really… special, you know…
SW: What was it made out of?
SB: It was beads. It was like… ohmigod. He was a very… all-American boy. So he made this red, white, and blue beaded necklace and then in the middle there was one green bead and that symbolized me because I really liked green. I might actually still have that. I don’t know.
SW: Did you wear the necklace often or no?
SB: Ohmigod, every day. I was really cheesy about it too. I was like, "OK, I’m totally gonna marry you because we were both virgins and we lost our virginity together so." It actually lasted for a year. We still randomly communicate off and on.
CONCEDING THE MATCH
Oliver, 31
I was very lucky to have a sweet, smart girl as a high school girlfriend because I didn’t deserve her. I was a horny 17-year-old and I had verbally pressured her so much to go all the way that she came up with this system that, looking back on it was quite mature for two teenagers. We decided that the day she wanted to do it, while we were fooling around she would give me two taps on the back.
One afternoon we were hooking up in my bedroom and out of the blue she tapped me twice on the back. I said, "Really?" She didn’t answer, she just tapped me again. That was that. We giggled a lot afterwards, which surprised us. I can remember telling her that maybe the first time isn’t supposed to be too serious. It’s supposed to be kind of fun and loose.
***
The next morning we had sex and she said the most flattering thing she could have possibly said and it has continued to give me confidence throughout the years. She looked at me and said, "Are you sure you've never had sex before?"
Russell, 20
Land O' Lakes, FL
***
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Julie, 30
I was absolutely not considered in a sexual way by any male in high school. I begged six of the dorkiest guys to take me to prom and they all said, "No." So I was one of those girls who was accidentally forced to wait.
After high school I found out about this job up in Bethel, Alaska, rebuilding troughs that led up the side of waterfalls for salmon to swim up and get back to their breeding territory. My dad’s dead and my mother’s crazy so I had no trouble uprooting myself and traveling up north. I saved up money and I was as pure as a virgin snow when I arrived up there like Sam McGee from Tennessee*. I journeyed to Alaska intending to save the fish but I instead found out that more money was to be made in actually gutting and canning them, tending them from a boat off the Kuskokwim River.
On this fish boat of maybe three females and 86 males there was a baker named Mack. I was 19, he was 27 and Mack the Baker, in my 19-year-old sentimental mind, somewhat reminded me of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway I let it slip to Noreen the Cook who had lost like 90% of her arm in a cutlery accident, I accidentally let it slip to this untrustworthy cook Noreen that I thought Mack the Baker should be the man who devirginizes me. I thought it was time and I was in Alaska, the land of men. We were on a boat killing fish, it was a very primal setting. He was a Capricorn just like my dad.
Rumors spread and he caught wind of my yearning loins and cornered me one evening at the back end of the boat. He came up on me as I was gazing out at this beautiful sunset, like a backdrop from the movie musical Oklahoma. I was having a private, whimsical, weighted 19-year-old moment looking out at the sunset, all this beauty, and Mack the Baker cavalierly waltzes up and the first thing he ever said to me, which was the first thing he said to me in the six months I was there was, "So, I hear you want me to take your virginity." An enormous red blemish erupted on my cheeks as I tried to pretend that that utterance had not been uttered. It felt that at least 3,000 seconds had passed before he stated, "I don't think it's such a good idea."
Now I was a woman of integrity, even at 19. So I ignored the entire scenario. I had pretended none of it had
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