Virginity…

hmmm… virginity. yes, i think i misplaced mine somewhere at the dirt road end of St Taminy Baptist Church Road, somewhere in the piney woods of northwest Louisiana. when i consider virginity, i do not like to think of it as “lost”. i do not like to think of it as “given” or “taken”. perhaps this would seem odd to some folks; however, i feel a sense of ownership over myself, my person, my etcetera. pondering this, even as i speak… errrrrr, type… i believe the best term for what i did with regard to my virginity is i “shared” it…

yes, the night i “shared” my virginity…

nothing spectacular to say, really. i was 16yrs and 5mos old. i skipped out on rehersals for the school drama club’s annual play and drove out to his neighborhood in my family’s station wagon. i picked him up at the corner of his street and he directed me down the road past the little baptist church. the road turned into gravel and then into dirt and then into a grassy lane with two dirt ditches where tires had imposed themselves upon nature’s path. it was warm, springtime and probably a starry evening though i’m sure i did not bother to notice . it was not romantic. we were not in love. hell, we weren’t even dating. he was just a boy i knew through a girlfriend – a girlfriend who had a big crush on him but he chose me, go figure – a boy who i had talked on the phone with for hours and who i had made out with a couple times on sunny sunday afternoons. just a horny boy trying to get laid. that and only that. and try he did, for weeks. i laugh now when i think back at how absurd this sounds. how, you might wonder, did he finally seal such a deal for himself? what was his stellar persuasion? haa!!

“don’t you want some experience?”

yep, that was all, it took. that was the winning answer on teen jeopardy that week. that was the one-liner that made practical sense to me. that was all it took to get me in the back of mom’s station wagon at the end of St Taminy Baptist Church Road that Thursday evening, so many eons ago. he brought a condom, i brought a tiny tube of vaseline to make things easier. it was pretty quick and actually painless. in fact, afterward, he remarked that he did not believe that i had been a virgin but i was…

or, at least, i am certain that i was…