particularly prudish

i wasn't the first one to lose my virginity. not even close. my girlfriend, jane, lost hers in 8th grade to a boy she had been dating for 4 months; the same asshole she dated almost all the way through high school, who beat the shit out of her and pushed her down a flight of stairs, forcing her to lie to her best friends and older brother for months so he didn't kill the mf. another, moreen, lost hers to her bf of a few months the night of our freshman prom, in the parking lot of the rest stop in between our houses.

marie got drunk out at a friend's hunting cabin and accidentally let our friend, JB, slip it in while the rest of us looked on, though hardly anyone even remembers that. and pam, poor pammy peterson, slept with her high school crush of four years, hoping desperately he would love her back. he moved out of town the day after graduation.

i, on the other hand, held out longer than them all. not because i was particularly prudish, religious, or proud. no, just like with drinking, i was just too boring to go looking for someone to get me drunk, to "pop my cherry". i didn't even have my first kiss until about 6 months before douggie and i started dating; in the front seat of jimmy's ugly green car that resembled a retarded turtle, sans shell, when i was already late for curfew.

douggie and i started dating sometime that summer, between that first epic bridge jumping indicident, the stip poker, and drinking UV blue out of a gatorade bottle at the drag races at the track down the road from my house.

soon enough it was my junior year, his senior, and new had spread through our impossibly tiny town that we were a "couple". a couple of idiots if you ask me now, but that's neither here nor their. the girls all thought it was adorable, captain of the football team, future captain of the dance team - it was an all american love story straight out of a carrie underwood song.

what everyone didn't know, yet, was that two weeks earlier, about 2 weeks after we had someone come to the conclusion that we were "official", we...made it official.

i still remember it perfectly; every painful, ugly, and embarrassing moment. i remember his brother walking in moments before, telling us to "be careful" and "use protection". like he was kidding, but he knew. i remember vin diesel's bald head swimming under water and shooting up the entire continent of asia in the background. i remember looking out the window, and finally thinking, "i'm doing it. i am having sex." it wasn't sexy or romantic or even pleasant.

but when his parents came home early from somewhere out of town, and made us come out into the living room to be reprimanded for being alone when they weren't home, all i could do was smile to myself as my cheeks flushed and i replayed the last 15 minutes of my life.

not even the sermon at church the next morning about sexual impurity (i could not make this up if i wanted to) could keep me down. something had changed inside of me. i had a secret. it felt powerful. turning point, pivotal moment...whatever you want to call it. two weeks and i had jumped.

and i haven't looked backed.