Virgin

A teen recalls a sapphic romance shaped by shame, longing, and the myth of virginity.

There was nothing ceremonious about taking Anna’s virginity. I thought she would come on my face, some bright coloured jizz and weep at how amazing I was. That all sounds too harsh. No, that’s not quite it, that’s a lie— or not quite the whole truth. Anna was to me what young lovers are: nervous, awkward, and ambitious. But sweet. We were sweet, I should clarify. There wasn’t a single original experience between the both of us, going through parallels of the same banal shit over and over again.
It was in the winter of my junior year that we fell in love on the floor in my room, her one year and one grade my senior. Janis Joplin growled from the stereo of my record player. I felt sexy in my little black shirt, my first adult piece of clothing. It boasted a lacy bra through the soft fabric of my bust. The girl beneath me grinned stupidly as I prowled over her with the kind of confidence that makes me cringe now. Messily, gracelessly, I devoured her face, wanting to consume her, destroy her; feeling the foreign fullness of her twelfth grade figure. A tentative hand smoothed a lock of a hair behind my ear while my fingers itched at her waist.
You can’t, your mom is in the kitchen, she whispered, dimples peeping on her cheeks and averting her eyes. I smiled and shook my head, fingers itching at her waist.
So what? I responded testily, inspecting her.
Anna was not a sexy person. Anna was giggly and quick to smile when I made her flustered. The largeness of her teeth and roundness of her school-girl cheeks became startlingly apparent then. If not for my egotism, I would not have realized the entirety of how ‘virgin’ she was. To my dismay, Anna was not someone to be conquered. Anna was candy from a baby. I did not fuck her on the floor that winter. Nor did I during the time we dated.
We dated until spring. Spring came and I broke up with her. ‘Why’ at the time eluded me. It was in the middle of her exams. Ten out of ten for a grand exit.
We did not talk for a while after that. Time and responsibilities kept us apart for the rest of the school year until June. I flew out to the otherside of the world to stay with my recluse father and help him pack. He was moving to another country, and this time I was moving with him. While my life was taking shape down an unfamiliar path, Anna’s was too. In Scotland. University. I rolled the word over in my mouth throughout the summer months like a large, clumsy hard candy. I secretly wondered to myself, on restless nights when I could fool myself into thinking kindly of her without the judgment of my daylight self, if she would become less , less innocent, less ‘virgin’ after she started the whole university ordeal. I was discovering twelfth grade no longer sounded as tempting as it did to me when I was a virgin once, giggling and whispering in some unimportant past life.
Memories and time slid amongst each other, snaking through my daydreams and nightmares that summer. Maybe it was the humidity. Maybe it was loneliness. Whatever it was, it made my memories of the time before and after that black shirt. The little black shirt punctuated my life, the death of Christ. I grew stiflingly sentimental, the way aging women grow fat: unwittingly and when unchecked, wretchedly.
Before Anna, there was Kristine. The way she pinched me and turned my name into a doll house of Slavonic -chka’s and -ya’s, made me giggle and blush to my ears. Kristine intimidated me with her height and tired, back-handed way she referred to the striding high school teachers I had only ever seen in the hallways. I have never believed any woman who has told me I am beautiful more than I believed Kristine when she took my virginity. Shivering and giddy, she left me on the side street next to the venue after her graduation and I never saw Kristine again.
On the disgustingly warm days of July, when sweat congeals itself on your skin and heat rash festers in every tender orifice, I could feel distaste for the world prickle at my tongue. A general feeling of loathing had come over me that I couldn’t quite name. I could feel it humping at my throat like a foreboding gag reflex every time I saw a cicada fall dead from a tree, knowing they only live to reproduce. One fuck wonders.
For a whole day, I cried without purpose. Acid is not an easy pastime when you hate yourself. By the end of July, I missed Anna terribly.