Seventh grade was interrupted when I moved to Yonkers with my dad for the duration of High Society, so I never developed a crush on anyone at school. In New York, I did have a crush on the boy who played Young Simba in The Lion King, but since I was only in a room with him one time and our parents were there, our love did not blossom.
My friend Nora from The Sound of Music and I often discussed that great mystery that looms before all adolescent girls: sex. We talked about sex A LOT. Not boys (I apologize if this freaks out any parents)—we did not talk about <3boys<3 and how cute Ryan’s new haircut was, or how dreamy the boys in 98° were—we talked about sex. What we’d heard about it, what it would be like, how you were supposed to do it. We were on a mission to compile everything we’d ever heard about all things sex-related. Condoms, porn, hookers, first base, second base, third base, and by the way, when the hell were we gonna get boobs?
If any parents are still with me, the good news is that we were way more interested in figuring it out than actually doing it. We were like theoretical sex engineers. Oh! Theoretical Sex Engineer! Title of my next book!
The other good news is that we were pathetic. We were the blind leading the blind. She told me about a pornographic comic book she’d seen and the offensive joke it contained about Hispanic women’s pubic hair. I told her that a girl from my church had seen Stephen King’s Thinner, and in one scene, the wife leaned in to her husband’s lap and moved her head up and down. . . . So blow jobs involved . . . moving, I guess?
It’s adorable in a super-uncomfortable way, right?
I’m grateful that we were wondering the same things and that we were both hungry to put a name to our feelings and to have someone reflect them back. I didn’t know how lucky I was until I went home and received many blank stares from friends who were not interested in or prepared for talking about sex out loud.
That was the last time I would ever be ahead of the curve sexually. In fact I pretty much plateaued there for the next six years. This was only a noticeable problem once I got to high school and phrases like “fooling around” and “hooking up” were no longer empty braggadocio.
When kids I knew started to go past first base, I felt nervous and excited. It was like waiting in line for a roller coaster, if you’d seen a sex-ed video about how the roller coaster was probably going to ruin your life. For me, the nervousness usually outweighed the excitement. Now that potentially seeing each other naked was part of the package, I would still try to court the male, and then RUN FOR MY LIFE at the smallest sign of interest. I was the romantic equivalent of the annoying friend who goes to the haunted house but chickens out and eats candy apples outside until it’s over (also me).
I don’t know if my aversion came from the suspicion that I’d make a fool of myself, insecurity about my body, or just the fear that it would hurt. I could sense I wasn’t anatomically ready when most girls were; maybe the emotional part was waiting for the physical part to catch up? It certainly wasn’t that I didn’t have The Feelings. But I was dealing with those on my own.
I was conflicted, to say the least, and it didn’t help that I’d found a pamphlet under a seat in the auditorium that proclaimed, “No one likes a tease,” but I still sought to ensnare a boy. Sure, the odds were against me, but there had to be at least one guy I could trick into settling for a girl who wore a training bra and was terrified of sex.
There was Andy, who had long eyelashes and was so cerebral and self-aware that even at fourteen I deemed him “pretentious.” Intellectual insults were my high school version of pushing someone on the playground. If I thought he deserved the label, it clearly didn’t bother me very much. I followed him around during his free period so often I almost failed the class I was supposed to be in during that time block. We flirted a lot and kissed a few times, and I was never sure if we didn’t get together because he didn’t want to, or because I would get that queasy “what if he wants to see me naked” feeling whenever he showed more than a passing interest.
I met Hunter at a rave that my brother snuck me into. He was slight and kind of gorgeous. He wore a bandanna with the Puerto Rican flag, I suspect to compensate for his misleading white-kid name, and he told my friend Lindsey that I had a “nice ass.” Who talked like that? Even putting that memory on paper gives me butterflies. I had never met anyone so forward. He asked for my number (what are we, in a movie?) and called a couple times but stopped after the third phone call when the awkward pauses led him to ask, “Am I bothering you?” No, you’re not bothering me! This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me ever!