"We accept the love we think we deserve."
It all started in the fall, roughly 8 or so years ago, promptly after a very momentous milestone - my birthday. My friends, for discretion we will call them Lily, Candice, Olivia, and Samantha. I had met all four of them at the start of the school year and we'd become fast BFFs. Being a lonely teenage girl, I let them into my heart with much enthusiasm. One day Samantha began to talk about a boy she had hooked up with the night before, a boy that I had coincidentally had a major school girl crush on. We will call him Mike. (He had very dreamy hair. He now is quite overweight and has three children, all by different mothers.) Anyway, I heard her talk about this, which was in MY mind at least, a very important, big thing. She spoke about it just like it had no meaning whatsoever, like it was an afterthought, and coincidentally I started to feel very self conscious, very self aware, and very much unsettled.
In the days following, Lily, Candice and Olivia all followed suit, telling tales of their supposed sex-scapades in gripping detail. I was positively freaking about it all because I was still the lowly virgin in our group, the undesirable, the last one to take that ever so important step into adulthood. I decided right then and there that I would alienate them until I was no longer a virgin. This was the only solution in my mind. I was a terrible liar, especially back then, so the simple thought of just lying about it didn't suffice. No, I wanted to experience it for real. Now I know what you're thinking. I was an idiot. I know that now. I know it very well. Back then, I didn't. Back then, I thought I was a fucking genius.
Listening to them all, I just felt an overwhelming sense of low self worth. It made me super self conscious and I just kept thinking - What is wrong with me? Am I going to die alone? Will I one day eventually become a crazy cat lady with 5000 cats all living in a run down Grey-Gardens-esque estate with cobwebs surely collecting between my legs??!?! I'd just seen the original documentary a few weeks prior, and it was very fresh in my mind (I recommend it. It will push you to be a more productive citizen and not hoard animals or live with your mother until you're 60 years old.)
So I set out to find a solution, and I was going to find one no matter the circumstance. So I reinvented myself and started going to parties alone in sketchy areas in my town. I started acting very, very social (something I admittedly am not usually).
It wasn't until the middle of one of these "ragers" that I overheard a group of girls talking. They were whispering about this boy who had a lot of notches on his bedpost. They just kept going on and on about how he would sleep with anyone and what a player he was. It became my personal mission to track him down and get him to sleep with me. If he slept with those other girls, surely I wouldn't be the worst he ever had.
So one night about a week later, I found him. We'll call him Chris. Chris was a junior, good looking, and played lacrosse. This was the perfect situation in my mind. I soon had an earth shattering realization of what I had to do, so I began my pursuit, smiling at him all throughout the party all seductively like how I'd seen girls act on television: playing with my hair, making eye contact, maybe occasionally slipping a giggle his way. I was really making my case. He was so going to go for this, I thought to myself. And at the end of the night, I had cornered Chris, my victim, and made my offer in the most subtle way I could think. I laid my hand on his lap, and by laid I mean I grasped his crotch basically. Now in hindsight, this is a very typical teenage girl move and maybe even a typical twenty something move, but in my mind back then I thought I was being totally awesome. He'd caught on pretty fast to my relief and soon we were pushing past inebriated teenagers up the stairs and stumbling into someone's angsty teenage bedroom, ready to do the deed. Ready to say au revoir to my virginity.
Chris kept telling me that I was hot. I believed it and with my slurring voice and slightly inebriated state, reciprocated by kissing him on the mouth, something I hadn't done too many times before apart from childhood romances and truth or dares. I imagined it would be like how it was in the movies. I already had myself in the mindset that this was going to be perfect, but it was far far from it. I was quickly pushed backwards onto the bed where we undressed, and at this moment I started to sober up and realize what a colossal mistake I had been in the process of making, as my clothes were quickly discarded on the floor.
I was freaking out inside and trying to keep calm when he, without any forewarning at all, entered me. I was still trying to get over the fact that someone saw me naked when the flash of pain shot me back to reality and I screamed out, because it hurt, and it felt like I was just stabbed. I didn't anticipate that at all, due to my hymen being torn a few years prior from a bike ride that went awry. I quickly kicked him off the bed and onto the floor (literally, it was a twin size) and got dressed, exiting hastily through the Jack and Jill bathroom. So I hadn't really had sex. I had just been left penetrated and majorly embarrassed by my lack of follow through and cowardice.
Over the following weeks, Chris began to tell people of our exploits, meaning that the whole school soon knew about it. He exaggerated the tale into a full night of pleasure and ecstasy instead of the lackluster event it truly was.
During those weeks, my friends and I reunited and soon after they found out about my supposed sex-scapades, they became oddly distant. I was feeling very lonely and caught a serious case of teenage angst. I thought losing my virginity would make us all feel closer, more united; I was wrong. I soon found out that my friends were all lying virgin bitches and I was left without my virginity or my friends, and a fairly bad reputation.
I actually tried to reach out maybe a year later when I got everything sorted in my life and transferred to a new school. They acted like they didn't know me, like our friendship had been wiped away. I didn't expect us all to become friends again, but I expected something more than being blatantly ignored and embarrassed in front of a group of my peers.
In hindsight, I'm still slightly bitter. I know I should have waited. It's not really a big deal for me now but sometimes I wish I could go back in time and slap my younger self for being so foolish. Sex isn't a big deal for me now and in fact I'm a very sexual person. I don't know if I credit my past indiscretions for that, but part of me is glad for the experience and the fact that I'm not so inhibited now.
I think the lesson I learned from this experience were to not be so gullible, not to care so much about what other people think, and that the world shouldn't just be a giant pissing contest. You don't have to compete with other people just because you feel that you are weird or a late bloomer or just undesirable. Every person deserves to make their own decisions in life, without the influence of others, least of all a band of snotty teenage girls.
While I wish that I'd lost my virginity to someone I actually cared about, it taught me a lot of lessons about not being so cynical or quick to pounce, to always think through the important things and calculate them in a way that includes both my brain and my heart and maybe my vagina. I was a self-conscious, unaware, teenage girl and I didn't think I deserved to be loved at all. I know better now, even if I do have my occasional commitment issues now and again.