I announced I had to take a piss. In the bathroom, I stood dumbly over the toilet at half-mast while a terrifying future flashed before my eyes. She was my romantic ideal — literary, dark-haired, olive-skinned, curvy, a drinker, a pot smoker, a pun maker, beautiful, and culturally Jewish — and I was going to lose her. You know, I know, everyone knows guys are awful their first time. She'd take custody of all of our fun friends with drug connections and tell everyone I couldn't even put on a condom. Not only would my real world be demolished, but my fantasy world would be, too. Even if I transferred to a new school, I couldn't ever create a better fictional girlfriend than her. My imagination would be permanently scarred. I'd be left cold and alone and have to become one of those kids who draws their own anime cartoons and masturbates onto his finished product. That's what my fantasy world would come to, and to make matters worse, I'm a terrible artist.

I walked back into her room. We started kissing. She touched my penis; it was scared but excited. I stared at her nipples and fingered her lazily and tried to remember which fucking way you unroll a condom. I had no idea. She grabbed a Trojan from her desk drawer.

"It's sexier when you put it on me," I purred. She unrolled the wrong way. I insisted that she keep trying.  

"Practice makes perfect!" I sounded disturbingly like my nana.

Eventually, my penis looked like it was wearing one of those cheap Disney World ponchos and twitched nervously, like it was expecting to get struck by lightning.

My stoned roommate had lectured me for hours on the merits of lube, so I had begun carrying Astroglide in my bag. I hoped having sexual aids would give me an air of authority on the matter, like a doctor casually whipping out a tongue depressor on a house call. Hadley looked confused, but I insisted "trust me, you'll love it," before emptying half the bottle over my dick and drenching her sheets. The reality was a lot moister than any of my fantasies. I moved over her. My arms were shaking ferociously, which made it nearly impossible to hold myself up. I tried to think of what fantasy-world Joe would do, and in the process, I got her thigh sticky for about ten seconds. Then, I actually found myself inside her. I did the only thing I could remember from the Kama Sutra and put her legs over my shoulders. I tried to keep a steady motion, like I was at the gym, which was strange because you usually don't kiss and caress your exercise machine. She began to moan and arch her back, and I prayed to Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Bret Easton Ellis that she was going to orgasm and wasn't just having a very strange seizure. And then she came! (I think.) And I came! (I know.) Good God, this is what people made such a fuss about — there was more to sex than just telling stories that impressed people and boosted your ego. I clumsily tied off the condom, flipped it in the trash, and we cuddled.

I'd love to say that immediately after this I realized the error of my ways — that no one was really impressed by my half-baked tales; that continuing to lie to Hadley about my past would be inevitably destructive; that to my real friends, the true romantic failures of my high-school days would ultimately be more appealing than unabashed conquest. Not true at all. For the next two years, I relished having both my wonderful romantic present and my fictional past. Eventually, I admitted the truth to Hadley, because my stories lacked the necessary specifics and consistency to endure two years of intimate conversation. But still, my fantasy world continues to exist in the minds of many, those brave boys and girls that endured my awful, cocky stories at high school keggers and college cross-dressing parties. But as I publish this essay and post the link on Facebook, my fantasy world dies and can never be resurrected.

And it's better that way. With my self-esteem secure and Hadley loving the real me, I'm ready to regale my friends with genuine tales: the early years where I get caught masturbating with my mom's Herbal Essence Conditioner, then the failed kisses and crushes, and the drunken, mistake-ridden nights where I never ended up with the girl at the end. But finally, the college girl came along, and somehow I didn't sabotage myself. Now, finally, everything feels good enough to tell the truth.  n°

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
		Joe Lazauskas is the former corrupter and editor of his college newspaper who's recently taken to the vagabond life studying abroad. He enjoys writing essays exploring the heart of vintage baseball reenactments, prose poetry, and seeing what happens when you drink way too much gin at a nudist resort. He finds no greater pleasure than drinking outdoors and calling the cops on himself.