By Rachel Keown

I was eight centimeters dilated and considered too much of a risk for an epidural. I hadn’t wanted one anyway.  I felt a head full of drugs was no way for anyone to enter or exit this world. If I was going to die, and I wished this once an hour during the contractions, I wanted to do it with a clear mind. At least then, the baby would have been adopted by the perfect mother, and have an endless supply of Garanimals, crustless sandwiches, and a father. As I lay there, the afternoon's main attraction in the Barnes Jewish Hospital freak show, it was never more apparent that losing my virginity, as a high school freshman, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

The man I chose wasn’t the captain of the football team. He, through no decision of his own, had long been betrothed to a cheerleader. These were simply the rules of High School...rules encouraged by our very own principal, a former linebacker who had once relished in his own glory days of polished trophies and backseat coitus. Principal Theaboux had been certain football would take him around the world.  But, then he tore his ACL, and was forced to trade in that trip and take a family instead. I was determined the man I lost my virginity to would be destined for greater things.

David was my secret crush. He was approachable, but still in another league. His high school success was founded on a perfunctory skill at all things mathematical.  Moreover, he had excellent rapport with every teacher; and despite being deaf in one ear, he was the leader of the trumpet section in the Black Knight Marching Band. He was genuinely Aryan, with steel blue eyes that could cut glass in an instant—the type of eyes that could look into the soul of a burdened freshman girl, and whisk away any notions of fifth period test anxiety. David came from a long line of teachers and architects, and my imagination ran wild plotting the great things he was bound to do upon graduation. I envisioned him as the next Frank Lloyd Wright, immaculately conceiving a new wave in housing structures; and then one day he would trade in his hard-hat for a houndstooth jacket and settle into a tenure track position at Berkeley. He was the type of man that a girl could count on to call the next day.

I had learned the basic mechanics of sex at the tender age of eight, after an appalling monologue from my mother, that was punctuated with her characteristic hand gestures.  Afterward, I felt so traumatized, that I could muster only one question: "Do you really have to get naked in front of a man?" I'd asked.  “Well,” my mother ruminated, “it does make it easier.”

By the time I was fifteen, my sexual education hadn’t matured much beyond that conversation - aside from that one porn video I had discovered at my brother’s house.
While watching the video, I couldn't understand how the man’s white urine (eventually I would learn this was called "semen") had been  transferred inside the woman, then back into her own mouth. Later in life, I was shocked and disappointed that this confusing act had been named after one of my favorite desserts. From that day forth, I was never able to face a coconut cream pie again.

By freshman year I had barely discovered how to wear a tampon properly and had no idea how to handle a man’s junk. I simply had no concept of sex or the reproductive cycle, and I had been mildly disturbed by the entire concept since the aforementioned discussion with my mother. But when I saw David, somehow I knew that he had the thing that would quiet my mind and fill that youthful gap in my understanding.

“Early Band” had a designated start time of 7:00 AM. If you were ten minutes early, you were on time. If you were on time, you were late. Such was our band instructor's military mentality, which was held firm and carried out by the gallant little buglers that were the section leaders. This is where I spent my glory days - perfecting an unfaltering run or glissando up the marimba. I prided myself on the fact that I qualified for all-state band as a mere freshman.  This was a feat of great magnitude that few seniors could claim during their student careers. Of course, David was not only in all-state band, he was also first chair trumpet. His playing was flawless, just like his nearly post-pubescent body.

I had first approached him, with idle conversation, one Friday morning after a show run-through. The closer song, “The Fall of Saigon” was still ricocheting off the aluminum bleachers, as the snare drums battered their cadence down the ten-yard line. It had all become a war-cry of sorts -  a Neanderthalic display of excessive aggression really - for the students at Farmington High. Our Black Knight football team was slated in a rematch against the rival North County Raiders that evening. There must have been an electricity in the air that transformed the typical cliques in my high school, somehow merging them together, unscathed, into one symbiotic Raider-hating machine. We all somehow knew, however, that once the Black Knights had prevailed, stasis would return to the halls, and the nameless would again seep into the woodwork.

Even David, who had an aversion to all things athletic, had worn the tribal colors of Black and Gold that morning - his “Flash” comic t-shirt a subtle display of patiotism and dedication to the upcoming event. I couldn’t help but swoon.  He had perfected his devil-may-care sense of “cool” with this tasteful marriage of school spirit and affection for graphic novels. Never before had I seen such a sophisticated and unassuming sense of style.  I didn't know it then, but I would later develop an unhealthy obsession with obscure comic-book t-shirt references, in conjunction with personal statements and political adjudication.

David and I were alone in the practice/shoe room—an unconventional place to display sexual propensity. Nevertheless, the aroma of corn chips and sock sweat infused the air with unwieldy pheromones--a savvy cocktail of lust that neither of us could deny. MTV’s Daria embodied the confidence and the playfully aloof demeanor that I lacked but longed to have.  As such, I modelled myself after this morose iconoclast in a grand attempt to attract a mate. Sarcasm was the bait, humor was the hook, and David was the perfect catch. One calculated jibe at the over-stimulated meathead jocks, and he would be mine. My tactics proved fruitful.

Now I should interject here that I didn’t know that a full reproduction cycle spanned 28 days. So naturally, because my monthly period ended a few short days beforehand, I assumed that my body was clear for landing. In my mind, a period meant that I was only fertile for five to seven days out of every month. David had agreed, and assured me that the pull-out method was 100% effective. Against my better judgment, I decided not to question his hypothesis. I was afraid to hear that David had scientifically proven the efficacy of the pullout method with some other girl.  Rather, I wanted to believe that I was his first, too.

I failed to even consider the possibility of getting an STD.  I was no role model for children.  I was fifteen and dying to dip my toe into adult waters.  So, without even the slightest protest, his unprotected member was inside me, torturing my hymen. Now, when I was eight, my mother had explained to me that sex was going to be painful upon the first go--and that I probably wouldn’t enjoy it. In fact, she was rather insistent that sex never gets better and eventually becomes a waste of sweat equity—whatever that meant.  I liked to believe she felt this way because she never wanted her darling little “Annie Lou” to make the great transition into womanhood, and not the result of her own growing personal vendetta against all things phallic.

Our sex was all wrong. In my dreams I had mapped out every move I would make on the day our carnal intuitions pitted us together. I had likened our intimacy to a call-and-response grope-fest. His succinct ability to manipulate the valves on his trumpet had only readied him for, what I imagined would be, legendary foreplay. Roses by the dozen would relinquish their petals so that we could bed ourselves in their perfumed softness. I would be able to see myself in his eyes and finally realize my purpose as the tiny dust speck that I was. Andtheylivedhappilyeveraftertheend.

But, I cheated myself out of that dream. Instead I was laid out spread-eagle atop two rickety benches that had seen everything from red clay mud to tainted jock. My foot had been wedged into the bell of a renegade Sousaphone. And somewhere between robotic thrusts, David was able to embed an oboe reed to the inside of my thigh. An impromptu pep rally had assembled outside for the football team, but I wasn’t even able to transform the hollering into personal cheers.

The sex didn’t hurt. It wasn’t anything. I was equally disappointed either way. In the grand scheme of infatuation, it really was the hunt that had been the most thrilling. As I glared at the “Flash” insignia on his chest, I wondered what Daria would have done. There had been no room for ironic commentary, with all the “hemming and hawing” of forced satisfaction. It seemed like David was screwing for a personal best of For-ev-er (which, in my fantasies, had seemed appropriate), when I realized that he was holding back so I could finish—which, might I add, was his only attempt at reciprocation. So, I let out some ridiculous sigh that, to this day, haunts my memories whenever I’m about to actually finish with a man. Then what seemed like mere seconds later, David was in the process of testing his hypothesis.

And nine months later, I reassumed the spread-eagle position - this time on sterile linens and with my feet cradled in stirrups. During the pregnancy, I had become quite knowledgeable about the female reproductive system and its cycles. Unfortunately for me, the timing of my education had been a tad off.

There I was, moments away from a future of Cheerios in my hair and trips to Gymboree...while David was off preparing his audition for the  Drum and Bugle Corps—and a full scholarship to pursue a double major in Architectural Design and English Literature. I have no doubt, that for him, becoming a father was the last thing on his mind. But for me, that was the day I traded in my own trip around the world for a bastard instead.