The best novels always involve conflict. Someone needs to get sick or die. Someone needs to be cheated on or run over by a truck. It makes it a better story if the characters in books have terrible childhoods and are faced with abuse and drug use at every turn that makes a story a story. My plan was to find my “novel” before forty. I felt that my parents had done me an injustice by allowing me to grow up without any more conflict than five stitches above my eye, by the neighbor and a golf club when I was ten. Trust me, it’s not much of a story. I never really felt I had a troubled teen story to tell. My teenage stories are more stories of stupidity, but then after this week, I realized I might be wrong.
At lunch we, teachers, can get pretty wild. We try desperately to find other things to discuss besides Carl’s obnoxious nose-picking or Sarah’s tenth absence in three weeks or how lame homework was turned in first hour. Unfortunately, it is with these “duty free” lunch discussions that prove why we are middle school teachers. We joke that our sense of humor is much like the kids. Often we find us solving the world’s problems as well as our sarcastic views of each other’s lives. This week’s discussion turned to when each of us lost our virginity.
I mentioned that I lost mine just before I turned seventeen, and another teacher lost hers at seventeen. However, I was confused in my middle school mind set and brought up good old Bill Clinton. What is sex? Does oral sex count when it comes to discussion of virginity? My pals were a little shocked. One actually exclaimed, “You gave head before you were in high school?”
This led me to think about just why I had done it in the first place. “They” say that the closer you are to your father, the less likely you are to have sex in your early teens. My father and I were not close, but we talked at the table and argued about grades. Maybe that is why I didn’t feel the need to go all the way. Maybe the boy, Toby, was too shy to go there, but maybe he just wanted head. I thought and thought, and realized perhaps I had my dear younger cousin to blame.
When I was in the seventh grade, I got an opportunity to “babysit” my cousin who was three years younger than me. Basically I was there only so she was not alone. A bit wilder than I, she also helped me sneak one of my first beers. Anyhow, her parents were going to a fancy ball. We were left alone with enough movies on Beta to last the evening and the whole house to ourselves.
Now I imagine it is something every kid does, but the first thing we did was scrounge through the house for hidden secrets. Being my cousin’s parents, she led the search into her father’s den. She had discovered some videos that she wanted to watch. I couldn’t tell you what the video contained, but it definitely opened my eyes to raunchy sex. Perhaps I actually believed this was what sex was like. Come to think of it, sex isn’t too far away from pornography. However in pornography, you are throwing out all your moves in one go. Real people hold back to make the week interesting. Who can have sex for ninety minutes every day anyways?
Summer came, and the video was a thing of the past. It wasn’t really even a thought in my head, but I guess brains are funny like that. They store bits and pieces of information, only to recall them in time for proper use. This summer after my seventh grade year was very different than previous summers. We had just moved into a new town, and finally after a year of school, knew the kids in the neighborhood. As a sixth grader and before that, I did everything with my little brother. He and I were inseparable. The summer before eighth grade, I turned boy crazy. Honesty, I was always a little boy crazy. This is only one story. My brother and I drifted apart.
Toby was tall and blonde and thin. He lived down around the block, one of the first houses in our addition. Next door, my brother’s BFF lived with a backyard pool and a pool house. I was torn. Do I impress this cute boy? Do I play in the creek with my brother? Most of the time, my brother won the contest, but on occasion Toby would give me a chance. When eighth grade began, we saw each other more with school. Not that we talked in school, but most of us neighborhood kids would still go out for a few hours each night.
Another lucky break was my continuing babysitting career because it allowed me to stay up late talking on the phone with him each weekend. He would always lead me into talking dirty, but I had no idea what that even meant. I was just going at it blinding, hoping to not make an ass out of myself. I let him lead. I don’t think he had a clue either. At some point or other, we began to discuss kissing, giving head, and sex. I did not know what head was exactly, but I wanted to seem educated. Come to think of it, we never did kiss. It wasn’t about that. I think he knew what he wanted, and I was clueless. He discovered that I had never experienced head. I was curious, and he convinced me it wasn’t actually sex. I was planning on saving myself for high school or true love or something like that.
Once spring sprang, the neighborhood came alive. My brother and I were far from bosoms buddies by this time. I juggled my time between my friend Susan, who was away during the day, and Toby. It took many afternoons of luring me up to his shed in his backyard to persuade me. A couple times my brother and his friend would bust in on us. A couple times I gave him a hand job. Oddly enough, we never kissed. We hugged a lot and rub against each other standing. The shed was rather small.
After holding out through the whole eighth grade year, I guess he was getting impatient. I realized I would only be able to avoid his sly pushes for so long. It was like he would find a way to hug me down to the floor and then pop up like a jack in the box (probably in both areas). Or if we did get to lay together in the pool house, he would slide up on the floor ever so often till my head was at his waist. I figured I was going to be asking for it, if I kept holding out.
Then one night, I was babysitting an actual child, up late on the phone. Toby asked me to finally commit to trying to do it. He told me it was perfectly fine, and he would make sure no one would break into the shed. He even promised I wouldn’t have to swallow, which ended up being a lie too. Still, I knew sex was pretty raunchy. My cousin’s video was the only sex education I received outside of school. To prove my commitment, he asked me to practice and hung up the phone.
How the hell am I supposed to know how to practice? I am a fourteen year old girl. I didn’t have a banana, and I had hoped it wouldn’t have the texture with or without the peel. After some unfathomable reasoning, I decided that it didn’t need to be all that long. My mouth could only hold so much. I imagine choking and gagging, and I figured I should just practice with something short. Through process of elimination and based on the item in my employer’s kitchen, I decided on an egg.
Practice must have been what I was lacking because good old Toby didn’t have to wait more than a couple weeks, and he got me to fulfill his dreams, probably his first blow job in his tiny yellow shed. We continued the dance for a month or so. It was difficult when school started and the Ohio weather blew in. It made the shed too cold, and soon enough the lack of relationship at school ended it for us.
In college, I actually saw Toby. I ran into him at local dive bar on campus. He wasn’t going to school but just there. He looked the same, tall and blonde. He begged and pleaded with me to go out to see his new car, but I was much smarter by college. I laughed and walked away. I guess some people are not real complicated. I learned that mistake, but I would have many more to learn before I find myself here. And I am not all that wise now.
My common sense was lacking. I always have to learn everything the hard way. The stories that I have about boys can be unbelievable. I always wonder why someone would want to hear my dumbass stories or maybe everyone has stories like these. Let me know. Oh the assholes, I have encountered! I could write them into a novel.
Mishaps Today 