Scrappy Little Nobody(26)

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!

But I didn’t say that. I was stuck in the limbo of wanting a fifth-grade relationship but not being able to admit it, even to myself. I mean, I wanted to do something before I graduated, but not everything. And the only thing worse than having sex or being a virgin loser forever would be having a mature conversation with a guy I liked about waiting until I was ready. The world would have ended.

Even though I remember high school as a never-ending barrage of rejection, I would feel dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that there were guys who liked me. Or at least one. Noah left a rose by my locker on Valentine’s Day and had to trick me into walking past it, because my locker was on the third floor and I didn’t use it. I panic-hugged him, said “No thank you,” and walked away before I had to look at his face. He was remarkably cool about it and made sure things didn’t get weird. We stayed close friends throughout high school, and when he asked me on a Friday, “You wouldn’t want to go to prom on Saturday, would you?” I wrongly assumed the late ask and casual tone meant “as friends.” I was grossed out and frankly kind of hurt when he drove me to a motel after the dance. I had to pull the old phone call to Mom where I loudly whine “Why not?” and say my mom’s being a bitch and I have to go home. (An excellent tool for getting kids out of situations they don’t want to be in. My mom always played along and I would recommend this trick to any parent.)

Some bitter boys reading this might accuse me of “friend-zoning,” but I’d like to say that even if a girl has misinterpreted a situation that someone else thinks was obvious, she does not owe her male friends anything.I

Noah knew me well. He knew I was a virgin, in every possible sense, and that I didn’t take it lightly. But the motel implied that he hoped we could fool around, even though we weren’t dating. He was a nice boy who did something skeezy, and it sucked. We stayed in touch for a while after I moved to LA. In fact, he and a friend once stayed on my couch for a week and left a lovely thank-you note on the refrigerator the morning they left. I woke up and saw the note and felt guilty for being irritated by the end of the visit. Then my roommate stuck his head out of our bathroom. “There’s an enormous shit sitting in the toilet.” Maybe you’re just destined to lose touch with some people.



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I. Needless to say, this applies to every arrangement of gender and orientation. I mention males pressuring females because that’s been my only personal experience of it, but it turns out my personal journey isn’t an infallible barometer of the entire human experience. Weird, right?





i guess we’re doing this, or how does this scene end?