a memorial to virginity
Virginity. What can we say about virginity? It was a good friend; it was with us from day one. We knew we wouldn't have it forever, but we weren't ready to say good-bye. We went everywhere together: camp, classes, weddings, church, bat mitzvahs. It was pure. It was clean. It was innocent. Sure, it could be a little uptight, and yes, there were times when we'd pretend we didn't know it because it wasn't "cool." But to have it taken from us so suddenly? To lose it like that?
And at the prom no less.
CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE MIME
by Amy Rhodes
In high school I was a mime.
Also, I was a virgin.
These two things were directly related, although I didn't realize it at the time.
As I sat in front of a mirror, carefully applying my white cake makeup, putting on my white gloves, and adjusting my bow tie, it never occurred to me to stop and say, "This right here, Amy? This is the reason that no guy is sticking his dick in you."
It's not like I didn't think about sex in high school. Every day for four years I thought about what it would be like to have sex with Kevin Jacobson. I imagined us having sex in a hot tub, because Sarah Shirk told me that that's where she lost her virginity to Brad Griffith when his parents went to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play in the Rose Bowl.
But I also thought about how perfect it would be to use the George Michael song "Mother's Pride" in a sketch the mime troupe was working on about a young soldier. And I thought about how, at the end of the sketch, when the soldier's widowed wife watches her son go off to fight in the same war his father died in, it would blow people's minds.
And the thing is, when you think about stuff like that, no matter how much you also think about sex, you're not going to get laid.
When I went to college, I put a framed picture of my mime troupe on my dorm room desk. But college was new and exciting, and I quickly forgot it was even there. That is, until the night a guy from Tilton Hall came over to hang out, saw it, and asked, "What the hell is this? Were you a clown or something?"
"Please. Like I would be a clown," I scoffed. "I was a mime."
He just stared at me. I stared back. Then he kissed me. I'd been kissed before, but this was different. And when he took off his shirt and pants, I knew there was more to come. So I panicked.
In an attempt to lighten the mood, I pulled out an old routine. For my high school mime troupe audition, I did a sketch where I was in a Laundromat when I realized that the clothes I was wearing were dirty and, forgetting I was in public, took them off and put them in the washer with the rest of my laundry. Now, standing in front of the guy from Tilton Hall, I started pretending to unbutton the top button of my blouse, then the next and the next, shimmying out of it as it fell to the floor. Even though I was still fully clothed, I felt totally naked miming without my white makeup on, so I stopped before I got to my pants.
"It's better with the music," I said. "That song 'Dirty Laundry' by Don Henley. It's better as a full performance piece…."
He just stared at me. I stared back. Then he kissed me again as he actually took off my shirt and pants. And, because I had both the top bunk and a blatant disregard for other people's personal space, we had sex on my roommate's bed.
As soon as we started I realized I had no idea how to behave. For the four years I'd been a mime, no guy had come anywhere near my vagina. While other girls were giving blowjobs, getting fingerblasted,[1] and screwing guys in hot tubs, I was leaning against invisible walls, getting trapped in make-believe boxes, and acting like I was running into the wind. Now some guy was not just near my vagina; he was inside of it.
Lying on my roommate's bed and losing my virginity, I thought about how, as a mime, I'd been able to express the terror of riding a roller coaster, the frustration of getting gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and the joy of opening a small box to find an engagement ring inside without ever uttering a single word. But I knew if I wanted to express myself now, I could no longer be silent. If I wanted this guy to know I liked having sex, I needed my voice to be heard.
So, I decided it was time to be loud. Really loud. I yelled, "Yes!" and screamed, "Don't stop!" and scream-yelled, "Yes, don't stop!" as loud as I could. I imagined that my voice was carrying all the way to Houston Hall. I envisioned people gathering in the dining hall, saying, "I can hear someone in Hill Hall having sex, and that's across the quad. Wow. That person is loud."
It was as though the guy from Tilton Hall was fucking the mime right out of me.
Then, suddenly, he was done. After a few minutes he got up, put on his clothes, and said he had to go meet someone in the computer lab.
When I saw him in the cafeteria the next morning, he pretended like nothing had happened. Maybe it had been really obvious that I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe he doesn't like screamers. Maybe he was embarrassed that, as I'd find out with more experience, he had a small dick and had come too quickly. Or maybe he was just an asshole. With time I've come to realize it doesn't really matter.
At the end of my final Spring-Night-O-Mime show at the end of high school, I, like the other graduating mimes, had walked to the center of the stage, stood in a pool of light, and taken off my white bow tie and gloves. In just a black leotard and tights, I exited the theatre through the audience. I had technically left the mime behind that day, but I didn't really find my voice until I heard it yelling, "Yes! Don't stop!"
And it didn't.
Marcel Marceau once said, "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop." It's true.
THE VIRGIN QUEEN
by Waitress, NYC, 30
Growing up, I was freakishly small and no one paid attention to me. There are always a few-those gnomes of the schoolyard running in slow motion toward puberty. But we sad sideshows were the same as our peers emotionally, if not physically. In junior high, I shaved my legs and wore a training bra, which, by the way, was too big in the smallest size. I always wore a T-shirt if there was going to be any swimming, until one pool party when Ben DeCroce convinced me to doff my cover-up only to respond in disbelief, "Wow, you really are flat!" And even though there's no audience of cruel eighth graders (whatever, Ben, like you were some prize with your gross glasses and chinlessness) to stare in appalled silence at this story and all its shirtless flatness, the spirit is the same. Take that, Holly McKinley, who was fully boobed and pubed by age thirteen and getting it on with a twenty-two-year-old. I may not have gotten to second base until I was eighteen, but at least I didn't get molested.
This is actually a sore spot for me. By sheer coincidence my high school guidance counselor turned out to be a pedophile, and was arrested and convicted when I was a sophomore. When I was sixteen I was under five feet tall, and weighed in at a hefty seventy-eight pounds. My tits were tardy, and tiny. I welcomed my first pubic hair in my very late teens. Here I was, a twelve-year-old in the physical sense, and Mr. Owl never made a move. I mean, it begs the question. I've always told myself no one ever wanted me in high school because I was prepubescent for so long, but the fact that Mr. Owl never even copped an "accidental" feel makes that a little harder to fall back on. I mean, what am I supposed to tell myself?
When I got to college I did what any inexperienced, nubile virgin would do: I overcompensated. I made a habit of sneaking up on my roommate buck naked and jumping on her lap, preferably while she was wearing shorts. I gave ball gags and nipple clips as birthday gifts. I even had a squirt gun with a rubber penis-shaped barrel with which I would accost my neighbors in the elevator. Basically, I was a low-level sex offender.
I guess Mr. Owl did rub off on me a little, even if he never rubbed up against me.
By this point I had some suitors, but none that suited me. It was the new millenium, and I was twenty. I had a brand-new best pal, Tyler, out of the closet since age fifteen. He'd recently finished playing the role of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, and we spent many afternoons contentedly watching Ab Fab or listening to Dar Williams, before he made his surprise move. Perhaps it was my boyish figure, or my overt penis envy-who can say? But for whatever reason, Tyler, who had never so much as glanced sidelong with lust at a lady, made an overture. I went with it.
"But he's gay!" you're thinking.
I ignored this fact.
"Would it be weird at school?" Tyler and I wondered.
It would. Our friends were baffled, scandalized, at times angry. Turns out, once you come out of the closet, you'd better fucking stay there. But love sees no sexual orientation, and we only had eyes for each other.
We did, however, encounter one large obstacle.
Tyler happened to be endowed with something that even I, with no frame of reference, understood to be a massive, mastodonic cock. A Boogie Nights cock. Nine and a half inches of solid, stout flesh. I can describe it as a hoagie. I can describe it as Jason Giambi's head and neck. A veiny, hulking schoolyard bully of a cock.
Here's the thing. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not always good news. It's especially bad news if you're a five-foot-four, ninety-five-pound virgin. How would this work? Tyler was very stressed about it. I assured him I would be fine and internalized my fears, but I knew I needed to do some stretching exercises. I needed to prep. But how? How, how, how?
Remember the squirt gun, guys? The one with the penis-shaped barrel?
I lost my virginity to a squirt gun.
I stuck a squirt gun up my no-no. I rolled a condom onto it and gave it my flower.
There's more.
Having left my virginity behind, I then convinced my gay boyfriend to give me his-five years after he came out of the closet. To set the mood, I put on the Backstreet Boys' Millenium album, which may be the only choice I made that night that I don't regret.
The problem was, the squirt gun I'd made love to was probably only a third the size of Tyler's dong, which just wouldn't…go…in. It just wasn't happening. I sat down on it, and it was like sitting on a bicycle seat. Uncomfortable, but exterior. It was like a barstool. So. We did what two twenty-year-old virgins-one gay, one straight-would do. We improvised.
We didn't have a lot of time; Tyler had rehearsal for Tommy in forty-five minutes downtown and would already need to take a cab. We didn't have any actual lube, so we threw out some ideas. Hand cream? Sunscreen? Hair gel? Hmm. Did I have any butter? Yes! Yes, I did.
So I retrieved a stick of butter from the fridge, and we copiously buttered Tyler's French roll. We buttered Tyler up and down and all around, and we gave ourselves to each other. And I will say, it was in its own way magical, on my dorm room twin bed with Nick Carter's crooning voice in the background. We laughed our way through the whole thing, and I wouldn't have it any other way, save one.
Don't use butter as lube, guys.
A couple of fun facts about butter:
1. Butter is corrosive. The butter ate right through the condom, which was then shredded around the base of Tyler's biggie-size, battered penis.
2. Butter contains bacteria. I stopped dry-heaving from the morning-after pill just in time to notice an uncomfortable sensation downtown. A vaginal infection of epic proportions.
And that's how I lost my virginity to my gay, almost-baby-daddy's nine-and-a-half-inch cock to the song stylings of the Backstreet Boys and ended up with a monster crotch infection. Except that I had already given it up to a squirt gun.
PUFF THE UN-MAGIC DRAGON
by Nick Garfinkle
I lost my virginity at sixteen, I think. The thing is, my first time happened before puberty happened.
It's August 1992. Bill Clinton isn't quite president yet, but a new day is dawning-for I'm about to have sex. She's eighteen. I'm sixteen. The state of New York calls it statutory rape. I call it "The Summer of Love." You see, I understand what the legislators of the Empire State don't-that it's theoretically impossible to take advantage of a sixteen-year-old male. (Now if the genders were reversed…but there's no double standard in New York.)
It's the last night of Camp Whippoorwill, and Bear Cabin is empty-probably because the director, Chip, has been too busy stealing money from the owners to do much recruiting. I bring a blanket. She brings experience. The hardwood floor is unforgiving-but I'm about to have sex! So it feels like a velvet cloud. Actually it still feels like a hardwood floor, but I'm about to have sex!
It all started one night during Awiskini, our weekly addition of insult to genocide, our "Sorry-for-the-landgrab, Native Americans, can-we-make-it-up-to-you-by-dressing-in-calfskin-ponchos-and-cribbing-your-sacred-rituals?" Or as we called it, "Friday night activity." As our council fire grew low, "Nomke the Wise" told us a story. We also painted our faces red, but the less said about that the better. She found a private moment between Circle of Truth and Indian (like we would really call it Native American) Leg Wrestling to confess, breathily, "I've been waiting two years for you to become a counselor." The laws of New York may be meaningless, but the code of Camp Whippoorwill is sacred.
And now it's time. The whole summer, our entire torrid heavy-make-out-with-a-chance-of-fondle relationship-my whole prepubescent life-has been building to this moment. She turns on her flashlight. "No, I want to do it by starlight," I say, so she won't see my worm without a hair, my snake without a lair. "But let me see your boobs first," I say, because I'm sixteen. I see them, and they are glorious, completely out of proportion with her tiny frame. Does it have something to do with her being from Wisconsin? The dairy state?
I fall on top of her, then roll us over, like I've seen that guy on the beach do in that black-and-white movie, right before they do it. I haven't seen the whole movie, but they play the roll-her-over clip at the start of coming attractions, and I assume they do it. (Note: the author has since learned that the movie is From Here to Eternity and that they don't actually do it, at least not on-screen.) Except I forget the guy is supposed to end up on top. But it's okay because I am a staunch supporter of women's rights! I've marched on Washington with five hundred thousand Women for Choice, my buddy Dave Panero and my mom, chanting "George Bush, stay out of my bush!" But it's no time to think about my mom's bush. She reaches into my shorts: camp-issued, elastic waistband, no resistance. And then she touches it. No one ever touches it! Except for me, of course, pretty much all the time, and my pediatrician, Dr. Lazarus, once a year. (He keeps promising me I'll grow hair down there. Liar.)
"It's okay," she says, "I'm on the pill." It's okay, I think, I'm incapable of producing sperm!
And then it's happening, I think. I'm not sure where exactly my bald eagle is, but it's definitely somewhere. And she's smiling, and her eyes are half-closed, so I figure it's likely. I churn my hips wildly, like that guy in that other movie, the one Dave Panero keeps hidden in his closet. I think it's happening. No, now I'm sure. I flail a rhythmless samba. She grooves an adult contemporary beat. Then she puts her lips next to my ear and whispers, "You don't have to worry about AIDS." And then I come. Air. I come air-little puffs of air from my very un-magical dragon.
I'm sixteen, and I've just lost my virginity. I think.
YOU BET YOUR ASS
by "The Flying Buttress"
This is a story about a guy named Rick. Rick and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. We made sense together in a really cool way. We were a power couple of New York's Lower East Side-dirty and shaggy, poor and rude. But we were all of those things on purpose, so we were cool.
I mean, sure, his pet name for me was "Slut," and yeah, he had a habit of sending me text messages from the toilet to tell me he was pooping, but he was really sweet and funny and would say things like, "If you ever let anyone else touch you, I'll fucking kill you." And I would think, Wow. He really loves me. Then I'd giggle and say, "Rick! You're funny!"
We had a good thing going. I introduced cool Rick to a lot of cool shit that a cool chick like me does. We did a little light B&D, we engaged in role play-I'd do a dirty nurse named Gina and sit on his face while giving him a sponge bath-and I paid plenty of attention to his balls. But Rick…Rick wanted more.
There's one thing I don't do. I don't give the back-lot tour. I can barely get anything to come out of there, let alone jam anything in. It's just my policy. I don't have a prostate; there's nothing in it for me. The back door's closed, boys. The back door's closed.
Rick calls it "Tiny Town."* Rick wants to go to Tiny Town. And he's relentless. He courts me with such stirring overtures as, "Just the tip, baby, just the tip." Just the tip? And then what? Hmm? Because I'm not letting you stick your feces-glazed "tip" in my nano.* And I'm certainly not letting you put it in my mouth. So how does this novel end?
I manage to hold Rick at bay until a fateful evening I convince him to come play pool with me on Bleecker Street. And we're having a blast, because billiards is sexy. Think about it: You're running your hands up and down a long, hard shaft of wood; you're trying to guide things into holes; there are balls bouncing around everywhere; and not least, there's a lot of bending over and presenting of the posterior. Which is almost certainly what gave Rick the idea in the first place.
Now we all know where this is headed. I bet my ass. But please be fair. It was a very safe bet. Rick was horrible at pool; I was awesome at it. He had never defeated me. And the bet proper was this: "Sure, Rick. If you can beat me in three consecutive games, I'll take you to Tiny Town." It was lottery odds that he'd win, and we both knew it.
And Rick didn't win. He didn't win a single game. No, Rick played predictably poorly in all three rounds. But here's where it gets fascinating. I lost. Three games in a row I sank every one of my balls, cleared the table, until only the eight ball remained. And I kid you not, three games in a row I scratched on the eight-ball shot. Which, to the uninitiated, is an automatic loss. Rick didn't have to beat me; I beat myself.
Three strikes. Three overconfident whiffs. Much like that poem "Casey at the Bat."
More like Casey at the butt.
I know what you may be thinking: I threw the match. Don't doubt I haven't lain awake many a night pondering, pondering, pondering. Did I? Did I want to lose? Had I flown a kamikaze mission? Was I subconsciously a hungry bottom? Of course I wasn't. I'm no puritan, but the bottom has always been top on my "To Don't" list.
In light of that, the best hypothesis I can come up with is this: I think my asshole was jealous of my vagina. Hear me out. Here's Lisa up front-very popular, getting all the attention, all the phone calls-while all poor Alice out back gets to do is vomit shit two or three times a week. So yeah, I think, in the crucial moment, my asshole called in a favor to my brain, who in turn gave my motor skills the night off, and the more I think about it the more I believe it and think, Fuck you, asshole!
Poor choice of words.
Back to Bleecker Street. I find myself doing a dead man walking out to a cab with Rick, who's wearing a look of thrilled disbelief. He looks like a guy who's just won the teddy bear from the metal claw arcade machine-he's beaten the odds and defied physics. He's not entirely cruel-he buys me two shots of whisky (that I hope will have a numbing effect). He even offers me an out, but not because of magnanimity. It was a win-win for him. He got to be the good guy, knowing full well that I had too much pride to renege on a bet; that I would forever compromise my credibility in doing so, a credibility I prized, apparently, more highly than my virgin ass.
I don't know how many of you out there have been to Tiny Town. Market research would suggest quite a few. Anal is a mainstay of gay men, adventurous straights, and abstinence-committed teens everywhere. But, if you're an ignoranus,* like I was, be warned: It's not something to be entered into lightly, or after too large a meal. I know all you bottoms out there feel me when I say the first time you head to Tiny Town, one question predominates: When I get there, is there gonna be a mudslide?
Here's a little taste of what went on between the cheeks. My butt clenched up like a baby who won't eat his beets, but Rick gave me a good open-palm lube job and I took it-not just the tip, baby-I took it. How did it feel? Not good. Even with the lube it felt…gritty. Grainy? Kind of sandy. What was I thinking? When you're getting it in The Brown* there's no way to see if anything foul is happening…if anything's been loosed or jostled free. If the "locals" will be friendly to this…visitor. More seasoned catchers know to spring-train with an enema or at the very least a rigorous shower. I just prayed for luck. I tried to make a few sexy noises, not to be generous-just to try to move things along. Welcome to Tiny Town. Population one too many. It wasn't cool.
But I didn't shit everywhere! I didn't shit for six days.
Notes
[1] For definitions of terms marked with an asterisk please refer to the glossary.
