First Time

I can’t remember if I ever actually told my parents about mine, or if they just figured it out somehow. Maybe they have some kind of radar for it. I definitely never sat them down and said anything. That conversation either never happened or I’ve completely blocked it from memory.

Your first time is rarely what you imagine. Not with the popular guy, not with someone your parents would secretly approve of. Sometimes it’s some drunk asshole in a garage. Sometimes it’s your best friend and something goes wrong that he claims was accidental. Sometimes it’s someone in a position of authority who shouldn’t be touching you. You can’t take it back. It stays with you forever.

There’s something strange about how permanent this becomes. One moment lasting maybe ten minutes, and it shapes everything about how you think of sex and your body for years. We treat it like it’s definitive, like it somehow marks you, and that’s just how it is.

You keep living with your parents afterward and there’s this quiet knowledge between you. They know something happened. You know they know. Nobody talks about it. Maybe that’s better than some conversation where they try to seem progressive and open-minded. At least there are no awkward questions about whether you were safe, no false cheerfulness. Just this unspoken thing that sits there, both real and unreal.