and—over the course of one fumbling, clumsy afternoon while American Beauty and then the DVD menu of American Beauty played on the TV in his bedroom—we rounded every base but home. But that was at 15 years old. I wouldn’t round any other bases with any other boys for years. My remaining time in high school—once said senior enrolled in community college before eventually moving to Tampa, Florida—I embarked on the first of several unrequited love affairs with boys who would give me just enough to get my hopes up but never enough to—as Jack famously said—pull my pants down. But again: I felt in total control. Yes, I could have bent down to the low-hanging fruits of Gilford High School’s performing arts department but I didn’t want Captain von Trapp—I wanted the captain of the soccer team! A want that felt totally realistic, the compatibility quite simply undeniable between my desired closeted sporty types and me, a person who petitioned to take gym class online and pulled into his high school parking spot regularly blasting the greatest hits of Paula Cole.
And so, I entered college a virgin. Not that that was unusual, not at least for the student body of the cloistered, high-school-part-deux Emmanuel College. More than half the friends I made freshman year were in the same docked boat I was. But exactly 100% of those friends would prove deflowered by the end of spring semester. Starting to feel embarrassed, I stopped explicitly admitting my virginity to friends, lying by omission in regards to my non-existent sex life—as if these friends ever thought anything to the contrary, joining me to all the same parties before saying goodbye to me exactly 45 minutes later when I started “seeing the sadness in people’s eyes.” I was scared it’d be obvious I didn’t know what I was doing, scared it would hurt, scared it’d be some sort of proof that I wasn’t the self-possessed individual, virile with possibility, that more and more people in my life insisted I was. And so, unable to muster the bravery to get intimate with any one guy, I widened the audience. In my writing, my tweets, my tasteful, in-on-the-joke nudes I’d post to Instagram, I carved out these spaces, a cyber totalitarian, where I could feel wanted, touched. Loved in likes and fucked by retweets. And so, I graduated from college a virgin.
I, thankfully, did not remain that way for long. And I, graciously, will not get into those specifics. After all, I don’t write about my sex life. But back in those virginal days, when I was beat, incomplete, when I was sad and blue, I don’t remember giving much thought to how it might feel on the other side. Devoting too many of my concerns to the mechanics of it all and not enough to the finished machine. I hope I wasn’t naive enough to think things would change in any seismic sort of way, that my sepia life would bloom into technicolor or that I’d walk down the street with some new center of swaggering gravity, all the boys I made no effort to get close with forcing themselves suddenly into my loving arms. All I could ever think about—and this is my last Cicconean allusion, I swear—was making it through the wilderness of my very first time, just about debilitated by the idea of laying in bed, out of total control, getting seen bare naked for whoever I actually was. And so I delayed my scheduled programming, changing the channel before I ever had to sweat over any final act. Tuning into the classics and broadcasting reruns, pausing my favorite character exactly where I wanted him, static and contained, burning into my television screen.