By Sara Freeman

Chicago, IL
August, 2004

My secret European online boyfriend, who I had never met in person, was meeting me at my apartment, my very first apartment, in an hour. It had been two years and counting since we met each other on a message board and I still wasn’t really sure what to expect. My poor mother, who still doesn’t know this story, had just tearfully left me, her only daughter, in the big city of Chicago and returned home to southern Oregon. I immediately missed my mom and quietly sobbed while lying on my bed before entering the bathroom, with the tears still fresh on my cheeks, and hopping in the shower to prepare for the big event.

Though I wouldn’t admit it, I was absolutely terrified to be left alone, 2,500 miles from home, and face the challenges of starting college, making new friends, finding a job, and, most importantly, losing my virginity to someone I knew, but didn’t really know. Alas, I was a faux-fearless eighteen year old girl, but I did my best to quell those feelings so I would be ready in time to meet him and finally lose the big V. I started running the shower and rapidly washed my face, hair, and body. My online bf, who I will call K, had recently told me he wasn’t the biggest fan of pubic hair. So, in order to gratify him, I bought some Nair hair removal cream on the sly and began applying the gunky white goo to my crotch while the shower was still running. At that age, I was willing to do just about anything to please the people in my life who were important to me, even if it meant hurting myself in the process.

Hindsight really is a bitch. I didn't know that Nair doesn’t actually work.  So, I idyllically sat at the edge of the bathtub for at least thirty minutes, against the directions on the bottle, waiting for all of my brown curlies to politely drop to the ground.  Meanwhile my crotch began to feel like it was inflamed with volcanic lava. I was practically screaming by the time I finally stood-up and washed away all the residue. I surveyed the results: my virginal vagina was Lolita-esque alright, but it was also bright red, kind of bumpy, and absolutely painful to touch. My clit looked and felt like a piece of Red Hot candy. Plus, there was still a lot of hair there! I grunted and groaned as I clipped and shaved away all of the remaining fetishistic indiscretions. If only I had been a feminist then…

I looked at the clock and realized I only had about twenty minutes before he arrived. I applied a tiny bit of lotion to the sorest areas and got dressed. My newly acquired black lace thong underwear felt very strange and smooth against my red patchy bits and I put on a skirt hoping some air would make my vag look slightly more appealing. I was confused about life and what I was doing, but I was hell-bent on looking attractive for our first rendezvous. I heard K buzz the intercom at the entrance of my apartment building as I was finishing blow-drying my hair.

Though I don’t think about these cringe-worthy moments of my life very often, I’ve always wondered how my life would have played out differently if I hadn’t hit the “enter” button on my intercom. But I did. It didn’t seem fair to leave him in the lurch after he had traveled all the way from Europe just to see me, even though our online relationship had been waning before this. I naively kept trying to think about the romantic aspect of the story instead of its creepy overtones.

I heard K walk up the stairs to the second floor, which is where my apartment was located. He wasn’t exactly what I had expected in terms of looks and manner, but he wasn’t that bad either. I was more or less just disappointed in his shy demeanor; the person I had come to know via instant messenger (I’m rolling my eyes as I write this), the person I had chatted with everyday for two whole years and knew every detail of my life, seemed so outgoing, suave, and confident and the person who was now standing in my apartment was so gangly, awkward, and not all that endearing. He was a few years older than I was and I had expected him to take charge of the situation, but I realized I was going to have to initiate everything despite having little to no sexual experience myself.

We sat on the edge of my bed and talked for a while. We were about as intimate in talking to one another as two patients talking about the weather in a doctor’s office waiting room. The conversation kept lingering on about nothing and so, finally, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get “it” over with. I had the courage to do this, but not enough to admit to myself that I already knew I had made a terrible decision about our meeting. I moved closer to him and started the kissing, canoodling, and caressing. As I stood-up and un-dressed, I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see his reaction to my failed attempt at being sexy. I heard him put on a condom as I crawled back into bed.

To be honest, it was the single most painful experience of my life. In addition to the mixed feelings I was having internally, externally my nether regions felt like they were in purgatory because of the Nair incident and my thick hymen breaking apart so sporadically. I gathered that he was nervous because his dick was hardly hard enough to fully penetrate through me, which made the already painful process last even longer. By the time it was over, my lower body was dripping with blood from my broken hymen and, to make matters worse, it was getting into my Nair burns too. Ouch! If memory serves, we then took a shower and proceeded to unpack his things. Before we actually met and everything was yippy-skippy in the online world, we had planned for him to stay with me.

Over the next month or so, I played it cool and pretended I was happy while I lay awake at night thinking about what I should do. It was the middle of August when this was happening and school would be starting at the end of September. We got to know each other a lot better, became friends even, and by the time I ended everything it no longer felt like I had lost my virginity to a complete stranger, which was nice.

However, by mid-September, I knew what had to be done because I had already developed feelings for another person. Though this also sounds ridiculous and I actually can’t believe it’s true myself, I met another guy, Jake, through my school’s website and we became fast friends because of our similar tastes in movies, namely Terry Gilliam movies. We were both starting film school at the same time and agreed to introduce ourselves at orientation. Despite a secret crush I had been harboring for a few months, I really had no idea that we would have such great chemistry in person. Within minutes of meeting, we were laughing and carrying on as if we were old pals. Being with Jake just felt right and he made me smile my first real smile in what seemed like ages.

It only took five days for me to decide to end it with K and announce my feelings to Jake. Thinking about this makes me feel like a monster, but K and I really did end things fairly amicably because we both knew that we didn’t have much of a relationship. I confessed everything to Jake and he welcomed me into his life with open arms. Within a couple of weeks, I learned what all the fuss was about when it comes to sex and our first experience together made up for all the things that were lacking in my initial attempt. We made each other feel safe, secure, and loved and it’s been that way for almost five years now. Plus, he works at an amazing sex toy store and we get half-off on all of the merchandise.

To this day, Jake is the only person in my life who knows the entire story of how our relationship began. I haven’t spoken to K since he returned to Europe and I doubt I ever will again. I don’t think about it very often because it brings up too many feelings of guilt and shame on my part. I feel bad for pretending to be happy while K was living with me and possibly leading him on, though I think he could read the subtext of the situation. I also feel bad for not trusting and following my instincts for the only time in my life. If I had, the situation would have been a lot less trying for everyone involved. Though, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Losing my virginity to someone I didn’t care about taught me to be more straight-forward with my feelings about sex and relationships and not to rely on my culture’s preconceived notions of what either one should feel like. Jake and I have a fantastic relationship in every aspect because we are in constant communication about everything. To gain the knowledge of a lifetime in exchange for a month of mixed, messy feelings is by far the best bargain I’ve ever made, even if it did leave my pubic hair looking a little spotty from that point on.