asks me if I like what he’s doing. I let his hands wander and go where he wants. In general, though, I feel bored. At the time, I don’t know what it is. I feel itchy, expectant, like I’m in a permanent state of waiting. When Greg and I kiss and dry-hump, I feel empty, frustrated. I want something else, something more. And because I can’t identify it, I decide what I want is to lose my virginity. And Greg, with his sweet, safe nature, is the perfect person to lose my virginity to. One night, as we are kissing, I ask him why he hasn’t tried to have sex with me.
Greg sits back and leans on his elbow. When I look at him up close like this, I feel a little turned off. “You’re a virgin,” he says.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
“I haven’t done it in, like, a year,” I tell him. “But I’ve had sex.”
Greg watches me. “So, you want to have sex?”
I nod. “Do you have a condom?”
“I’ll find one,” he says.
He jumps up to go, I assume, to Jack’s room to find one. I take off my clothes, get under the covers, and try to gauge how I feel. I am about to have sex, I think, and I wait for a bodily reaction. When I was younger I expected I would lose it to someone I loved. Every girl did. It would be with a long-time boyfriend. I would have strong feelings about it. But lying here now, I find that’s not true. I look down at my body, the white expanse of it. I feel almost nothing. Just a low-lying numbness. Greg comes back with a condom and gets under the covers with me.
“Whoa,” he says, seeing I’m naked. “You move quickly.”
He takes off his clothes, already hard. He goes down on me, and I close my eyes, letting myself focus on the feeling, letting myself go. Then he puts on the condom and pushes his way inside. It is uncomfortable, but not painful. There is no popping or searing sting like I’d read about. No fireworks or meaningful moment. I stay still, waiting for him to finish. He moans, and then he pulls himself out of me and flops onto his back.
“Nice,” he says. He pulls me against his chest, and I lie there, feeling his heart beating quickly beneath my ear. I have no sense we are “one,” as the cliche goes. I have no sense of anything. Just an emptiness. A disappointment. And that’s it. For two more weeks, I have sex with Greg. I held off having sex before because I had the notion I would wait for love. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be loved, and I was tired of waiting. If I can’t have love, I’ll take the next best thing—or at least the thing I figure might get me the love. So now that I did it, I want to get good at it, and I assume practice will get me there. As soon as I feel I have reached that point, I break it off with Greg.
I don’t tell Amy any of this. I don’t tell anyone. I know initiating the loss of my virginity is a major faux pas for a girl. Girls can’t make choices like that. If a girl has sex when she’s drunk or overpowered, she’s not considered promiscuous. But if you’re aware of what’s going on, it’s this consciousness that makes you a slut. Losing my virginity is a choice I make. What’s more, I orchestrate the whole thing, and I use a boy in the process. If that’s not being a slut, I don’t know what is.
Amy and I meet two guys at Dorrian’s a few weeks later. We know who they are before they approach us. Most everyone does. They are part of a party production team in town, a group of guys who put together club parties where underage kids can dance, drink, and do drugs. Thrilled, Amy and I flirt like crazy, and within an hour, the four of us are in a cab, heading to one of their homes. The taller boy is Ben; the dark-haired one, Dave. They are both smartasses, making comments about our clothes, our hair, and, of course, New Jersey, the whole ride there. But we don’t mind. We can be smart-asses too, especially Amy with her sharp tongue. Ben’s home is an unbelievably huge loft on the Lower East Side. The ceilings must be twenty-five feet high, and one whole wall is a window. The Manhattan lights twinkle and wink, a whole world of people living their lives while we’re in here with Ben and Dave. Ben turns on the stereo—Tears for Fears—and we follow him to the stainless-steel kitchen where he gets out four glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He pours each of us a shot. I don’t want it. I don’t like the burn of liquor in my mouth, and I’m always afraid I’ll vomit trying to get the shot down. But I take it anyway, and while the others down their shots, I take a prim sip. I do my best to hide my grimace. Soon, Ben and Amy disappear, and Dave guides me toward the black, contemporary leather couch. We kiss, and he peels off my shirt, his shirt, his jeans. He undoes my bra, hikes up my skirt, slips a hand between my hip and my underwear. I look at the windows as he slides them down. Our bodies reflect there. It is beautiful almost, the curves of our bodies connected. I can do this now, I think. I can let him in this far. This is what I wait for every night: a face hovering close above mine, his breathing fast and out of control. Him wanting me, all mine. He kisses my neck, my collarbone. So sweet, I can almost believe he loves me. And then he is inside me. He moves, gripping my hips and butt. Like he needs me, too. Our skin comes together and apart, growing slick with sweat. I wrap my arms around his back, holding on.
And then it is over.
He pulls his body away, the air suddenly cold. He pulls on his jeans, runs a hand through his dark hair, and goes off to the bathroom. I turn again to see my reflection in the window. I am lying on the couch, alone, shadowy. A corpse. I quickly pull on my shirt and underwear. I fasten my bra beneath my shirt. I hear Dave in the kitchen and turn to see him pouring more whiskey. He holds a glass toward me, and I shake my head. I ask instead for water, which he brings me. That’s nice.
When Amy and I leave that night, Dave hugs me then chucks me under the chin. It is sweet, affectionate, a big brother’s gesture. I smile, not knowing what else to do. I guess this is just how it is. Having sex is lukewarm, something you share for an evening. It’s friendship-building. What else should it be?
In our cab heading uptown, I tell Amy. I’m not sure why. I guess if this is going to be a regular thing, which I know it will be, I don’t want to be so alone with it. I realize I’m going to need a friend. But Amy is aghast.
“You had sex? You didn’t even know him.” She stares at me, incredulous. Her open window whips her dark, thin hair into her face. I bite my lip. I don’t know what to say. “It’s not like he was my first,” I say.
“What was he, then? Your fifteenth?”
“Ha ha,” I say, though I know she’s not trying to be funny. “It’s not a big deal, OK? I lost it to Greg when we were seeing each other. I just thought it was time.”
She turns away from me, eyes straight ahead. “It’s a big deal to me.”
I shrug, hurt. “That’s your problem. Besides, what were you doing with Ben that whole time?”
She looks right at me. “Kissing,” she says. “He took my number.”
I shrug again, trying not to reveal my envy. “Lucky you.”
She doesn’t say anything more, and neither do I. But I keep having sex with strangers.
One day, we wake up late at Nora’s and find Dorrian’s Red Hand is in the newspaper. Jack brings it to show us. A boy and girl met there, left together at four thirty a.m., and went to Central Park, where she was found strangled by her own bra two hours later. Amy and I read, our mouths open. Robert Chambers and Jennifer Levin. We know who they are. We saw them leave together the night before after Robert’s then-girlfriend had broken up with him, jealous about other girls, including Jennifer. Robert is the tall, handsome boy we had watched from afar, one of the boys always in a blazer and topsiders. Jennifer was one of those tiny-waisted girls. They were regulars, part of the wealthy in-crowd. Amy and I both thought Robert was hot. His dark hair, the way he kept half his buttondown shirt out of his khakis. He seemed so likable with his affable smile. But the article painted him in another light. Robert had been kicked out of a number of preparatory schools, and he had recently been expelled from Boston University for stealing and for hosting a party in his dorm. His lawyer claimed Robert didn’t need to force anyone to have sex with him. Jennifer had been the sexual aggressor that night.
Amy and I take showers. We eat some breakfast. We try to go about a regular day. We talk about Robert Chambers as a badass, the reports of him having yelled obscenities in the street and then torn up the summons he received from a cop. We discuss the claims that he was kicked out of one boarding school after another for his defiant behavior. Inside, we are both shaken. Things have changed for good. Looking for guys in bars is suddenly not quite so innocent, and my having lost my virginity makes that even truer. In the evening, we head to Dorrian’s, hoping to talk to others, but there’s a new bouncer at the door, and he shakes his head. Media attention, he tells us. The owner got in big trouble for all you underagers. Don’t bother coming back. We go to a nearby diner, upset. Over the next few months, the Robert Chambers murder, or
“Preppy Murder,” will build national attention. The story grows daily. News critics will write incisive features about wealthy parents leaving money for their kids on the kitchen’s granite countertop as they run off to second homes in St. Barts. The parents are from the sixties hippie generation, grown up and bringing in serious cash, but
