How to Lose Your Virginity ...And How Not To (20 page)

So here's the story. So I was like, I'm sick of these men these pricks and shit, ever since I was locked up in Baltimore. I'm talking about the ponytail... I'm locked in Baltimore... So I'm like, fuck all this shit, right? I was locked down. There was like 150-250 bitches in there, ain't a fucking dude around. It wasn't even like that, that's the way I learned to love. Where it's safe and shit, where you got your little best friend buddy.
Then after I got out I was with this woman for like six years so I had to live loud and proud in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her and her little boy, you know what I'm saying? And people are ignorant. We'd be driving, "Hey you fucking dykes, you bitches..." you know what I'm saying? I got a son in the back of my car. What are you talking about, you know what I'm saying? I been in places, shit... Evanston, Wyoming, isn't far from here where they killed that fucking boy... and strung him to the fucking fence.
SW: Matthew Shepard?
CQ: Hell yeah. Exactly. Straight up. So it's not like I don't live with a constant awareness that I went from fucking being fucking raped to getting fucking fucked on all the time. Then I was with a woman and I was handling my shit, and these motherfuckers that get so goddamned ignorant and you're like, "Fuck, it's not even safe to be fucking..." ‘Cause I ain't no fucking scrub. I know what's up.

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I’m in charge of my own sex life now… and I have a great sex life, for sure, now. But it’s like 12 years later and it took 10 years for me to enjoy sex. And… that guy was a goddamn bastard for sure.
Wendy, 26
Madison, WI

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NICOLAS’S SIDE OF THE STORY
Nicolas, 34
This was in middle school. This was like... ninth grade. I met this girl through my cousin and I thought I was straight at the time, at least I was trying to live like I was straight. She had a quality about her that I thought was sensual and welcoming. I was living with my grandmother and at my grandmother's house you could sneak up the back way, like on different roofs to get into my room. I got her to come around one night to the other side of the house and climb up the roofs and from there, there was this pole you could climb up and then jump on the roof and then jump in the window.
We were friends since I guess we were 10 but her father didn't want me to date her. He always gave me this like disapproving expression on his face. Her father always disapproved of me and I never understood why until years later when my cousin told me, "He always thought you were gay and that you would be bad for his daughter because you wouldn't give her the love she deserved." But I was like, "She was young too. What kind of love could I give her?" But anyway, he knew I was gay and he was right. And I always saw her father as beautiful, like this quintessential male and I respected him so much because I thought he was noble. But he never accepted me. Anyway, his daughter and I dated and she snuck into my bedroom and we had sex and she started crying, which my first thought with my perverted sort of closeted gay male sensibilities was like, "Oh she's crying because I'm a man, and I'm hurting her, and I'm penetrating her, and maybe it's her first time." It wasn't her first time, it was my first time. I should've been crying too, because the reason she was crying was because she felt like I forced her into having sex. But I didn't even realize that I forced her. But if that’s how she felt then I guess I did force her. How could I deny that if that’s what she felt? And she was crying because she was so disappointed with the situation.
We hadn’t talked about having sex, it was all just nonverbal communication. It was basically me helping her through the window, and you know like, "Oh this is bad but good at the same time." And then we were lying on my bed and everything went from there. It was all sort of nonverbal. I took off her pants, then I took off my pants. But strangely enough we both had our tops on. I was erect and I tried to penetrate her and it wasn't working. I wasn’t experienced. I didn't think she was either but later she told me she was.
She was unhappy with how everything went down. I'm thinking she's a virgin and I penetrated her, that must hurt and, "Oh, what a man I must be." And it had nothing to do with that. She was completely utterly disgusted with me because she didn't want to have sex with me in that way, sneaking through my bedroom window, any of it.
Her and I never reconciled; we hardly even looked at each other afterwards. It was always avoidance. Constant avoidance but for different reasons. I thought she was avoiding me because we had sex. But she was really avoiding me because she felt I raped her. But she never let me know like, "Oh, Nicolas this is not right." I was thinking, hoping, it was sort of an overwhelming kind of spiritual thing for her but it had nothing to do with that. It was disappointment and disgust and anger towards me.
AMANDA’S STORY
Amanda, 23
I met River at a coffee shop. Cup of Joe’s Garage was the cool hangout in the town I grew up in near San Diego. I was the typical insecure girl and he was older and intellectual and different. And he was interested in me. We hung out for a couple of months and got to know each other, became friends. Then he started to really dig me and he started to do all these sweet, nice things. He made me tapes with songs on them and he wrote me poetry.
We were at his mom’s apartment where he still lived, in his room, and he gave me some beer. I never had beer before and I got drunk. It was a date rape situation. And then afterwards he pretty much abandoned me. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t call me and I was very confused by that. It was my first experience with alcohol and my first experience with sex and because of that experience, for the next five years of my life I thought sex was about me lying on my back until the man was finished.
I don’t spend much time in my hometown now, but I went back years later and I saw him, and somewhat confronted him and said, "You’ll never know…" in a nice way, "You’ll never know what an effect you had on my life." And I didn’t clarify negative or positive… but it was negative. Maybe positive, maybe it opened my eyes to somewhat the true nature of some men. But he gave me some random, intellectual comment or quote and I said, "Yeah, River. You’re so deep." And I just walked away and I felt so good.
Yeah. There was like half a dozen girls in our town that he did this to. That was his tactic. Play the part of the intellectual, find a naïve girl and make them believe he really liked them. Then he’d get them drunk, took what he wanted from them, and then never spoke to them again. There had to have been six girls who I knew personally that he had taken their virginity. He was an evil bastard. I was 15.

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I definitely see how it’s affected me in later years. And since it was the babysitter who molested me… it forced me to become more distrustful of authority figures.
Frank, 29
Philadelphia, PA

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HENRY’S STORY
Henry, 48
I was seven and it was with my cousin through marriage. I know it’s fucked up but that’s how it happened. Happened while my Aunt Bernadette’s daughter, Sandra, was babysitting me. Now I have a real aversion to heavyset women because of two incidents, the losing of my virginity and one other one.
The first incident was when I was five. My mom was white, it was an interracial marriage. She was from Montana and my dad was from Mississippi. When we used to go to Baptist churches it was like my brother and I were on display because our mother was white.
This one Sunday we’re in the back of Scott’s Methodist Church, sitting in a pew. This lady comes over sits in the space next to me. I’ll never forget this, she had a light purple dress on and she’s all of 350 lbs.… all of 350. This is in an evangelistic church and they had nurses and stuff to fan people who got the Holy Ghost and fainted. So I’m sitting and the big lady’s sitting right next to me. All of a sudden she gets the Holy Ghost in her. She jumps up and throws her arms back and hits me in the nose. I fall into the corner of the pew and she falls down on top of me. Nobody knows I’m up under her because she’s all of 350 lbs.
If you’re ever been to an evangelistic church, the music is going, the preacher is going… it’s chaotic! I’m under there and she’s got a girdle on so she can’t feel me under there. Pretty soon she sees blood, she thinks she’s bleeding and panics. My mother grabs my brother because she thinks I’m missing. Finally they get her off me, but not before I’m feeling abandoned by females because my mom didn’t save me from up under this great big weight.
Then when I’m 7 or 8 my cousin Sandra was babysitting me and she’s huge, big. And she used me to have sex with her on the bathroom toilet. I’m a kid, she’s 18 and the only way she can get serviced is having me, her little cousin, sit on her. But I didn’t even realize that what she did was wrong until my mid-40s. I was watching that movie Antoine Fisher. I see the part in the movie when the lady who adopts Antoine starts slapping him around and I have an anxiety attack right in the theatre. It was almost like the same thing I went through because when my cousin wanted to do it and I wouldn’t go along with her, she would get aggressive on me. When I was growing up I thought I was the shit because none of my friends my age were getting pussy. But at the same time, I now have a hard time with relationships and it wasn’t until I was sitting in the theatre and I saw it happen on screen that I realized that.
I run an escort service and it’s like I have an understanding of their sexuality, like I can relate to their whole well-being. I’d have to say that the females I work with, it’s sad but probably 95% of them were molested as children. Most little kids who get taken advantage of are cute kids. That’s just how it is. And back then I was considered exotic at the time… there weren’t a lot of interracial marriages or products of interracial marriages. And I didn’t even realize how fucked up what I went through was until I saw some similar exploitation in a movie. It overwhelmed me to the point where I had to be helped out of the theater, like I had gotten the Holy Ghost in me and passed out.
AILEEN’S STORY
Aileen K, 40
SHAWN WICKENS: Tell me about the first time.
AILEEN K: I don’t need to say my name or anything, right? Uh… let’s see… I-- uh… Denise was my friend at the time and she still is.
SW: Right.
AK: At the time I was 14, eighth grade… and I was dating a guy named Hal.
SW: All right.
AK: And… Denise stop getting upset whenever I tell this story. And… uh, these boys said to us, "Let’s relax, let’s relax, let’s relax."
SW: Where were you?
DENISE: In Englewood.
AK: We were at… no, not in Englewood. We were in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
SW: OK.
AK: And he said, "Let’s relax." And he gave us…
SW: You were at a house party?
AK: No…
D: It was in the basement of Hal’s house.
AK: It was two boys, two girls.
SW: OK.
D: And he gave us Valium that was his grandmother’s.
AK: His grandmother’s Valium. I was on Valium. And that’s when it happened… and I was in a back room. And I still had my shirt on… and I mean – I had my pants off, but I had my shirt on.
D: And I remember your expression after it happened.
AK: The first time… you don’t want your shirt on. You want your shirt off. You want it to be like intense and everything. And… I just remember him struggling a little bit to get it in and then him struggling to get it out. And it was not fun at all. And like I said I had my shirt on. So it was all about, you know, the sex of it all. And I came outside and… and I came outside and my best friend, Denise, was standing there…
SW: Right.
AK: Waiting for me outside and what did you… Denise, come here. You have to verbalize it. You have to verbalize it…
SW: Denise, were you at all drugged up as Aileen was?
D: I was drugged up but I… I fell asleep. And when I woke up she was standing there with her hands folded in front of her with a real foul look on her face, and I said, "What happened?" And that’s when she said, "I had sex with him." And I’ll never forget that look on her face as long as I live.
AK: And the only thing that I remember that I was really disappointed in was… number one, I was too young. I wanted the love and I wanted the hugs, the kisses. I didn’t want the fucking penetration. And the other thing is, my shirt was on.
SW: What… what effect did the drugs have on you? Did you pass out or you just couldn’t move or anything? I’ve never done Valium…
AK: Valium makes you sleepy.
D: Valium. It was Valium. And I remember it was 10mg a pill and he gave us two each. I fell asleep. He raped you.
AK: Oh, so… yeah it was considered rape, if you think about it. Date rape, maybe, possibly. Um… it just left me very relaxed and very sleepy.
SW: Right.
AK: I was not ready for the intercourse thing, I was just ready for… I was ready for a boyfriend, but not for that.
SW: Did you break up with him soon after that? Did you stop seeing him…
AK: Oh, yeah. He wanted a girlfriend with long red nails (laughs). I can laugh about it now, ‘cause it’s funny. He said he wanted a girlfriend with long red nails.
D: I’ll never laugh about it… ‘cause I’ll remember your expression standing there in the semi-darkness, with your hands folded in front of you and tears in your eyes. I don’t find it anything funny to laugh about it.
AK: Yeah. That’s my best friend. That’s my best friend.
SW: How soon after it happened… ‘cause earlier you said your mother knows. How… when did you tell her about it?
AK: Oh, god… let’s see. Hang on a second. This happened like spring, and then in summer I became like a slut because… once a teenager… no, no, no. Seriously, once a teenager loses it they become a slut. Bottom line. I am not ashamed of that. My mother knows everything. I am not ashamed of it.
D: You weren’t a slut.
AK: No, not a slut. I was… I was free. And what happened was… my mother found out. I would say in September.
SW: Right.
AK: It happened in April… my mother found out everything in September.
SW: And what did she say?
AK: Oh my god. I came home, well she… it’s a long story.
SW: Right.
AK: OK… Hang on, my mother, no… it was my stepmother who read my diary. And she went and told my mother, I came home from track one day, and my mother just said, "You! You! You! I read your diary! Oh my god. Oh my god!"
D: I remember that. And you were running down my street, screaming, crying. And your brother Scott was in the car following behind you.
AK: You know the movie Thirteen? You know, it’s similar to that. I can understand the movie Thirteen. Mine was all… I mean, I didn’t do all those drugs but I did a lot of the alcohol. And girls don’t really…
D: Bad memories for me. You losing your virginity. Bad memories.
AK: Look at her, she’s upset. Denise, Denise, yours wasn’t so dramatic though.
SW: Were you upset about Aileen so much though ‘cause you… I mean was there a feeling that you got off easy in a way, ‘cause you were drugged too, and sort of nothing happened?
D: I fell asleep so I felt like I wasn’t there to protect her. That’s what I felt like. I was 18 when I lost my virginity. So I was out of high school. But for her I felt like… I fell asleep and I let her down.
SW: Where did the other guy go that was also there?
D: He fell asleep too.
AK: I don’t think he took Valium. I think he was smoking pot or something. Yeah. But I really want teenagers, teenage girls in the world to hear something like this.
SW: Of course, because it happens. It happens.
AK: Um… after that, I have to say after a teenager, after a teenage girl or a pre-teen girl goes through something like that… they long and long and long and long for more. But I don’t think it’s sex they want. It’s intimacy they want. It’s not sex. They think they want sex. But it’s not. They want intimacy. They think the sex makes up for it. That’s why when I saw the movie, Thirteen, I was like, "Oh my god." Like I wasn’t that bad… but it was… it… it affected me when I saw that movie.