By: Mel

The first time I did “it” I didn’t tell anybody. I wasn’t ashamed but, I wanted to keep the memory to myself. I didn’t need any commentary from friends or family running through my head when I reminisced about it. There was plenty of that rolling around in my 15½ year old brain the night it happened.

My mom and I lived in the rural equivalent of government housing; a group of split-level apartments tacked together against a strong wind overlooking a desert view that would never make the cover of Arizona Magazine.

One of our neighbors was a couple I’ll call Fred and Lucy. Lucy was a swing shift bartender downtown, and she had two young girls, when she met Fred. 28 going on about 50, Lucy had seen a lot, but she was a nice woman and a good tipper to babysitters like me. Fred was in his 40s, a Vietnam vet and Lucy was his fourth or fifth wife. He had at least a half-dozen kids by his many exes scattered throughout the western U.S. Fred was an occasional handy man but Lucy brought home the bacon. I started babysitting for them one summer because I needed a break from my mother and the idea of flipping burgers was appalling to my delinquent sensibilities.

Most nights, with Lucy off tending bar, I watched cable TV in their living room while Fred hung out with his softball league. One night Fred came home early.

We sat on the sofa, watching HBO and shared a joint. Fred fixed me a rum and coke and I savored the fizzy soda mixed with icy, sweet liquor.

“Ever play strip poker with your friends?”

I said ‘sure’ though, truthfully most of the guys I hung out with were shy around me. I was a tomboy and apparently intimidating.

Fred got out a deck while I proceeded to get drunk off one rum and coke. We played a hand and Fred had to take off his shirt, which was fine by him. It was summer and the evenings were balmy. Hand after hand I won and Fred grudgingly took off his clothes until he was down to a pair of softball pants.

He was blushing slightly under his deep tan when he peeled those off. His dick was partially erect and stuck out under his modest gut like a tree branch. He had a livid scar running from his pelvis straight up to his collarbones. He told me it was from Nam, when at age 19, he’d driven a tank off a cliff in a dust storm and been split open by one of the panels inside the tank.

Fred sat on the couch, lit a fresh joint and eyed the TV. He caught me staring at his cock.

“You’ve seen one of these before, right?”

I nodded, and muttered ‘never hard.’ The dick is an oddly mesmerizing appendage.

He laughed, gathered up the cards and we played another hand. He got my t-shirt off this time and got to see me in all my boring white bra glory.

Eventually one of Lucy’s girls woke up crying and I had to go upstairs and change her toddler diaper. Fred put his pants back on and I went home.

We played strip poker again and, one night, when I was losing and down to my Sears-issued granny panties, Fred said,

“You’re not a virgin, are ya?”

I said ‘yeah’.

He scoffed, “No way! Nobody’s a virgin after they’re in high school.”

Confused, I shook my head.

“Come on, tell the truth.”

I was annoyed now.

“I am,” I said firmly over my rum and coke.

He watched me for a while. I was an awkward towhead with tan legs, sunburned cheeks and clunky eyeglasses.

Then he asked me if I wanted to do “it”. He explained he’d had a vasectomy after wife No. 3 and I was safe with him, no danger of getting pregnant. Surely a more enticing selling point was never offered to a wily teenage girl.
We went upstairs to the master bedroom and I laid down on the huge waterbed. Fred climbed into bed beside me. There was a black velvet poster of a tiger on the wall overlooking the bed. A surreally exotic tiger with florescent green eyes watched me.

In hindsight, I realized that Fred didn’t have a clue what foreplay was and this might have been a factor in all his failed marriages. He sucked on one of my tits for about a minute and then proceeded to fuck me very gently but monotonously. We carried on for about 15 minutes with me either staring at the top of his head or the poster of the tiger. There was no pain and he was well endowed.

Finally Fred rolled off me, stood up and smiling, hurriedly said “okay, let’s just be friends.”
I followed him downstairs, slipped my clothes on and left. When I got home, I muttered ‘hi’ to my mom and went upstairs to go to bed. I found the tiniest smidgen of blood in my underwear and thought at first it must be Fred’s. He was the one with all the scars, not me.

Afterwards, I didn’t tell anyone.

I still went over to Fred and Lucy’s to babysit but things had changed. Lucy wasn’t quite as friendly as before and now seemed slightly annoyed by my presence, but not angry. Fred was slightly jumpy and evasive.

A month later, as Fred and I sat watching TV, he picked up the remote and started surfing.

“Wanna do it again?” he asked casually, as if he was asking me if I wanted to take a ride to the local Dairy Queen.

I said ‘no thanks’. I was thinking of Lucy and I was thinking of Fred’s complete lack of foreplay. Fred’s eyebrows raised but his gaze didn’t leave the TV. He paused on an adult channel.

“Hey a fuck flick,” he said cheerfully.

I sighed, annoyed. Alien was playing on one of the premium cable channels and I wanted to see it again.

“Watch this,” he said nodding toward the porno, as he rose and stepped past me to get another beer. He patted my head as he went by. “You might learn something.”

For the first time, I watched his stocky frame disappear into the dark kitchen with real anger.

I stopped babysitting for Fred and Lucy when high school started back up two weeks later. I found out, through a neighbor in the housing project, Fred had been telling anybody that would listen that he’d nailed me.
The irony was, people looked at grizzled Fred in his cut-offs and athletic jersey and looked at me in my sullen adolescent gawkiness and didn’t believe him.

Several years later, when a friend tried to sneak 19-year-old me into a bar, Fred was working the door as a bouncer. He had moved on to wife No. 5 or 6 by then. Lucy had taken her daughters and moved to California.

Fred told the bartender I was only 16, a lie off by over three years. I ended up sitting in my friend’s sports car while she sat at the bar and had one drink with a guy friend. She told her friend that Fred had fucked me, and then blabbed about it endlessly. Her friend tried to pick a fight with Fred, presumably to defend my honor. That was the last time I saw Fred.
In retrospect, Fred was a good first time. I didn’t get pregnant as three of my best friends in high school did. And I never got raped as at least half of my friends did. No man has ever struck me and I’ve never been in a physically abusive relationship. I can’t count the number of my friends who have.

And to this day no boyfriend, past or present, has ever accused me of being an amateur.

I have no regrets about Fred, only a little disappointment that he was unable to keep his mouth shut. I realized I hadn’t changed; I wasn’t suddenly “a woman” because of my first time. Fucking doesn’t equal maturity, only time does. Sex doesn’t change anyone, only love does and that is a far rarer and more exotic animal.