I am eighteen and just lost my virginity to a guy I met two hours ago. We are on the beach lying on a blanket the size of a pillowcase and I am curled up on my side with my back to him. It's two a.m. and the wind is blowing sand and dried crispy pieces of seaweed in my face. I can't believe that I'm here, that it's over. I'm sad and excited, but mostly I feel relieved. Still, this is not how I wanted the first time to be. I wanted to be in love. But I have never had a boyfriend. What if I turned twenty, thirty, forty and still didn't have one? I didn't want to have to keep waiting to be wanted. So when he pulled down my pants, I let him. I kept my arms at my side and never spoke a word.
I'm on the east coast of Florida and it is spring break and as I look out at the silvery dunes, I realize I have just become a clich. When I return home to Youngstown, Ohio, I will put an "I GOT LAID ON SPRING BREAK" bumper sticker on the beater car I share with my mother. I deserve to drive around and have people point and snicker. They ought to know I'm no better than the other stupid kids who come down here and leap off hotel balconies or choke on their own vomit.
This guy is in a fraternity. I worry, was I a bet? Ever since the seventh grade, I've been saying no to sex. Now, after holding out for someone special, someone who talked to me and not to my boobs, a guy who didn't stare at my full mouth and think, she has perfect DSLs, I go ahead and give the green light to a frat boy?
What have I done?
"Are you okay?" he asks. "Are you cold?"
I transpose the words "yes" and "no." I want to race back to the Sea Missile Motel, where my friends are probably wondering if I've been abducted by a transient with a lazy eye.
What if I end up with genital warts — or pregnant?
We did not use a condom. Right when his mouth opened wide and his eyelids began to flutter he pulled his penis out of me. Now a gob of semen is matted in my pubic hair.
I curl up tighter into myself. No, I am not okay. And yes, I am cold. Does he even have to ask?
But he does ask. And he is still here beside me. For this I am grateful.
If I don't end up pregnant or with a sexually transmitted disease, I should consider myself lucky. By all rights, he should have rolled off of me, grabbed his puny blanket, and disappeared down the beach in search of a keg party or wet-t-shirt contest. He is a frat boy, and it is spring break.
Our post-sex huddle feels awkward, as if I am lying too close to one of my brother's friends.
What's supposed to happen next?
I've seen enough movies to know that if it is love you made, you linger. You rest your head on his chest and smile up at him. He brushes a strand of hair away from your face and kisses your forehead. You have afterplay.
I have also seen enough movies to know that if all you did was fuck, your attention wanes soon after the deed is done. He channels his energy into lighting a cigarette and turning on the TV or zipping up his pants and walking out the door.
You act just as indifferent, or you feel the sting that screwing leaves when what you really wanted to do was make love. You pull the bed sheet up around your shoulders and look forlorn, trying not to stare at him.
To feel better about giving myself to a stranger, I think of worst-case scenarios. This guy could have strangled me with the lanyard on his Vuarnet sunglasses. Or he could have used his good looks to lure me here and then beat me to death with a charred log from a beach bonfire. I am twenty-five pounds overweight and out of shape. I cannot even run a quarter-mile on the high-school track, let alone sprint on sand. Had he flipped out, I wouldn't have been able to escape. The surf is loud. It would have deafened my screams. My parents would never have recovered.
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