There’s a First Time for Everything

I sometimes wish it hadn’t gone according to plan.

He peers into the gloom, slowing almost to a crawl as he tries to find his turn. I’ve been down this stretch of highway a million and a half times, but I have no idea where we are.

“Here it is!” he says. He flips on his blinker even though there is no one behind us and turns down a little road, barely more than a path. It leads through the woods to a small clearing near the lake, a fishing spot. He turns down an even more obscure path from there, drives just a little deeper into the woods, then parks at last and cuts the engine.

We are in the middle of nowhere.

“Come on, you have to see the stars from here,” the Roman tells me. I get out and look up; they are indeed beautiful, twinkling down through the trees at us.

There is a gap in my memory here, because suddenly I am sitting on the hood of his little white Prius and he is kissing me, and I am kissing him back. I cannot now remember how I got there.

My body responds to him. I feel a certain sort of wanting, the same kind that I still remember from dating the Cowboy. It is a kind of flare, a primal reaction to touch. It is sharp, but nowhere near as sharp and raw and bitter and sacred as the wanting I have always had for Snake. To my eighteen-year-old virgin self, it is a safe and mostly tolerable wanting. This will be the only time I really feel it for the Roman.

I press my small form into the weight and warmth of him, let his hands hold me under my thighs, close my eyes and just feel a little bit.

This slice of experience almost seems unreal to me now, but I know that it happened. I can’t remember how it began or ended.

I find myself back in the car as the Roman reaches into the center console and solemnly pulls out a Mason jar. He wrests out the Walmart bag inside, peels out something smothered in about a pound of plastic wrap, and finally unrolls a little glass pipe and a tiny bud, just enough to pack the pipe once.

“I don’t want to risk anyone smelling it,” he says. He is dead serious.

Less than a year later I will be riding around with a fat quarter in a Ziploc bag sitting in my cupholder, homemade bamboo bong tossed carelessly in the back seat.

But now, this is the first time I’ve ever even seen the stuff. The Roman shows me how to hit it, and like many newbies, I hit it twice because I think I didn’t get anything the first time and end up pretty high. He hits it too, once, then packs it all away again with a furtive glance into the woods, as if a narc is going to emerge from the wilderness to detain him for his half a gram.

Years later, I will recall laughing hysterically as he took a turn too fast, only to learn that he was driving ten miles under the speed limit, but nothing else about that ride will stick in my memory.

We have the same shift the next night. I try to act as if nothing had happened, but the Roman isn’t having it. I can see him in the back, wrapping burgers and dropping fries in the grease with his customary buoyancy. “I had a good night last night,” the Roman says to our manager.

“Oh yeah? What’d you do?” The manager is largely disinterested.

“I had a hot date with a really good-looking girl,” the Roman answers, and he looks right at me and grins. God, I could melt right into the floor.

Some months back, I had quit the youth group band. I wasn’t yet eighteen at the time, and the youth pastor told me that I could stay until my birthday; but I felt I shouldn’t be “leading worship” anymore. Although I hadn’t consciously made THE decision yet, I think I subconsciously knew that the decision was coming.

I would later tell my husband, Atlas, that I chose the Roman over Snake because the Roman was just around more at that time. I may have even believed it when I said it, but I don’t think that was entirely true. I chose him for the same reason that I chose Atlas — I didn’t have to feel, he couldn’t reach inside me and pull out that sin and make me desperate for more of it. He couldn’t see me the way that Snake could. I could always hide from the Roman and Atlas.

I could never hide from Snake.

I don’t now remember making the big decision at all, in fact, but I know it was a decision that I made for myself and then followed through. I was proud of myself for that, making a decision for myself completely independent of anyone else’s input and sticking with it. And the church was pushing me out already, anyway — no matter how hard I tried to be godly, virtuous, and all those other saintly adjectives, I still wore a scarlet letter for my refusal to conform. For being myself.

There is nothing spur-of-the-moment about it. The Roman and I spend weeks discussing it like you might discuss a career change or a move. Logically, analyzing the facts, deciding what’s going to be best for everyone involved.

Of the actual act, only a sliver remains. I am in my room, only the black light on, the bed pushed into its final resting place in the corner farthest from the door where I would leave it when I moved. I stay under the covers; I won’t let him look at me. No slow and sensual undressing, no revealing. Only me, hiding under the covers. I take off my underwear laying down, under the sheets, I won’t let him look. I won’t let him put his hands there. This is the ritual that will play out for the entire last few months of our courtship.

He asks me, one last time if I am sure I want to do this; I nod, grimly determined. He moves on top of me; despite my coldness, he needs no persuasion. No poetic opening, no desire. It’s a certain force, a force that I asked for and willingly consent to but a force nonetheless. And yes, it tears, it bleeds. Not a lot, but some. I put my arm around his neck and bite down the tears that want to spill over, it fucking hurts.

Just a part of growing up.

He makes a noise and I make a noise, and they are two very different noises. And then it is done, I am no longer a virgin and I push him off me.

It will be years before I learn that it doesn’t have to hurt. I always heard that it always hurts, no matter who you are, no matter who you’re with. But it doesn’t have to.

Only then will the full impact of the memory I didn’t get hit me. Only then will I shed tears for the girl who wanted to have sex because she was sick of the big deal that it seemed everyone made it into. See, it’s not a big deal, that girl says, I’ve done it and I haven’t sold my soul to the devil. Fuck you all.

Only after I learn that losing your virginity doesn’t have to hurt will I realize that I believed I deserved to be hurt for it. I had always known Snake wouldn’t hurt me.

That scared me too.