By A.A. Moran

If I’d had a crystal ball that allowed me to see into the future I would have lost my virginity to Jay Masterson, who so kindly offered to de-virginize me during senior year of high school. I’d been lamenting my un-sexed status to a friend while working through problems in Physics class when he interrupted with his proposition. “I’m a virgin too, so you know – maybe we could - you know - help each other out” he’d said without a hint of irony.
 
Jay had harbored a crush on me since nursery school when he kicked my mother in the shin for interrupting our playtime. He’d gone on to become the “teetering on the edge of sanity” kid who liked explosives and who brought a gun to school in seventh grade, which he threateningly waved around at all of us in 4th period Band. I would have overlooked the fact that he seemed crazy if he’d been hotter…as this was my only requirement for initial entry into my lady kingdom. While Jay was not bad looking, he was not a physically perfect male specimen and thus he never stood a chance. As it turns out, Jay, who went on to become a world-traveling entrepreneur, would have been a far better choice, on all accounts, than the Adonis who did ultimately pluck my cherry.

I was 19 when I met Mike Megarra, who was tall and tan. His long, dark hair waved down his muscular back while simultaneously framing his light blue eyes and pillowy lips. He was, quite simply, beautiful. Since this was my only requirement, I forgave his lazy pretension. When we met, we exchanged only a few passing words. However, Mike must have been intrigued by girls with bad hair and poor sense of style because the next weekend, he peppered my best friend Jackie, who was dating his friend Bret, with questions about me. Upon learning that I played guitar, Mike declared his desire to "hang out" with me.

Now, as a sidebar, it is a well-known fact that boys learn to play guitar in order to get laid. But girls do too...or at least I did. At 10, I was entranced by the back cover of Van Halen's 1984 album and its picture of David Lee Roth with windblown hair and a knowing stare. A couple years later, Robert Plant’s orgasmic moans and Jimmy Page’s onstage slither as captured in the Led Zeppelin concert movie The Song Remains the Same convinced me that the path to greatness involved the company of musicians. But how was I, in all my awkward adolescent glory, to gain access to these uber-cool beings of humankind? I had NO chance without some sort of schtik. So, like the good tomboy I was, I decided I would become one of them; and I convinced my parents to let me pick up guitar. To be fair, this wasn’t my only reason for wanting to play. I had always loved music. At 6, an unhealthy obsession with the Blondie song "Rapture" lead to my suppertime announcement that I would be a "singer," like Deborah Harry. At 9, I started writing songs on piano. And, by 14, my hope for access to pretty boy peen had driven me to master the ultimate instrument of rock. Five years after strumming that first power chord, my hard work was about to pay off. While not a musician, Mike was most certainly a pretty boy; and he had been seduced, in part, by my own dirty version of the g-string shiver.

Mike called that week and we made plans to "hang out." From the beginning I knew it would be a "goodbye hymen" get together. Unfortunately, Mike also knew. At 19, I felt far too old to be a virgin; and I would have happily tossed my cherry out the window without ever informing the lucky plucker. But Jackie had outed me...so the secrecy I would have preferred was lost and I felt silly and vulnerable when he arrived at my door.

Because I was sick with nerves, I wanted to treat him like a sex deliveryman who had come to quickly perform a service…to rid me of this stupid embarrassing leftover of babyhood. Then, he could be off to his next sad and pathetically old virgin client. Unfortunately, he wanted to eat before we got started. So, we went to the local Tasty Freeze, just like "Jack and Diane" of John Mellencamp's teen love anthem, which retrospectively seems ironically appropriate. Energized by burgers and fries, we headed back to my apartment, where I nervously attempted small talk. Thankfully, Mike grew impatient quickly. He clumsily lifted me mid-sentence, pushed me hard against the nearest wall, and shoved his tongue down my throat. "It's beginning" I thought with relief as he carried me to my room, threw me on the bed, disrobed me and deflowered me. There was no pain, no blood. I even had an orgasm thanks to his "cunning linguistics." About five minutes in to the experience I thought, “this is so not a big deal. What the fuck was I worried about?” Nevertheless, when it was over, I prayed for him to leave. I didn't want to be bothered with a post-coital intimacy that didn't exist. Thankfully, he did; and I quickly called Jackie to tell her all about the experience. Then, I made a list of other boys I wanted to "hang out" with now that the virginity monkey was off my back. But, before moving on to that list, I decided to travel north to Indianapolis to perfect my skills with Mike the following weekend…and the weekend after that, and the one after that…and then all hell broke loose and I realized that perhaps sex wasn't as perfectly simple as I wanted it to be.

Mike lived in what could only be termed a “party house.” Every weekend kids on nonstop trains to nowhere gathered to imbibe the cheapest spirits and smoke the shittiest weed Indianapolis had to offer. These weren't college parties, where crazy conversational tangents always seemed to redeem the ever-present debauchery. These were parties for lifelong burnouts…people bound for cirrhosis by 30 and dentures by 35…two would be dead before 35. Someone always passed out in a puddle of their own vomit only to wake the next morning and watch football in the same vomit stained shirt they were wearing the night before. Girls got stupid drunk and fucked guys with rotting teeth and unkempt hair. Many of the girls would be pregnant within a couple years - and in the Midwest tradition, married to those same toothless drunks.

I thought I was superior to most of the people who frequented Mike's parties. Although I was still a year away from fully outgrowing the ugly duckling phase of my adolescence, I was smart and thin; AND I had some place to go on Monday morning…calculus class. So, imagine my shock when I walked in on Mike fucking an orange haired half-wit named Jeanie, who would graduate from chunky to obese within a year. I was livid…not specifically because he was cheating on me. We weren’t together in that sense. But I HAD driven an hour for three weekends in a row specifically to "hang-out" with him and now he was "hanging out" with another girl while I was in the living room and everyone at the party knew. I felt like a fool in front of people I considered far more foolish than myself; the pain of that embarrassment was only augmented by my general lack of experience in personal relationships. In an effort to conceal my hurt I immediately shifted into revenge mode.

Mike's best friend at the time was David. He wasn’t as “HOT” as Mike, but he was soft-spoken and thoughtful. Like me, David played guitar and, on a couple of occasions, we traded riffs in the midst of all that drunken debauchery. He was cool in a way that I didn't yet notice or understand. When he offered to take me to his house to sleep that night, I accepted because a.) I was too drunk to drive myself anywhere, and b.) I was out for revenge. “Tell Mike, I’m at David’s,” I loudly slurred to partygoers, as I followed David out of the house.

During the drive, I mentally prepared myself to fuck David. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I figured it a necessary evil in the quest for revenge against Mike, which was my sole interest. Mike would learn that nobody made a fool of me without reaping the same consequence. So, as we pulled into the driveway of David’s house, I pushed back the tears I could feel welling and I marched inside, with my perfected teenage tough girl bravado, fully prepared to give David the best fuck a girl who’d only just lost her virginity could give.

To my surprise, David didn’t make any kind of sexual advance. Instead, he poured me a glass of water and set me up on the couch with a blanket and a pillow. He took a minute to assure me that Mike was a huge asshole and then he went to bed. My tears started as the house settled into silence and I felt the weight of my heartbreak. I wasn’t crying because of Mike. I knew he was a loathsome prick. In the years to come he would cease all efforts at personal grooming. He would have trouble holding a job and would lose his house and his looks by 35. Shedding tears over him specifically was unthinkable. Rather, Mike’s meanness felt so pronounced in the face of David’s simple kindness…and I somehow knew it would be a long time before I found kindness genuinely attractive. Mike was not going to be the last guy to make me feel foolish and angry. He was just the first.

The next morning David made breakfast before driving me back to my car. Over orange juice and eggs, he told a story about a job he’d once had driving an ice cream truck. “I came upon this trailer park and I thought, ‘this fucking place is going to be loaded with kids.’ So I cranked the carnival music full blast and headed in. Turns out it was a bunch of old people. They were all sitting in lawn chairs in front of their trailers, a bottle of whiskey within reach and cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. Not one of them wanted any fucking ice cream and they stared at me like 'what the fuck is this asshole doing?' So, I'm feeling like a complete jerk and I just want to get the fuck out of there. Turns out the street is a fucking dead end…and I have to turn the truck around and drive by those same folks again…with their noon cigarettes and their whiskey chasers. Fucking ridiculous!”

To this day, the memory of David's story makes me laugh. Ironically, I can’t recall a single thing Mike ever said to me…not one anecdote or joke or witticism. I can’t remember a single thing we really did together aside from that first meal and the fucking. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget that goddamned ice cream truck story.