Welcome to Labrys, your student-run art and literature collective of Smith College.

We were going to “hang out,” as young people say when they like to pretend their intentions are not what they are.

I was fifteen. He was kind. The kindest boy I knew. And twenty. It was mid-March. I wanted it to be special but I wanted it to be over with, and when it was done I wanted the world to know but I wanted to keep it a secret.

My mom gave me a ride to his house.

****

In order for me to tell you about my first time I must first tell you about all the other incidents, before and after, that make it significant. If virginity, as it is commonly referred to, is a quality of pureness, a synonym for innocence, perhaps we lose it earlier than we think.

Every woman has a sex story. Maybe not like in the movies where it’s romantic and perfect and heterosexual: your feet tangling smoothly against his, a white sheet covering half of your calves, and delicate instrumental jazz playing in the background. Maybe you’ve never done the deed everyone makes a big fuss about but you too, have a sex story. Our culture gives it to you whether you like it or not. Perhaps the confusion comes because we’re looking for an isolated event that is instead a product of many, smaller events.

****

Before I was even old enough to read, I walked in on my parents having sex in the living room one night. My dad said, “go back to bed,” in a whispered version of his commanding dad-voice. I remember trying to mimic the bodily shapes I saw with my Barbies the next day. It was frustrating how their legs opened only front-to-back, but not side-to-side. (Perhaps the manufacturers determined such mobility was unladylike in their dolls.) When I was six my best friend Carly found her older brother’s stash of dirty magazines. We sat in the plastic playhouse in her front yard, pink door closed, and flipped through the pages with wide eyes. I had seen naked adults before, my parents and their friends often took saunas in the nude. What I remember distinctly about that image is not the opening of the woman’s legs but the expression of her eyes in the camera. It was intensely dead-looking; focused in such a way that I felt both preyed upon and invited to gaze back. (I was too young to know about the machinations of pornography and that the camera angle and her expression were not accidental.) It was the same look I saw girls at school practicing in the bathroom mirror after reapplying eyeliner and mascara at lunchtime. It was the same look I would make years later, also in the mirror, after a glass of wine, some lipstick, and a determination to go out dancing with friends. Somewhere in between those experiences I learned to read, procured a library card, and found the young adult version of the human physiology book in which were diagrams of the male and female bodies, genitals included. I was too nervous to actually ring out the book but I came back to that aisle several times for research, knowing without understanding it was something I should hide.

****

They teach a human physiology segment in sixth grade where you learn about everything that happens in your maturing body that you can’t see. No curriculum ever includes what happens on the outside that everyone can see but no one talks about. Teachers don’t tell you that the eyes of men and boys alike will follow you down the street if you wear shorts. They don’t tell you that nearly all women’s magazines are aimed at your eyes, trying to sell you beauty products you don’t need to meet a standard you can’t meet. They don’t tell you that sometimes when you get your period your body detoxes in a way that mimics food poisoning and even though you feel like you’re going to die it’s really just normal, vaginal bleeding. They don’t tell you that if you bring a banana to your high school lunch table some boys will tell you to eat it slowly. And they certainly don’t tell you that you can’t hang out alone with your male Honors Bio teacher during lunch period instead, no matter how much you want to learn about the mitochondria.

****

I feel a chest press against my upper back. The place is a thousand degrees and everyone is covered in sweat so the nearby presence of one more body is hardly noticeable. But then he says, “Hi I’m Matt what’s your name?” just like that, all in one sentence and I feel a firm hand on my hip. He pulls me toward him. I think briefly about giving him a name other than my own, but what’s the point? It’s not like he’ll remember me in the morning. I can smell the beer and see that his eyes are not quite focused. I’m not worried but I still wonder how long it will take me to disinterest him. He has my wrists now, drawing me toward him and I take the opportunity to shout in his ear “Rose! Like the flower!” He backs up slightly. “Do you dance?” A stupid question as that’s what we’re all doing in a mosh pit—but I know he really means “I’m going to push myself up against you now.” It occurs to me that in his mind, saying no is inviting him to teach me, and saying yes is inviting him to be my partner. I think later that the witty thing to reply would’ve been “Not like you want me to!” But alas, I go for the lesser of two evils: I shout back a vague “Yeah” and start shaking my elbows in funky ways, hoping the pointed syncopation will eventually drive him off.

****

My attractive friend sits with his parents at the table left of mine. I like that the presence of the humans who created him humble his athletic achievements, his semi-celebrity status on campus reduced to the basic interaction of a boy sharing food with his mother and father. If I had met him now, would I notice him? If I had not heard his name whispered by other girls how would his face appear to me? Ah but his voice…what is it about his voice that gets me? The low rumble and British accent, I can barely understand what he’s saying yet I’m interested in the sound. Would it be different if I didn’t know the sound’s source was his rather firm chest? A chest I’ve made a point of hugging whenever I see it. One I’ve pressed my cheek against while trying to inhale deeply without his noticing. The chest I sat next to that one night in March, drunk both physically and emotionally on the idea that I might get to fall asleep on it. Ah, but his voice…I think even if I didn’t know him I would still sense the timbre in my left cheek, reverberating down the side of my neck into my collarbone. If he only knew how I hear him.

His voice could enchant me over the phone, no touch necessary, no scent nearby. But what does it remind me of? There is something frighteningly arousing and paternal in the way I pick it up across a room. I imagine being held by a past lover. I remember feeling small and warm next to him. And when he spoke I could feel the vibrations from his sternum moving through the back of my neck. It wasn’t supposed to be sexy, but there I was in his bed. That voice has told me “careful” as I was about to cross the street, accompanied by a firm hand on my forearm. I probably heard that voice as a little girl before falling asleep, quoting John Wayne for a “goodnight, baby sister.” And I’m sure that’s the voice that told my mother it loved her, placed a hand on her belly and told me when I could only feel sound that I was beautiful before he had even seen me.

****

Then, dear Body, you started bleeding. Since I turned twelve once a month, every month, I see you swell and ruin my panties. Tea and chocolate do not measure up to dragging my sheets to the sink at four in the morning. How am I better off for having massive breasts? For years it was the first thing anyone ever noticed about me, not my soft, brown hair or my large, green eyes, and sometimes, a lot of times, it was the only thing they noticed. Even sex sometimes hurts because of you. Granted, sometimes it feels amazing because of you—do you remember that August night in the back of his car? I have to say you made me look good in black underwear…Thanks for that. But then I was seventeen and learned what coffee was, that wasn’t very fun for either of us was it? What happened to loving the way it smelled but hating the way it tastes? I thought we had a deal! But no, you started liking the jolt. Reveled in my trembling hands and jittery heart and told me it meant I was skinny. When did we agree that that was our goal? Because even when we achieved it, you still weren’t happy. When all I gave you was spinach and egg whites you died on me. You reduced my soft, brown hair to clumps of limp strands on my brush. You made my large, green eyes heavy with constant exhaustion. Yet when I would succumb to a nap you would wake me up with the pain of my hipbone digging into the springs of my mattress. But worst of all, you tortured me with finally having magazine-sized breasts and thighs. And I loved that I could see the ends of my collarbones.

****

I had hoped he would keep one picture of my breasts and think: they were perfect. Just like me. I was perfect for a time, when the setting allowed for it. When I smiled more than the other girls at the table, switching couches to get closer to him. When he brought me to his childhood treehouse and we made dinner by candlelight. I was drunk and he was drunk on me shirtless. I was only in his bed for three weeks; but I was the cleanest item in his room.

Just after Halloween he slept with three women in one week; two of them weren’t me. I know, I know…I gave him permission to scratch his itch, to flip his switch, to reset his whatever it is. And I forgive him for not understanding how much of a bad idea it was to take me up on that.

My boyfriend’s sexual acts with other women didn’t bother me. It was him taking several photos of her when she looked so beautiful at the party. It was me coming home to him on the phone with her, using his flirty voice. It was finding her hair chopstick on my bedside table. It was him sharing the moments reserved for me; it was how I felt.

****

It’s a Friday now and I’m drinking rum so I think I’ve put enough distance between me, you, and all the others to tell our story. Well, it’s my story, but thanks for the fantastic cameo.