We’re looking for stories about the first time you had sex. Email with 500-1000 words. (Don’t worry, we won’t print your name — but please do make sure to include your gender, where you were, and how old you were.) Submissions may be edited.
There was no one before him, not even close. I still can’t figure out why – I’d dated and kissed a few people but somehow things always seemed to fizzle out before that point. I guess I was skittish and couldn’t make my mind up about people and he wasn’t like other boys I knew.
We’d known each other for maybe a month. We weren’t friends exactly but were in the same circle. There had been a flirtation but he was that way with every body. He lived far out of town, so it wasn’t uncommon for him to crash at my house after a night out because that’s what everybody did but then one night, it was just us and somehow we ended up half naked on my bed. It was Halloween. I told him I didn’t want anything serious and he agreed. We didn’t fuck that night, just fooled around. He put his hands under my night dress and asked if I was cold when I shivered.
“Do you need a jumper?”
I shook my head.
“I was hoping to take your clothes off instead of putting more on,” he said and I laughed and laughed.
He was the first person to ever see me naked and I liked the way his eyes went round and how he leaned over me, said he was admiring me. When his fingers came out of me, sticky with blood, I said it had been a long time since I’d been with anybody instead of never. He didn’t question it. Afterwards, I asked him to sleep in the next room – where he always did. We texted the rest of the week and he talked about all the things he wanted me to do with him.
It happened a week later, after a night out with all our friends. This time, they all trooped back to the house. I snuck him up after they all went to sleep. We sat on the side of my bed, a little awkward and giggly and it felt good when he kissed me. Already kind of familiar though we hadn’t quite gotten good at it. He rolled me back to the bed and traced a hand over my leg.
“We don’t have to do anything yet,” he says, “We can just do more of this.”
“No,” I told him. “I want to.”
It was strange after that, the drink wearing off quickly and I felt safe with him but it didn’t stop me from being embarrassed when he couldn’t get inside me, trying to relax me with his mouth, his hands. We shoved around, switching positions to finish the deed but it took time. I sucked him hard again. He put me on my hands and knees but it didn’t work like that, didn’t work properly until he was on top of me – rocking into me with his hands braced against my bed frame.
“How do you want me to do this?” he asked, panting over me.
I told him to go fast even though it hurt because I wanted for it to be over. He looked at me all the way through. I hadn’t expected that. I like it when he came inside me, the feel of his body unravelling over mine. The bit where he fell panting to his side and we lay like that unable to make words – that felt more like what I’d expected than anything else about that night.
I liked a lot of things about him. How the stubble on his chin felt when I sat on his face. How he always smelled right, tasted right, some reaction of the proper pheromones. He did all the right things in bed without my having to say or ask. Pulled my hair, kissed my neck – not telling him how inexperienced I was meant that we didn’t need to evolve gently or slowly, getting out the cuffs by night number three, tying each other up and down. We didn’t fuck again for a few months though we hooked up all the time. I learned his body the way I still don’t know anybody else’s though I’ve been with people since and we both dated other people the whole way through our fling.
I remember the first time I enjoyed it. Him rolling over me in the dark bedroom, no condom because we’d not expected it, how I’d said yes, yes please because I wanted him inside me. This time it was not just to say I’d done it but just because it felt like what our bodies should do.
He had all of my good and bad firsts – the first time I got the morning after, the first time I slept in someone’s arms or recognized their smell on my clothes, and the first time I was so angry with another person I thought I’d put my fist through a wall. I must have loved him on some level but I didn’t know that till later, not until the third time we said we’d broken things off and it finally stuck.
We didn’t stay friends. We never could have. I don’t miss him but I miss the way things were when they were good between us.
