The day after my not so steamy encounter with Jon, I feared that I would never be able to kiss a guy without having a panic attack. This wasn’t normal, was it? I’d ‘fantasized’ about making out with guys for years, yet when it actually came down to it I wasn’t exactly smoldering like Jessica Rabbit. But today was a new day, and thank goodness it was Friday. Fridays, my friends and I usually went out to smoke hookah, we were definitely not the types to hit up the bars. I wasn’t opposed to going out, getting a drink, and dancing- yet my friends preferred to just chill. At the time, I was fine with just going along with what they wanted. This was the first group of people I felt like I’d really connected with, and I did not want to screw that up. But this Friday at the lounge wasn’t exactly like the others.
My friends and I decided to have a little more fun than usual, playing a drinking game involving your average six-sided di. Each roll was a different command, all involving me getting familiar with the famous Captain Morgan. Much like my sexuality, I was very much a virgin when it came to drinking. Sure, I’d had a beer or two at parties but I’d never been anything more than tipsy. Things were about to change, as I learned than Jon wanted to spend more time with me tonight. I met him at the lounge, and it seemed as if all of the nerves that had been building up inside me were gone.
I was no longer worried about whether or not I was a good kisser, if he wanted to be with me, or how far he was going to go. I just wanted to kiss him, in front of everyone, badly. Kissing him, it made me feel alive. I felt like yes, this was finally the person I was supposed to be. I was starting to become someone with confidence and courage, someone who a cute guy would find attractive. It all sounds cliché, like something you’d read in a bad drugstore novel, but kissing a guy that you are starting to like makes you realize why there are clichés in the first place. That Sarah Dessen actually knew what she was writing about.
But I’m not the romance type and I knew that I didn’t have the kind of luck to pull this kind of thing off. He seemed too perfect, but not in the conventional Mr. Right sense. He was older, popular, interesting, experienced, and dangerous. He was the kind of guy that thrilled you to the lacey hem of your panties but you wouldn’t jump to introduce to your parents. Yet I wanted this to work and I was hoping that he’d see something in me that he hadn’t found in other girls. Unfortunately, I soon came to realize that mixing good girls and bad boys could be a sour combination.
I met Jon at his house a few days later, to watch Monday night television, and ‘get to know each other’ a little better. Things were heating up even more than before, we were alone and he’d earlier confessed that he hadn’t had sex in nearly a year. Yet while I wanted to put care to the wind and give everything up to this guy, I could feel the weight of my virginity pressing down on me. It wasn’t because I wanted to stay pure, trust me at nineteen I was more than ready to lose it. But I was scared. I was scared that he would freak out when he found out, leave me for another easy college girl. But I was also scared that I would freak out, having lost something I’d been carrying around for nineteen years of my life.
Things continued to heat up and I could feel that he was ready to pounce; I needed to spill my secret and admit to being the person I still very much was. As expected, he didn’t take it well. He told me that he shouldn’t be my first and surprisingly, that killed me. I felt as if I’d really opened up to this guy, both emotionally and physically. I didn’t want this to be the end; there was something about him that captivated me. I felt as if I’d met him for a reason, that our happenstance encounter on the Internet was no coincidence.
And I was right; I would be with him again. Except I needed to sidetrack on a little adventure first, become the person that he could be with. That I desperately needed to become in order to satisfy my hunger to blossom out of the shell that had constrained me in high school. I needed to be the girl who took risks and never accepted a closed door. Even if that meant opening one of mine.