The First Time I Lost My Virginity, I Worried About Body Hair More Than Pregnancy

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Mike had a scheme for enabling us to be alone, in proximity to a bed, together. I would come over to his house around 6pm, while his parents were still there. He would ask for a ride to the Holy Redeemer Fall Bazaar and Pancake Dinner. His parents would see us enter the safety and celibacy of the church’s walls. They would drive off, assured of their son’s allegiance to the congregation. They would not observe him slip immediately out the back door with his high-school girlfriend and walk 2.5 miles through viscous leaf piles in the chilling October air, in pursuit of their vacant, Cape Cod home.

It was a good plan, and I was eager to shed the label of “virgin,” now that I had a boyfriend and a grown-up bra or two from Kohl’s Department Store. But having sex meant being naked in front of another human being, and no one had seen my naked torso since the scoliosis screening in 5th grade.

To date, only I was aware that the peach fuzz running down the center of my chest and tummy had darkened to a medium brown, and now resembled more of a coconut shell, if one desired a fruit analogy. I had long ago abandoned v-necks and bikinis in favor of more modest tops, and had only let Mike fondle my AA-cups in complete darkness.