Def Leppard’s Hysteria is breaking the airwaves. Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again is breaking MTV. And my girlfriend and I are breaking the Catholic Church’s cardinal rule of no sex before marriage.
I’m fourteen.
She’s thirteen.
Her name is Stephanie Allen.
She’s pretty with long, wavy blonde hair, piercing green eyes, and a million and one emotional scars.
We’re at her place: a two-car garage turned into a tiny, two-bedroom hovel in the part of town where couches are on porches and residents are on parole.
She lives with her mom and fifteen-year-old sister, neither of whom are home. Her mom probably out drinking and drugging. Her sister probably out breaking and entering.
The room we’re in is a cramped space she shares with her sister. Girl clutter everywhere and a stolen license plate that says CUDDLES, swiped off a car by her mom’s boyfriend during a blackout bender.
The room is barely bigger than a coffin, so the girls sleep in a bunk bed. I have no idea who the bottom bunk belongs to, but it's the bed I’m currently losing my virginity in. A cheap digital clock glows beside us, keeping quiet witness.
For the past hour, we’ve been naked and tangled, rising and falling like a slow wave. Touching and trusting each other, suspended in a moment neither of us had the vocabulary to name.
Since this was my first time doing it, I had no idea how I was supposed to perform. My only instruction manuals were the movies Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Risky Business, neither of which offered any real guidance beyond bad hair and cheesy dialogue.
So I just followed what felt natural, being slow, steady and present, savoring everything. The afternoon sun pouring gold across her skin, the faint sweetness of her perfume, the mattress springs keeping a soft, trance-like rhythm beneath us.
It was bliss.
It was magic.
It was transcendent.
“I love you so very much,” she whispered, her voice stripped of its usual sarcasm and defense.
“I love you too,” I whispered back.
When it ended, there was no triumphant orgasm, no cinematic cigarette moment. It just… settled. Like a slow dance easing into its final step.
It’s common for guys not to finish their first time. The body overcome by the magnitude of everything that’s happening that it chooses to relish in connection over climax.
It’s not shameful. It’s human. Sometimes moments eclipse mechanics.
And nothing felt missing. It felt exactly as it should; two humans pressed close enough to make the world go still. And in that stillness, we lay there breathing, touching lightly, careful not to break the spell.
Eventually, I checked the clock.
4:00 p.m.
Earlier, my mom had dropped me off at the rec center down the street from Stephanie’s house. She said she’d pick me up at 4:30.
So we eased apart and I rolled out of bed.
Stephanie sat up, wrapped in the rumpled sheet, hair wild, watching me with a softness that made me feel whole and worthy in a way I’d never felt before.
I pulled on my acid-washed Levi’s, Reebok high-tops, Motley Crüe T-shirt, and denim jacket. A wardrobe fit for a boy who’d just stepped across a threshold into a world that felt bigger, different, full of wonder.
Still wrapped in the sheet, she walked me to the door and kissed me goodbye.
I floated down the street with euphoria humming under my skin, making it to the rec center with time to spare. So, I sat under a tree and at some point, drifted off into my first post-sex nap. A deep, effortless sleep offering me a calm I hadn’t known until now.
My mom’s horn yanked me awake. I stood, half-dazed, and shuffled to the car, climbing into the back.
“How was your day?” she asked in a way that didn’t sound like she was probing.
She knew I was seeing Stephanie, but assumed we’d spent the afternoon playing pool, video games, maybe kissing under the supervision of bored adults.
“Fine,” I said with a yawn.
“What’d you two do?”
“Stuff.” I said, offering the type of teenage mono-syllabic response she’d grown accustomed to.
As she drove us home, my mind replayed everything in soft, looping flashes I held onto like a dream I didn’t want to lose. A dream I wanted to revisit again and again and again.
When most people look back on losing their virginity, it’s usually tainted with regret or remorse.
Wrong partner, wrong time, wrong circumstances. But for me, it felt like the most meaningful moment of my life. A moment that would shape everything that followed and that I’d look back on with a quiet gratitude and reverence.
It was tender.
It was precious.
And, although I didn’t know it at the time, it was dangerous.
Because during our union, a set of beliefs and truisms had seeped into my still-developing brain that would become the prism through which I viewed love and relationships for decades to come.
Which would’ve been fine if Stephanie and I had grown up in homes where love was healthy, communication normal and our parents noticed the storms that were brewing inside of us.
But that wasn’t the case.
Instead, we were two broken kids trying to outrun the wreckage of our families. Mistaking chaos for connection and the coming toxicity for normalcy.
But none of that mattered in the here and now. Because in the here and now, the future wasn’t something I could see and the damage set in-motion was a curse that would take time to ripen into rot.
And in the here and now, all I knew was the feeling in my chest, a sudden, unfamiliar peacefulness as if someone had finally put a hand on the frantic part of me and told it to rest. The result of crossing a threshold with a girl who believed, with absolute sincerity, that I mattered.
And for a boy who had quietly lived with the suspicion that he didn’t matter? That small, earnest belief felt like salvation. Salvation given to me from a girl who loved me so very much.
Dear, Reader
I write these stories because I have to.
Because some things only loosen when they’re put on the page.
If this one meant something to you and you want to help keep the work going,
you can buy me a coffee here.
Either way, thanks for reading, I'm honored to have you on this journey with me.