how i lost my virginity, pt. 9

[part eight]

after we had moved, i felt very relieved. i felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. no more lying. no more pretending. no more big mouth ruining everything. i could start anew. i had successfully kept the cat in the bag. or so i thought, until i found out that erica had blabbed to rob that i was, indeed, a virgin. i had her call him and tell him that i wasn't as damage control. i really didn't want him to know. i really didn't want him to feel like he wasn't "special" enough. he was too special, and that's why it didn't happen. i thought that erica was the only person i could trust, and when i found that out, i officially had no one.

this was the beginning of the deterioration of our friendship. spending every second together was starting to be a bit much. even when she left the house for school, i wasn't rid of her. her mess flowed into every room, crept into every corner, the edges of it would lap at the doorway to my bedroom. the coffee table that i had painted myself was covered in garbage. it was The Prodigious Mess. it was such a mess that i gave it a name. for the first few weeks, after she'd leave for school, i'd set about cleaning the entire house. i'd vacuum, do the dishes, scrape off messes that she had cooked onto our cheap ikea pans, and then the second she'd walk in the door, it was as if a tornado hit. instantly, hours of cleaning had been undone. every single day. whenever i'd ask her to do the smallest chore, like throw away a disposable tv dinner dish, or take out the trash, or move her plethora of shoes from the entry way so i didn't have to risk my life to get to my couch, she would either ignore me completely or snap at me. she didn't understand that since i pay to live here too, i get a say in what our apartment looks like. and if i don't want our apartment to look like a 5-year-old's room, then she is obligated to at least compromise. but every time i brought this up, she'd call me selfish and say that i'm not complying wither her wishes.

it also didn't help that we were practically bound at the hip. we shared the exact same social life, and had the exact same group of friends. at least she got to go out to school every day. i just sat around and did nothing. i gave up on cleaning every day after i got an ulcer from stressing over The Prodigious Mess. since she couldn't even take that as a hint, i gave up. so i just sat around. i couldn't even apply for jobs without her, because the one time i handed in an application to Tilly's without her, she pouted for the rest of the day because i left her behind. i felt like i wasn't even allowed out of the house alone.

one night, a band from the area, the valley arena, was playing a show at chain reaction in anaheim. i was originally going to go with erica, because she insisted on me bringing her along, but she came down with a cold hours before we were set to leave. so i went without her. the band played a good set. i'd only seen them at warped tour that summer. i got their demo at some random show at gilman. it was one of those weird industrial shows, and so i didn't think i'd like the band much. but once i gave the demo a listen, i loved it. so here i was at their show.

near the end of the show, this group of interesting people came up to me and asked, "why are you here all alone?" and i replied with some stupid answer, and then conversation began. there were four of them. heidi, who turned out to be 37 but looked like she was 23, lisa, johnny, who was rather cute, and adam, the latter two being in a band together. i hung out with them for the rest of the night. johnny, adam, and i ended up going to denny's, which was right next door. i had seasoned fries. they were good. we exchanged phone numbers, then i went home.

the next morning, erica headed off to school, and once again, i had nothing to do. but then i got a text message from johnny, the cute one. turns out that he and adam's band broke up last night, or this morning, or sometime within the last 15 hours. so he didn't have anything to do today. what was i doing? well, i was doing nothing, so he came over. unfortunately, it took him forever to get there because of traffic, so by the time he got to our house, erica had come home. so she came along.

we decided to just drive around downtown fullerton in his cute car. he had a black volkswagen golf, and i thought it was adorable (so i ended up getting one once my old car died, but that's later). we went to this vegan shabu shabu restaurant. we'd never been to one before. it was really good. while johnny was in the bathroom, erica leaned over to me and said, "wow kelsey, you didn't tell me that your friend was so cute!" i didn't say anything. i wanted to say, "why would i? it's not relevant to you since i got dibs," or something like that, but that would only offend her. once he got back, i felt kind of insulted when she started hitting on him constantly. how disrespectful. this is the first time that i have i guy that i'm actually interested in who returns the favor, and she's going to try to ruin this for me. whenever she'd have crushes on anyone, no matter how unattainable they were, we weren't allowed to even look. so how is it okay for her to flirt with my crush right in front of me? i thought that was rather rude.

so once we got home, we decided that since halloween was well on its way (it was in less than a week), we were going to watch the Nightmare Before Christmas. we put it in, and of course i knew all the words. as we all sat on the couch merrily watching the movie, johnny started putting his arm around me and touching my hands and such. around the middle of the film, erica got up to go to the bathroom, and we stole a kiss. we stopped just as she re-entered the room. as the movie ended and the credits started rolling, i really didn't want to get up, because what would i do next? i really wanted to just start furiously making out with johnny, but erica was right there. did she know? is this really as awkward as it seems, or is it just me? what should i do? so we just sat there. when the credits ended, erica announced that she was going to bed. i was relieved, because i didn't have to think of anything clever.

once she left, johnny and i started making out again, and after a few minutes we turned off the dvd player and headed to my bedroom. i don't remember thinking anything like, "omg this is it!" or asking myself, "is this really happening?" as i thought i would have. we just went into my room, closed the door, and continued.

i tackled him and ended up on top of him, and we stared removing each others' clothes. i didn't want to be in charge of things, considering that i'd never done this before, so i tried to hand things over to him, but he wouldn't take the lead. so we stopped.

"what's wrong?" he asked. "nothing," i said. i was going to try to play it cool and leave the whole virginity thing out of the equation, until he blurted out, "i've never done this before..."

i tried so hard not to laugh. this was too perfect. after all that. what a coincidence. after all this bullshit, after all the people i've tried to pursue, the one i finally get into my bed turns out to be a virgin too.

"are you serious?" i said incredulously. at that point, he thought i was laughing at him. i told him that i wasn't, and that i was, indeed, a virgin as well. at first he didn't believe me, but then we laughed about it for a few minutes. we talked about why we were still virgins, me at 18 and him at 20. for me, it just never happened, more or less. for him, he always just ended up chickening out. that was when he tried to get out of it.

"yunno, we don't have to, i mean..." and i cut him off by pinning him down and saying, "oh no, you're not chickening out this time." i'd been waiting for that moment for years, and his cowardice was not going to keep me from my prize.

when we finally got all of our clothes off, it was time to sort out the protection, which i had kept dutifully in my bedside dresser. he messed up a couple of times, but that was okay. i had a million condoms, since i had no use for them until then.

it wasn't embarrassing, or painful, or unpleasurable as all of my friends had described it. it didn't hurt at all, in fact, it felt good. it felt like i thought it should have.

we had three rounds, all of them lasting about 15 seconds. but it was okay. next time would be better.

afterwards, we did the whole "cuddling" thing that you're supposed to do while recovering from the throes of passion. since it was getting pretty late, i walked him to the door and he left with a goodnight kiss.

after he was gone, i was left to my thoughts. my friends' first experiences were often awkward, or regretted later, or painful, or just plain bad. i lucked out. my first time turned out to be better than any of theirs. all of the stupid conflict from the last several months was now resolved. not only was i now even with my friends, but i had also one-upped them. that was a secret i kept from them for years, as my own sort of quiet revenge.

it wasn't until a couple of days later, after halloween had come and gone, that i had realized that all of this was preordained. i got my first condom when i was 12 years old, as part of a goody bag from the KROQ weenie roast. i didn't tell my mom about it because i wanted to keep it (even at such a young age, i was always a bit of a perv). the expiration date printed on the back said "10/2005." i had promised myself that i would lose my virginity before the expiration of this condom. even though i had thrown it away a couple years back (because even if it wasn't set to expire for a while, i still wouldn't trust a condom that was several years old), i had managed to keep that promise to myself. i had achieved my goal in the nick of time, the 27th of october, 2005.

[part ten]