Why Was I in Such a Rush to Have Sex for the First Time?
Among her many other duties, Executive Editor Jesse Sposato does a fantastic job overseeing our Personals section, bringing in revealing and emotional essays from a wide array of writers around the world. But today we have a first: a Personals essay written by Jesse herself, which is part of a bigger collection she’s working on about coming of age. This one is, well, very personal, and just in time for Valentine’s Day. We think it will resonate with a lot of you. Keep reading for Jesse’s story, or click play above to listen to an original audio version of this piece, narrated by Jesse herself. —Narratively co-founder Brendan Spiegel
If there are two camps when it comes to your v-card, those who want to hang onto it, and those who are eager to get rid of it, I fell into the latter category, big-time. At 16, I wanted my virginity gone fast, with the kind of urgency you feel after a car has splashed you with a giant puddle and you need to peel your dirty clothes off immediately.
I wanted to be older than I was. Most of my friends in high school were years ahead of me, some weren’t even in high school at all. Having older friends meant there was always someone to buy you cigarettes or beer, but it also came with this unspoken push to hurry up and mature.
While we were all in a rush to grow up, my best friend, Emily, and her boyfriend, Bill — who was three years older — were already well on their way. They’d been dating since our freshman year and had done all kinds of grown-up things together: traveled from the small Long Island suburb where we lived to big-city Boston for a weekend and stayed overnight in a hotel, ate dinner with one another’s families, and most importantly, they’d had sex — not just had sex once or twice, but had it regularly. I wanted to catch up.
I met Brian one Saturday night at a Kinko’s — a late-night copy shop where punk teens went for entertainment in the suburbs. This was the late ’90s. He was tall, only a year older, and had a jet-black matted down bowl haircut that looked just like the hair of the little Lego figure I played with when I was a kid. My friends and I were photocopying zines we made, and Brian and his friends were making flyers in search of a bass player for their semi-band, so we got to talking. Though Brian on his own didn’t necessarily stand out that night at Kinko’s, the thrill of meeting like-minded individuals in a place like Long Island, where there weren’t many, was significant. We all exchanged info but then never heard from them.
The next time I saw Brian was at a coffee shop called Witches Brew. Emily and I ran into him as he was leaving, and we went through all the motions of being surprised to see him, excited by the coincidence, then disappointed that we were mere ships in the night.
A few hours later, Brian came back to the coffee shop, just as we were leaving, to get my phone number. He said he regretted not getting it earlier. I was flattered by the gesture. I gave it to him — I had my own line that year — and watched him drive off in his gray minivan with three heart-shaped stickers on the back that spelled out Yo La Tengo, the name of a band we all liked.
Brian wasn’t my first choice for a boyfriend. He wasn’t even someone I particularly liked, though he was kind and had good taste in music. More so, I sensed he liked me, and I definitely didn’t dislike him — I just felt kind of neutral. Though I know it sounds callous and insensitive, who Brian was exactly was of less interest to me than the possibilities he brought with him. I wanted a boyfriend to play adult with: someone to have sex with, to go to indie rock shows in the city with, to introduce me to new music and be my general plus-one when Emily was busy with her own boyfriend. Brian seemed like the perfect person to fill the role, for no other real reason than that he was game.
Truthfully, I wanted it to be Jerry C. or Joe M. or Jesse L. or Jim B. (these J names!), the crushes that orbited around me then, but none of those boys would date me. They would flirt with me and lead me on and make out with me when drunk, or when no one was looking or they were on a break with their girlfriends, but they were too old/involved/cool to commit. So I worked with what I had.
Brian and I finally had sex about a month or so into our relationship, just a few weeks after I’d turned 17. It was a Saturday, a colorful and leafy fall day like any other. Brian picked me up in that gray van of his with the stickers and we drove around for a while before being sure the house we were going back to would be empty.
I owned one single condom that I had been carrying around in my wallet for I don’t even know how long, months at least, possibly years. I had gotten it at a warehouse space owned by the nonprofit People with AIDS Coalition, that doubled as a venue for hardcore shows. We went there a bunch, not because I loved hardcore music, but it was something to do and a good place to meet other punks.
Luckily, Brian was not relying on my single condom and had thought to get a whole pack. I didn’t know then that one might not be enough, that it could break, that sometimes it was awkward getting one on and you’d just fiddle with it till it became unusable. Unlike in movies or TV shows, sex in real life brought with it the possibility of mistakes. But Brian knew what he was doing. He had had sex before with a previous girlfriend, which I felt relieved by.
Brian’s bedroom was decorated with posters of bands like Slint and Smog, his bedsheets in typical-boy blue and made of cheap polyester. He shared a room with his much younger sister, which I thought was odd. His house may not have been a château, but it seemed big enough that surely his parents could have found some other space for her so that a little girl didn’t have to sleep only three feet away from her teenage brother. I tried not to think about her stuff as we decided to go through with the thing on Brian’s twin bed in his half of the room.
I kept my white cotton bra on, and also my headband in, keeping my short hair perfectly tucked behind my ears. He insisted I get on top of him, which did not seem typical — maybe he was trying to give me control since he knew I was a feminist? Anyway, I tried it. But when I instinctively used a wiggling motion, like I did with dry humping — which was the closest experience I had had so far — he adjusted me, saying it was more of an up and down thing.
It seems like I should have known better. Since we were friends with older boys, I had actually seen a lot of porn, or at least it had been on in the background of a bunch of living rooms I’d been in over the years. I knew who Jenna Jameson was, and if someone referenced Deep Throat, my first thought was the movie, not the secret informant, even as an aspiring writer. The film I remembered best, though, Edward Penishands, did not prove useful in the real-life bedroom. It was super entertaining and a great conversation piece when I wanted to be provocative with strangers, but it wasn’t exactly something to get tips from.
The sex itself felt more like having a medical procedure done than the hot and sloppy scenes I had witnessed in all those adult movies. We stayed in the same position as the one we’d started in the whole time, it didn’t last long, and I certainly didn’t have an orgasm. Though I had been giving myself orgasms for years by then, I didn’t yet know how to involve another person in what I had figured out.
When it was over, I felt it had been anticlimactic and underwhelming, but above all, I was relieved. I HAD HAD SEX! I had done the thing I’d wanted to do for so long. One day, I might want to publish a book or have a kid or work as a journalist, but for some time, this had been the only real goal in my sight, and I’d achieved it. I was now able to check off one task on the imaginary list of milestones my friends and I were waiting to achieve, on which losing your virginity ranked pretty high.
Afterward, we got french fries from the Wendy’s drive-through near Brian’s house. And when it eventually started to get dark out, we made our way to the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, where we hung out nearly every weekend watching friends skateboard and drinking in the backseats of cars.
When I pulled Emily aside to tell her my big news, she expressed momentary disbelief, which quickly turned to giddiness once she realized I was serious. She called Bill over, and they fawned over me, asking questions and demanding details as if they were my parents proud that I’d gotten into my first-choice college. They thought it might be time to invest in sexy underwear, and I took their advice to heart next time I went to the mall.
I had sex with Brian a few more times, enough to feel like I had experienced sex, not just had it. But after spending more time with him, I came to terms with what I had suspected all along: that I could never love Brian. Continuing a relationship with him obviously wasn’t the right thing, and we broke up a month later.
I don’t fault myself for not liking Brian all that much but dating him anyway. He was clearly a means to an end, yes. But honestly, how much did Brian really like me? I got the feeling he thought I was cute, good on paper, the same way I saw him, but maybe more than anything, that he needed something from me too, even if it wasn’t something he was conscious of. Maybe he just wanted someone to go see bands with, too, or he liked feeling like he belonged to my friend group.
From where I stand now, yes, I was racing toward sex and adulthood with impatience and desperation, and that probably wasn’t particularly healthy. After all, that likely stemmed from society’s unfair expectations of girls to mature before they’re ready, or the skewed misconception that in order to fit in I needed to act like one of the guys by participating in stereotypical “male” behavior. Neither great.
But on the other hand, I was impatient because I was curious, eager to experience all that life has to offer, ready for the excitement to start. I couldn’t wait to figure out how it all worked. I might have straight-up had sex for the “wrong” reasons — I knew this at the time. But did it really matter?
We’re taught that losing your virginity is a big deal, that it’s sacred, that it must be done with someone you love, but maybe it’s also not a bad idea to get it out of the way with someone you feel lukewarm about so that you’re not so nervous when you meet someone you really like. So that you don’t wiggle around rather than move up and down, so you don’t bring a single ancient condom that’s been kicking around at the bottom of your canvas bag for a year and think that’ll cut it. Brian was my bad pancake, the one that’s not quite right, not cooked all the way through — but that helps you learn how to make (find?) a better pancake the next time, when it really matters. And for that, I’m forever grateful.
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Jesse Sposato is Narratively’s executive editor. She has also written about feminism, friendship, culture and parenting for a variety of outlets, including Vanity Fair, InStyle, Slate, HuffPost, Memoir Land and more. She is currently working on a collection of essays about coming of age in the suburbs, discovering punk rock and being boy crazy.
Brendan Spiegel is Narratively’s editorial director and co-founder.
Noa Denmon is an award-winning illustrator who has worked with clients such as The New York Times, Google and Macmillan Publishers. She won a Caldecott Honor Award in 2021 for her debut children’s book, A Place Inside of Me. She loves to uplift and depict the stories of the underrepresented, and hopes to create work that displays humanity in all of its differences.
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