The Hymen is a Lonely Hunter

There was blood everywhere.

The pillows piled haphazardly on the floor of his bedroom were covered with it.

I was fourteen, he was eighteen. My virginity was yesterday’s news.

Before you wince at the age difference, let me say that I looked much older. I was one of those little girls who bled at eleven, boobies soon to follow.

(The sixth grade girls had already formed bitchy little cliques. One snidely took me aside to recommend I buy my first bra, with a sniff of disdain. I was still eleven in my brain, so I had no idea I was actually a braless harlot, slutting up the hallways of our middle school. I’m glad they set me straight.)

As soon as I realized the power those two ridiculous mounds of blossoming chest flesh yielded over the opposite sex, my days of climbing trees and tomboy goings-on were over. I had new grown-up games to play. 

Like seducing my older sister’s boyfriend’s best friend.

He fought my Lolita stylings valiantly. It took an entire school year to get him to see things my way. Impressive restraint for one so young.

 

But he never really had a chance. I had chosen the one who would be my first.

 

The boy who was voted Best Looking by his class. His family had money; he drove a nice car and wore the latest clothes. He was casual; never flashy. Blonde hair, blue eyes. I held my breath every time he passed me in the halls.

 

And me. The weird girl who dyed her already goofy red hair funny colors and dressed in poor kid clothing. I was voted Best Dancer and Most Revolutionary by my class, which were both just polite ways of telling me I was a bit odd.  He was completely out of my league, but I was a determined young lady.

 

My sister let me tag along on outings, his best friend brought him, and there we were. Together again and again. Just as friends at first, slowly becoming more. I sort of wore him down with the idea of me.

 

It happened over my freshman year of high school, which was his senior year, culminating in bright red splashes on his floor pillows that summer.

 

I couldn’t believe all the blood. His room looked like an abattoir for the slaughter of my innocence.

 

Yet I could believe it, because it hurt so much. I tried to push him off, mid-thirty-seconds-of-heaven, but he was too heavy and preoccupied with deflowering me. It was over before I knew it anyway. 

 

The room was dark, with some sort of classic rock music playing, but I could still see all the blood. Black-red shadows within purple shadows on the pillows and blankets.

 

I was beyond embarrassed and excused myself to the bathroom to clean up. I fashioned a pad out of rolled up toilet paper and bled all the way home, excited to have relieved myself of the burden of my virginity.

 

We didn’t have sex again that summer. A few days later, I moved to Phoenix to see if living with my biological father might be less unpleasant than living with my mom and stepfather. My first sex moved to Colorado to attend UNC.

 

We talked on the phone for hours. We wrote twice-weekly letters. We got to know each other in the way we really should have before we were physically intimate. He invited me to fly to Colorado to go skiing with his family that Christmas break and I eagerly agreed.

 

Copper Mountain. We stayed at a beautiful lodge. He let me spend the money to fly from Phoenix to Colorado, and broke up with me there.

 

He had met a girl at college. Her name was Gina. His father was a millionaire, so he didn’t understand that I would rather not have spent my own money to fly in for a break up.

 

After asking me to follow him there to “talk,” he ended our relationship in his car. It took me a minute to realize he actually wanted to talk, that it wasn’t a creative ruse for make-out privacy away from his family. Oh. Oh no.

 

He played that Who song, Behind Blue Eyes, after solemnly telling me, “This sums up the way I feel perfectly.” I remember listening to the self-piteous lyrics about how no one knows what it’s like to be the bad man, to be the sad man, behind blue eyes, and thinking, Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, you fucking asshole? Really?  

 

I still get angry when I hear that song.

 

He tried to have sex with me in a hot tub a few hours before he dumped me. Luckily, someone walked into the previously empty recreational building, making it too risky.

 

I spent the rest of the trip hanging out with his little sister, who was, fortunately for me, an awesome girl. She made the trip almost fun, despite the fact that my heart was breaking and her brother was now avoiding me.

 

She snuck into his room while he was out skiing and got a picture of Gina from his suitcase to show me, trying to make me feel better about everything. It did. 

 

Gina was not attractive, and was nearly my physical opposite—dark hair, short, squatty, with a huge gap between her front teeth into which one might fit another tooth. She said Gina also had a lisp that she worked on correcting with speech therapists weekly. I was still crushed, but at least I didn’t lose the guy to a supermodel. It helped.

 

I got very depressed after that, and my straight A grades went to straight C marks. It triggered a downward spiral for me, from smart kid to rebellious degenerate. I stopped lifting weights, running and taking good care of myself, and started drinking, skipping classes, and sleeping around with anyone in the vicinity of a bottle of booze.

 

In my head I was getting back at him, forgetting him by losing myself in other boys. I was too young to realize that I was only hurting myself with the destructive behavior.

 

The second time I had sex was at a party. I was a sophomore now and drunk, of course.

 

I knew him from around school. The poor guy didn’t know he was my second time. I bled again because it had been nearly a year since the first and last time. He completely freaked out and felt bad, even though I reassured him that it meant nothing to me.

 

He avoided me at school after that. He stunk excessively of Polo cologne (he even kept a bottle in his locker for touch-ups) and had crunchy, over-gelled hair, so I wasn’t too torn up over the loss. Nobody was getting near enough to my heart to take a swipe at it again anyhow. Not even close.

 

At one party, somebody had a bottle of Southern Comfort that they were passing around. I am a lightweight in every way with every substance, and eventually learned to stick with beer and wine, but this was before I’d figured that out.

 

I chugged the So-Co, and the last thing I remember is leaving the house to go for a walk in a drunken haze. They said I came back to the party later, covered in blood, mud and puke, and it was a miracle that I even made it back.

 

My girlfriends undressed me and put my clothes in the washer and dryer, so that I would be able to go home to my parents after the party, leaving me passed out in a pile of dirty laundry.

 

A friend told me later she’d overheard a group of guys at the party talking about how I was “completely wasted in the garage and alone…” Heavy on the dot-dot-dot and nudge, nudge, implying that they were thinking about taking advantage of me.

 

There was a guy named Scott nearby that I had one class with in school. My friend said he stepped up and said, “If anyone touches Tawni, I will kick their ass,” and obviously meant it. They left me alone.

 

I thanked Scott in class after I heard about it, but I have always wished I could thank him again as an adult. I am so grateful for his bravery. I could have had one more date rape memory under my belt, one more reason to feel disappointed in human beings, and instead a teenaged boy showed enough strength of character to give me the best two things a person can give another: kindness and hope. I still send “I wish you a wonderful life” thoughts his way from time to time, just in case it matters.

 

Now that I have a son, I only pray that I raise the good, decent person who steps up and defends some lost girl’s honor like that. 

 

Years later, my first love was out of college, home from Colorado, and we ran into each other. Lisping Gina had not worked out. We went on a few dates and the connection was still there.

 

I slept with him again. I didn’t bleed this time. I guess I was finally empty.

 

He soon told me he was falling for me; that he wanted to take our relationship to the next level.

 

And I dumped him.

 

It wasn’t very nice of me, but I like to think he kind of had it coming.