how i lost my virginity, pt. 3

[part two]

the summer after i had finished high school was strange, because all of a sudden everyone wanted me. i went from absolutely zero to four: rob, aaron, gregg, and chelsea. this all happened in the two months before i was set to move to southern california with erica. she was going to go to cal state fullerton, and i was going to take a year off. this felt like a limitation. it felt like there was constantly a timer ticking away at the summer. i felt like i couldn't start anything that i wouldn't be able to end in two months. this made things difficult.

rob and chelsea happened at the exact same time. i met them the exact same weekend at the end of june 2005. one thursday, the farmer's market had gotten rained out, and so me and erica went to the crib, one of the few 18+ clubs in the city, for the first time because it was party monster night (it was lame, we were the only people who dressed up). before embarking on our adventure, we had dinner at san rafael joe's with robin and her cute friend chelsea. she was a bit dykey for my taste, but she was still adorable.

so we all danced the night away, and by the end, chelsea and i were grinding and making out and it was awesome. and hott. very hott.

and then, three days later, we met rob. me and erica were at a physchobilly show at the phoenix theater, and we met this awesome dude named rob. we ended up hanging out the entire night together, and going to denny's in corte madera at like 2 in the morning. we invited robin along too. the night was entertaining over all.

now, this is when things got complicated. this is when i really started to notice that i was being treated very differently by all of my friends, simply because i was a virgin. for some reason, being a virgin means that you know absolutely NOTHING about sex, or your own body, or masturbation, or anything of the sort. in fact, you get offended if such things are mentioned. now of course, all of this is absolute bullshit. but i was still treated like an 11-year-old nonetheless.

i got the higher-than-thou attitude from everyone, including erica, even though she had only been sexually active for a grand total of a couple of weeks. all of a sudden, she was a sex expert. i remember one time, we were having a conversation about having sex outdoors, specifically sex in the parking lot of muir beach at 2 in the morning. now, i get cold easily. i knew i would not enjoy it. i could imagine that i would get that same briny feeling on my skin and in my lungs that i got whenever i ran the mile in P.E. in the rain. i could imagine it being very unenjoyable. but of course, since erica had had sex once, she knows my body better than i do. "trust me," she said with a smug air, "you'll be fine." she said it with that "mother knows best" tone, and i just looked at her in disgust.

i also got the same attitude from my friend robin, who had lost her virginity at the age of 16 to a boy she met on the internet. she had met him on vampirefreaks.com, and he went by the name natas (which is satan backwards). i had been dealing with the "robin knows best" attitude since then.

as time progressed, i started to notice the difference more and more. the subject matter of conversations would often change once i walked into the room. or the topic of sex would altogether be avoided whenever i was present. so i made a decision. even though i had never been self conscious about my virginity, i was going to keep it under wraps. this wasn't even because i was embarrassed about the virginity itself; i just wanted to be treated like a normal educated person, just like my friends were. after all, it is kind of hard to get laid when everyone you know treats you like a child.

so for a while it worked. and i did notice a difference in the way that i was treated by the people who didn't know versus the people who did. and it was great for that while.

while all of this was happening, i was still trying to get closer to chelsea, because i took quite a liking to her. however, as rob's profound love for me grew, it became increasingly difficult and awkward to hang out with everyone at once. i really wanted to hang out with chelsea, but i felt like i couldn't let anyone know about it. first off, rob would be heartbroken. second, this was still during the time that robin's mouth was bigger than lake ontario. if you told her something about your sex life that may have been amusing or interesting, but still didn't want the whole world knowing about it, it would be the butt of her next joke regardless. and she'd repeat it. over and over again.

in the midst of all of this, the second chance i had to lose my virginity came and went. it was with chelsea, one of the times that we hung out together in her huge house on the outskirts of san rafael. we watched "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" (which is still one of my favorite movies to date), and messed around in her room for a while. we would have gone "all the way," but her mom had just called her to tell her that she'd be home in less than 20 minutes. it was quite enjoyable while it lasted. it was the first time i had gone that far with another female, and i still held my verdict that girls are much better kissers. that was an enjoyable day. it was the first time that i'd been too overcome with desire to properly focus on the event at hand. for instance, we stole kisses when her mom wasn't looking while playing pool. it was the worst game of pool i'd ever played, but i didn't care much. unfortunately, this would be the last chance i really got to see her. after that, everything just got too confusing.

i'd never had to deal with this before. i'd never had to juggle friends who are in love with me with friends i want to spend the entire day with alone. and so i just did nothing. i let it guide me because i didn't know what else to do. and i hated that i had to just let her hanging because i just didn't know what else to do. i couldn't even put it into words to tell anyone.

[part four]