did I shave my legs for this?

my first “boyfriend” (I use quotations because we were never in fact “official”) was during the period immediately following my remission when I was 18, rocking a bleached buzz cut, and REALLY stoked to be alive. his name was jeff, he was a musician, which I predictably swooned over, pontificating and romanticizing the potential of being an artist's muse, when really he was just getting stoned, taking acid, and hitting random buttons on a pc laptop and fancying himself the next thom yorke. jeff and I first made out on his best friend’s floor after I spent an entire summer lusting after his mysteriously tortured and permanently high hiney, listening to tenacious D and the mildly disturbing sounds of ashley losing her virginity in the next room. I was done for. the romance was unequivocal. 6 months after that, I ended up giving him my cherry on his grandmother’s bed after we had made it roughly 18 minutes into Lost in Translation and he turned to me and said, “so, uh, are we gonna do it or what?"

so, we did it. It was brief, and I remember being vaguely distracted by two things: my grandmother on her death bed having told me she was going to be watching from the ceiling with a bag of popcorn when I lost my V card, and also my little pink socks awkwardly bobbing in the air above us because I thought that you were supposed to stick your legs straight up during a missionary deed. [It didn’t seem to be working, but, give me a break. I didn’t watch a lot of porn.]

after it was over he had me check to make sure I hadn’t soiled his meemaw's linens, and he fell asleep. I laid half awake all night, naked on top of the covers and sometime around 4 am there was a knock on the sliding glass door that led out to the backyard, and and when I looked over, jeff was peering into the room with his hands cupped around his eyes to see. I was totally bewildered. I turned back to the other side of the bed to see that jeff was, in fact, still there and still very much in the buff and unconscious. this could mean one of two things: I had somehow absorbed some of the hallucinogenic drugs by sexual osmosis, or jeff’s twin sam was just perving out on us. I shrieked and tried to cover myself up, sam yelled “oh, shit.” and vaulted over the fence and ran back to the party down the street where he proceeded to share jeff and I’s intimate moment with a big group of dudes who practically owned the rumor mill.

shortly after, I put my clothes back on (I’d worn matching panties, just in case we were to participate in any of the “doing it”) and woke jeff up to tell him I was going home, but I didn’t, I just drove around watching the sunrise in the hilly vineyards in sonoma valley in my mercury sable luxury sedan listening to magnetic fields mixtapes and wondering if I should be feeling anything. all I was really feeling was sort of bummed out that I’d just given it up to a dude who, for all intensive purposes, really didn’t give two hoots about me, and also like I could go for a couple of advil liquigels.

the next day I called my mom into the room when I was doing my makeup out of my purple glitter caboodle case before going out to the shop, my small town’s only answer to a youth center, out in a warehouse in the boonies that was half of dowling magnet factory.

“mom, I’ve gotta talk to you about something.” I stated matter of factly, as I swiped on a second layer of blue wet 'n wild mascara.

“sure.”

“don’t freak out.”

“okay.” she put her hand on her hip.

“seriously, no freaking out.”

“honey, I hate it when you pull this shit.”

“you’re already freaking out…”

“just tell me!”

“I did it with jeff. we used a condom… it kind of sucked. don’t worry. everything’s fine. I just remembered that you’d ask me to tell you when I became “active”.” I punctuated my distaste for such an official term for this as of yet silly act by making a stink face. my mother took a deep breath and absorbed the info, and then spoke.

“really?? with jeff?”

“yes. It was just time. I was seriously the ONLY one. I’m about to turn 19. I was starting to feel like a eunuch.”

“and you were safe?”

“of course. sex ed. duh.”

“well..." she struggled a moment with the appropriate response to this unexpected news, "... thank you for telling me.”

“no prob. I’ll be home before two. bagels tomorrow?”

she shook her head at me. jeff worked at the bagel shop.

“love you!” I gave her a kiss on the cheek and bolted for the door.

a week passed with radio silence from jeff’s camp, and then I ran into him at the farmer’s market on the square and pulled him aside, where he unceremoniously dumped me over a corn dog from uncle bill’s. he told me we probably took things too far, seeing as he was moving to australia, indefinitely, after the following two weeks to work on a mango farm. he promised to write a song about me, sitting amongst the lush and vast fields of oz, and next I heard from him was in an email 8 months later saying he’d taken ill mid-harvest and caught something that the locals call “mango fever” that involved too many embarrassingly gross symptoms to share. my imagination ran wild with what delirium and oozing pustules must’ve befallen him. my V card had been avenged by tropical fruit!

these days (and after I might add, we attempted to date once more about 3 years ago that was just as ill-fated and entirely ridiculous) jeff and I are on friendly terms and he lives with his albino russian-israeli girlfriend in the east village. he’s apologized profusely for acting like a twat, and I can truly say that any residual hard feelings are null and void. being a teenager is hard enough as it is, and we had to deal with being teenagers in a tiny wine country town where the dating pool was occupied with a couple of tadpoles and the occasional slimy snake. c’est la vie. dwelling causes cancer. (I would know.)

I got a bug to write about the first time I really tried to “date” someone because I feel as if not much has changed, and I’m frustrated. some experiences have been more extreme than others, but my patterns remain. emotional unavailability (thanks, dad), instability, prevalence for infidelity, reach and withdrawal games, and sexual mediocrity have all been themes (and only one such experience offered them all at once!). the next dude after jeff was a manorexic bro from san diego who said he was “worried about my bod” when the condom broke and then refused to go to planned parenthood with me. I dated a male model from utah who drunkenly pissed in my laundry hamper after trying to surprise me with anal one night who ended up giving me scabies. my rebound after Jorge was impotent, shared a great deal of personality traits with george costanza, and lives with his boyfriend in oakland now. I once went on a dinner date that ended with me watching him get dragged off by several cops to the clink, bawling like a newborn, and getting charged with assault and battery because he lost his temper and kind of, sort of, tried-to-kill-his-roommate-with-a-bat. this most recent guy brought me to meet all of his friends one night, then took me back to his place for the first time after 6 weeks of dating, and in the morning upon inspecting his walls, found them practically wallpapered with photos of his ex like a break up mausoleum. what the fuck? am I doomed? would it be best to dip myself in honey and dive into a pile of lesbians? I came back after black.