Silke

So, I went to a really really small high school. And everyone knew who everyone was who’d had sex. For the guys it was a badge of honor. For the girls it was either nothing (if they were in a relationship) or could be a badge of shame if the girl wasn’t in a relationship or if the relationship didn’t work out and the boyfriend decided to denounce her as freak, slut, whore, or prude.

But basically, once you had sex–as a girl–you were on shaky ground. I’d learned enough from witnessing firsthand not to mention afterschool specials where girls who slept with a lot of guys for fun (a) were deemed to have “self esteem issues” and might result in the creepy school counselor crawling up your ass inquiring after your home life, or (b) could end up branded a slut and would carry that with you for the rest of their HS days.

I actually still remember the names of girls who were rumored to give blowjobs to seniors or have group sex with the lacrosse team (whether or not it’s true).

The knowledge that you’d had sex, and what you were like in bed, was a sort of social capital. I saw a girl in school who held her most popular crown from 7th to 12th grade take a massive hit when a guy she’d slept with scrawled: “Jen Pratt Just LIES THERE!!!” on a study carrel in the library–which EVERYBODY saw. And another time a popular girl who was actually nice showed up on the wall behind the school where people smoked: “Lisa Benjamin LOVES SEX!!!” Even pimply misfits could now laugh at the snobbish Jen Pratt and the hitherto almost angelic Lisa Benjamin (fake names). Which of course is horrendously unfair—both Jen and Lisa had their social careers compromised because were punished by the masses for not getting into sex enough or apparently too much.

I once was called a CT (that too was carved into a study carrel). But cocktease is so much less damaging than the others. CT is reversible; it’s something that can be cured. It establishes you ARE sexual (so not a “prude” which is also a scornable offense) but also not a slut (like when the girl Louise Doomey — pronounced “Do me” another fake name but along these lines — came back to a party after having “taken a walk” with a borderline nerd, and grass stains were all over her white pants and back).

So, I did not want the social liability of being called a slut. I didn’t have a steady boyfriend after sophomore year, and that was the only socially way to safely have sex. Sex was very intriguing to me, but I knew once I went to college it would be a whole nother deal and I could have as much sex as I wanted because everyone in college was cool and mature…So i would fool around with guys but never have sex.

But I also knew that virgins in college were deemed to be undesirable. That there was something wrong with being a virgin in college. So I had to lose my virginity before college….but not so as to attract attention in high school. My friend Sam didn’t have a girlfriend and he wanted to have sex. We would fool around sometimes and it was pretty fun and freaky. The summer before college I had just turned 18 and I thought something had to be done about this virginity thing. And now I was out of high school and din’t give a shit what anyone would carve into study carrels.

So, Sam and I decided we would lose our virginity to each other. We also both had wanted to try a particular recreational drug so decided we’d do both the same night. We went to a party at a friend of his house, and they were wealthy so we had basically an entire wing to ourselves to do our deeds. We took the drugs, hung out, fooled around, and then around 4am we were like: ok, let’s do this. We fucked, I bled a little, I decided while it was going on I liked fooling around better than this, and it felt different than I imagined, but it was pretty cool. I liked how into it Sam was—that was really really cool. To see how completely lost he was. That was new and I knew I just discovered something really important about sex. Both as we were screwing, and then when he came, and afterward. I was fine, like “that was pretty cool” but he was in total surrender mode. I liked that and felt very tender toward him.

I remembered from movies you take a shower after sex so we got up and took a shower together, and he was very grateful fir what had just happened, and I was like WOW, I just took that drug AND I fucked someone! and that’s what I wrote in my journal that night. I was so vastly relieved at having gotten the roadblock to my adulthood out of the way. And I knew everyone said it gets better. And it did — lawdy laws did it ever. And I was pretty much Sexy Silke in college. What I didn’t realize until years later was that even tho people didn’t carve anyone’s name into study carrels or spray paint shit on smoking walls…it wasn’t much different. But thankfully I wasn’t aware of that them, and had me a WONDERFUL time. Because, basically, when you’re an 18-year-old girl, you can sleep with **anyone** you want. It’s like being a rock star. You can look around the party, and say: him! I’ve never slept with someone who looks like that before–wonder what he’s like in bed? I think I’ll talk to him and see if he’s also smart, funny, and someone I actually like — and if so, I’ll sleep with him! And then someone else, as the fancy struck. I LOVED the variety and autonomy and basically going shopping for guys at night and deciding who I wanted to sleep with. And I have never ever regretted it. Each one of those guys I liked and I remember and I value what we had together.

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