The Conversation Nobody Actually Had

I’ve been trying to remember if I ever actually told my parents about my first time—or whether they just somehow knew, the way parents apparently know things they were never told. Maybe there’s a smell. Some specific quality of guilt radiating off a teenager who has recently become slightly less of one. I genuinely cannot remember sitting them down and saying: "Mum, Dad, I just got fucked."

Not everyone’s first time is some aspirational scenario either. Sometimes it’s a drunk loser in a garage. Your best friend who "accidentally" ended up inside you. A PE teacher who liked you a bit too much. The first time is rarely the story you’d choose if you were choosing. And you can’t undo it—that’s the part. Whoever that was, wherever that was, it’s yours now, permanently, filed away in the permanent record of your life.

There’s a video going around of adult children sitting down with their parents and describing exactly how it happened for them. Reactions range from laughter to visible horror to the kind of wide-eyed silence that means someone is trying to process information they were not remotely prepared to receive. The whole thing oscillates between funny and genuinely uncomfortable, which is more or less the correct register for the subject. Your first time is a big deal. Even now. Even for people who’ve had a lot of sex since.

You can’t unknow who got there first. Neither can your parents, now.