How I Got My Cherry Popped!

I was young, 14, I believe. Yes, that was young, but, what can I say? It was a long time ago, things were different then, I was much younger and more innocent.

I can’t say I expected it to happen. I spent a great deal of time alone in my room, doing it for myself. What can I say? I was a loner, very shy. It was difficult for me to open up to others, to be at ease, so I kept to myself, doing things by myself, so to speak. I read many books, many genres, and some of those had very…racy parts. It was all fodder for my imagination.

Then, I met HER. In a library, of course. I found her browsing English translations of Russian science fiction from the 60s and early 70s. I had already been there, had already done that. What can I say? I was a nerd. Still am, but now it’s fashionable. Then, it was torture.

She was very pretty, a little older than I, poised and confident. I fell in love instantly. The Thunderbolt, as they call it in Italy. Amazingly, she actually paid attention to me, which truly blew my mind! Until then, the only people who ever actually listened at all to anything I said were the few other nerds I hung out with, to the limited extent I hung out at all. In no time, we were talking, well, whispering, about books we had read in common, movies we had seen. It was magical!

In a matter of days, we were getting together outside of the library, actually being…social. She quickly became my everything. Every time I was away from her, all I really had to do was close my eyes, and she was there. Many times, alone in my room, I envisioned her there, and… well, my imagination was very fertile. Very.

Finally, one hot day in July, hot as only the Mississippi Delta can get, she came to my house. My father was gone for the day, fishing, I think, and he would have been furious (well, first, he would have been shocked that I had anyone over at all), and he never would have let us be alone in my room with the door closed. But, it happened. I was showing her things I had accumulated, collectibles, that kind of thing, when she saw an ‘art’ book of collected paintings by Boris Vallejo, paintings that, most of them, featured women who had very little modesty and even less in the way of clothing.

When I realized what she was looking at, I was embarrassed. Well, that and… it was warm in there. Very warm.

I had no experience, no knowledge of what might happen next. I mean, I thought I knew, but, well, a boy’s imagination can be misleading, when compared to the real world! And, I did mention how pretty she was, I think. Again, I had no preconceptions of what to expect from her, just fevered imagination and hope.

When she sat on my bed, I thought I would lose my mind! This was my personal space, the only place in all the world where I could be myself, alone with my thoughts, my dreams, and now I had a girl there, in some ways, a stranger, and I laid bare my innermost secrets and thoughts for her! It was all there for her to see, nothing artificial anymore, nothing held back!

She patted the bed beside her, and I almost fell down in my haste to sit there. That was me…smooth. Yeah, right! She looked into my eyes, smiled, and said, “Is this your journal?” She held up the notebook I kept beside my bed, where I wrote my stories, essays, whatever crossed my mind. It had come from a stack of similar books, stretching back to my earliest days alone in my room, writings about the sort of things that cross a boy’s mind.

I didn’t know what to say. No one, no one at all, had ever looked at any of my writing! It was just for me! I had a chance to say something, to stop her, but I choked. I could only watch as she opened the book and began to read. Her face betrayed no emotion at all while she read, and I could do nothing but sit there, unconsciously holding my breath while I awaited her first inevitable comments. I said nothing, did nothing, except to stare at the side of her pretty face, to breathe in the traces of her perfume, Sand and Sable, which is still a personal favorite of mine, even 40 years later, and wait. I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks, my forehead.

Finally, she closed the journal, looked me in my eyes. “This is really good! You should try to publish!” This is not what I expected to hear, not when someone read my work for the very first time. Everyone thinks the first time is going to be special, and it was! If she hadn’t taken the initiative, I might never have shown anyone my true self, never allowed anyone in. I will be forever grateful that she took my cherry. Without that, I would not, ever, have shown my writing to anyone at all.

Oh, and we had sex later that day, too. That was my first time for that, too.

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