Losing the Vcard

I am sitting naked on a window sill stories above Baltimore City, with one foot propped up against the wall, and the other dangling but not long enough to reach the floor. A sea of miscellaneous things spreads like waves around me; pieces of clothing thrown hastily wherever, partially empty bottles of gatorade and coffee cast aside. A tube of toothpaste lays beside something black and lacy, something of mine, on the nightstand.

My father warned me that sex changes things. He explained to me long ago how, under the right circumstances, it cements people together like bricks in a wall. This concept hits me hard as I watch a pale white back rise and fall gently on the hotel bed before me. An arm extends over the bed’s edge; long, thin fingertips graze the carpet below.

Almost two hundred thousand people per minute are having sex, according to some highly accurate internet source that I found this morning after Googling “how many people are making babies right now”. Admittedly I had never before been part of this statistic, until last night.

That’s right. At the ripe age of twenty one, I finally lost my virginity.

I have never partaken in anything more awkward, hilarious, physically uncomfortable, or transcendent in my life.

I’m having a very hard time pulling together coherent thoughts about it. The whole thing is one mass of sounds and images and yearning feelings and wonderment. I can see his face just beneath mine, breathing his breath, and watching his eyes as he rocked and recoiled under my skin. It was difficult to look into his eyes at first, sort of like trying to look directly into bright sunlight. There was an essence not only of watching someone undress themselves in watching him, but also an essence of being undressed emotionally before him as well.

Dad also told me to wait for the right person, and while I had been in other relationships in the past, they were about as sexless as a room full of knitting octogenarians. The very idea of being that vulnerable with someone was terrifying to me. The girl who can disrobe both her body and mind as easily as one draws the living room curtains is a girl I will never understand.

This guy (we’ll call him Liam) and I started out as good friends. Two months later, I broke up with my boyfriend, and within a week Liam and I were sleeping together.

The ironic part is that we had been sleeping together in the literal sense (rather than the figurative) for a while before hand. Many nights had found us passed out on my couch, the TV running movie credits, as we slept less than two feet apart. Some nights we would stay up until five in the morning talking, driving, exploring old country roads together on foot. Even as friends, we had a connection that I had always yearned for, and had never found until then.

And it blows my mind that I now find myself here.

It is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever experienced.

I watch him, still breathing quietly under the bed spread, feeling something that I know I felt before last night. It was definitely there. Sex seems to have awakened my awareness of it.

Something is just different about him, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is yet.

**This was written some time ago, when I lost my virginity for the first time. I reflect up on that time now, and wonder who this person is. She feels so much more whimsical, romantic, and carefree than I do today. The man I gave myself to still stands by my side today.

Mavis Knightley

www.mavisknightley.com