10. "I think about him even thirty years later..."

Female • 17 years old • Tacoma, WA

It was 1979. I think about him even thirty years later. I was a senior in high school. Jeff had graduated the year before. I had unknowingly stolen him from my best friend. He was taking a class on our extended campus. I met them at morning break, outside my class. It was an unusually warm sunny spring day for Washington. Our eyes met and the three of us sat down — him in the middle — of a loading dock. As the conversation continued he laid back in the sun. I instinctively put my hand on his stomach. He sighed.

He came to my house a few nights later with my sister's new boyfriend — I had no idea of the friendship between the two guys and my sister. We started dating after that night, talking and smoking weed at the beach. Our foreplay lasted that whole summer. Four months worth of stolen nights in cars, on the beach, in grassy fields. He was the first man who ever told me I was beautiful. The day of my sister's October wedding to her beau was to be our night of consummation.

Illustration by Thomas Pitilli

My sister had left me the keys to her house. After the wedding that day, we had changed into our regular clothes. We went into their bedroom, took off our shoes but kept our flannel shirts and jeans on. We crawled under the covers and began to peel off the layers of clothing going into our usual kissing, touching, and then slowly, slowly we were naked. Jeff was not a virgin, but he knew I was because we had tried the night before without success at his house. I was tight, and he was gentle. But tonight there was no stopping what we both knew would happen.

He got on top and went into me in small, slow, easy movements. Once my body yielded it was like a whole part of me was complete. Being touched in a formerly untouched region was ecstasy. I can still remember the feeling thirty years later of the whole of my body connected with his. His gentle stroke, our eyes together, kissing fully. It was fantastic. After, we stole strawberry ice cream from their freezer and ate it out of the half-gallon carton, sharing one spoon while he fed me. Laughing because we had moved the bed off its frame.

We stayed together for three years. We made love everywhere. In cars, a boat, movie theatres, a forest. We broke up when I moved to San Francisco. He came to try to get me to move home. We made love every night for the three weeks he was there. I decided to stay, opting for the city life I always had craved. I can still see him on the San Francisco Airport's rooftop parking lot, walking across the empty parking spaces after our last talk.

We would go on to be married for fourteen years, and eventually moved on to have sex like pretty much everyone else. But the innocence of those early days and weeks is still something to be remembered.