*This is another re-post from The First Time Project, sent anonymously to in 2024, for me to I share here with you. I started this project, and this blog, to elicit women’s narratives of their first time having sex because if I read one more example of how much fun it is for ‘guys to lose their cherry’ I will run amok. If we don’t tell our stories, there is an aspect of our lives, our experiences, that simply do not exist, we don’t exist in the worlds of reality, myth, imagination, reconciliation, recovery, redemption – you name it. I want women and girls to exist, and for our stories to be written, read, remembered, and elevated, understood, prized, believed, given preference. And more. Thank you for being here, for reading this, and for considering writing for this project.
My best friend and I were the only virgins on the fourth floor of St. Mary’s, our dorm my freshman year of college. We were both good Catholic girls, but I think the bigger obstacle to our getting laid was that we were both incapable of pretending to be anything other than exactly who we were.
In my case, it had also been a lack of opportunity since I went to an all-girls Catholic boarding school (Nuns! Uniforms!) for High School. Since I was thousands of miles from home, and knew no one, I was always set up with a pal’s brother for the big formal dances. He was awfully nice, and, it transpired, gay. I was the world’s biggest weirdo. My mother was a designer clotheshorse, and did not recognize the existence of jeans, so to not be overdressed at every event, I shopped with my scant allowance at thrift stores long before it was cool. I was always dressed very strangely. I was also a bookworm, burdened with a love of reason, science, history and literature. I was outspoken, direct, brash and loud. I had (and still do) a filthy mouth. The editorial committee that prevents everything I think from coming out of my mouth had yet to be appointed, and put on duty 24/7, so I literally scared people.
The very nice Catholic boy who made it his business to be my first let slip after a few months of dating that he had asked me out on a dare. It didn’t occur to me until decades later that the dare had to have included getting me into the sack. For a smart girl, I can miss blinding flashes of the obvious. I have to give him credit, he committed and worked hard to win that bet. I had an idea that I had to really love anyone I had sex with, so he made me love him. We were a couple for almost ten months, we lasted through a summer apart. He wrote me letters. He managed to send me nineteen long stemmed red roses for my nineteenth birthday, which was impressive since he was in Philadelphia and I was in London – this was 1979, so making something like that happen took some real effort. He put on a very good show, and kept his eye on the prize.
I can’t remember how we both came to the unspoken agreement that the moment had come, but I do remember getting dressed up for a date with consummation in mind. He had won the dorm lottery and was supposed to be in the fancy new dorms, but construction had been delayed and they weren’t finished. He and his roommates were in temporary housing at – get ready for it – The Motel Imperial 400, near campus. I kind of love that, and to this day every time I see one, I laugh.
Mind you, it was still unconscious enough that neither of us talked about birth control. Like many good Catholic girls, I was afflicted with magical thinking that went something like “if you don’t admit to yourself what is going on, you aren’t responsible for the consequences.” I just got lucky. That time. But that is another story altogether.
It was fine. It was fun. I felt safe. In retrospect he had not the first clue about how to give women real pleasure, but to be fair neither did I. I was relieved to not be a virgin anymore.
I was completely unprepared to be summarily dumped quite soon after. The only explanation was that I was not quite up to par socially. So, it turned out, interesting enough to be the subject of a dare, to present the challenge of capture, but a little too interesting to be a candidate for long term girlfriend. He did come back to the well several times over the rest of our time in College, anytime he was between girlfriends. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I couldn’t resist, and he couldn’t resist being irresistible.
It broke my heart. I was confused and hurt. I was so naïve. The cognitive dissonance in the Catholic teachings became to much for me, so I ended up having to leave the church at about the same time. I launched into a period of promiscuity, figuring, hell, I had nothing to lose anymore except my naiveté and ignorance. I was wised up and bitter for a long time. So in addition to my high IQ, and a sharp tongue, I now had a very dark sense of humor. And I still dressed funny. It wasn’t until I committed to never dating anyone a second time, if at any moment during the first date I wished I was at home reading a book, that I started to heal.
I married my first husband because he was really funny and smart, and that worked long enough for me to get two amazing (and very funny and smart) kids. But it wasn’t until I was 40 that I finally found a man who fell in love with my mind.
If it hadn’t been for a dare, I easily could have been a 40 year old virgin.