TMI?

In August of 1986 I was a wee cheerleader, fifteen and barely five-foot-two, dating my very first serious boyfriend, a seventeen-year-old football player who towered over me by almost a foot. He was about to be a senior and I was about to be a sophomore, and he was as new to being in a “real” relationships as I was.

He was a football player—a sweet and hilarious wide receiver, bright and kind enough to make up for the fact that he wasn’t especially handsome. Our football program was all about the running game, so the fact that he was a decent receiver meant little—he was a minor player on the team. I was a lowly tenth grader with stringy hair, bad skin, suspiciously good grades and too much interest in reading; I was totally a minor player on the cheerleading squad, there because I had rhythm and could do gymnastics, not because I was pretty or popular.

I tell you these things so you don’t see the words cheerleader and football player and get all glassy-eyed and bored, and automatically cast us in the Silhouette Romances you read in seventh grade. We were pretty much as far from Ken and Barbie as it was possible to be while still having a place in the margins of the toy box. I had great legs, true, but I wore bad make-up and spent too much time thinking everyone was an idiot, and he was a senior and had a car, but he also had a mullet and a mother who made him wear an ugly scarf with his letterman’s jacket, to keep him from catching cold.

He wore Polo cologne and chewed Big Red gum, and the music I think of when I think of him is from the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, and Bon Jovi. How he loved that my name showed up in one of their songs—he had a terrible singing voice, but would screech it at the top of his lungs.

I loved him. I really did, and I know he loved me. We always had fun together, and in August of 1986, after we’d been together for several months and he’d given me his class ring (and I think he had mine, too, because that’s what was done at the time), I decided that we should lose of virginity together.

Seriously—it was all my idea. He didn’t mind, of course, although he never pressured me as we felt our way around the various bases. I was terribly curious about it, and wanted to know what the big deal was about, but the thing that put me over the edge and made me sure I wanted to Do It was another couple, L and D. They were both seniors and had been together forever. He was a fierce running back and a star, and she was a blond and pretty cheerleader. (They were a kind of Mountain version of Barbie and Ken—he was tough, bearded, and Bronco-driving and she had a mouth like a truck driver, but they were indeed attractive and popular.) I admired L, the girl, who was goofy and funny and always seemed to be having a great time, but I was a little afraid of D and his muscles and glowering.

One day, though, during two-a-days, the twice daily football (and cheerleading) practices that were held during the two weeks before school started, L and D were goofing off in the parking lot at lunch when L fell down in some gravel and scraped her knee. I will never forget seeing D swoop over her, lift her up like she was a little kid, and run her into the school and to the nurse’s office. He was so tender and competent in that moment, and I knew I wanted to have a relationship like theirs. I also knew that L and D slept together, and I figured it was the sex that made their relationship so much more adult. And at fifteen, there was little else I wanted more than to be an adult.

So I said the word, condoms were bought, and plans were made. We went to my church’s annual August festival fund-raiser for pizza and funnel cake, and left our friends there. We took a blanket from his car and walked into the corn field behind my house, and we did it right there, under a very pretty night sky.

Yes. I lost my virginity in a corn field. Not in a hotel room, not on someone’s couch when their parents weren’t home, not even in a car. In a corn field. And it had been PLANNED that way.

It was obviously over pretty quickly, and I can’t say it was especially momentous, but it wasn’t bad, either. I remember that it hurt a bit, but not as badly as I’d feared. And I remember that there was a dried up corn cob under the blanket, pressing into my back—that was much more uncomfortable.

And then . . . that was it. He and I were part of the club. The initiated. I really did feel older and more mature. I felt like there weren’t any secrets left that I cared to know the answers to. We did it a lot more, and got pretty good at it. We stayed together until I broke up with him my junior year of high school, when I felt stupid dating a boy who was away at college when there were so many other boys right in front of me.

He was a great first boyfriend, and I never regretted losing my virginity when I did. It was planned and tender and loving, and handled really well, after all.

I wonder now, though, whether I should have waited. Because while I was right in thinking I was ready to handle the physical aspects of sex, I wasn’t at all ready for the . . . mystery of it? Is that what I’m getting at? Because I think having sex when I did aged me in a way. I wasn’t a jaded, cynical adult at fifteen, but I felt like one from that time on. Sex ceased to be something special. It was still nice, and good, and something to be sought after, but . . . I think something in me hardened then, when I lost that innocence. Even though it was a good and special and happy and controlled situation—and something I had wanted to happen, I wasn’t ready for it, and it made me hard in a way that I didn’t even recognize.

I wish someone had explained that possibility to me back then, even though I probably wouldn’t have listened. I hope I’m able to explain that to The Boy in a way that makes sense to him. When the time comes, that is.

I have a feeling it’ll be a while. I hope I’m right.