You Gotta Test-Drive the Car Before You Buy It

Much like in Stephen Dunn’s piece, when I was in high school, my girl friends and I had our own kind of “locker room talk,” except this took place in our school’s cafeteria at our usual table.

I sat down in the only spot left, right across from the column with the mirror pasted onto it. I always hated sitting there because I’d feel uncomfortable when I would catch myself looking back at the person reflected in it, almost like I was undergoing some out of body experience as we all chatted. Letting my polka-dotted Jansport fall to the ground and taking out my brown paper-bagged lunch – the one mom still packed for me even though I was a sophomore in high school – I tuned into the conversation of the day.

“Yeah, we just alternated between watching the whole Lord of The Rings series and having sex.”

Oh great, a conversation I couldn’t relate with at all.

“That sounds like an amazing weekend, did you actually get through all of them?” Eleanor asked, taking a bite from her sandwich. She was no doubt the smallest in our group and always easily mistaken for a middle schooler, and with short brown hair and bangs covering her eyes, it didn’t really help that matter. But when she opened her mouth to speak, you knew she was much more intelligent and mature.

“Let’s just say we got distracted and stopped paying attention after a while,” Kyra replied with a wink, confidently sitting up tall.

Leah – who had been dating her boyfriend, Nate, for a few years – nodded and laughed, “Oh yeah, been there before. It’s a good thing your parents were away for the weekend.”

“Right? Could you imagine if they were to walk in? I would be scarred for life!”

The girls continued talking about their boyfriends, about being sexually active, and I just sat back, praying that I wasn’t the only virgin at the table. It’s not so much because of the fact that I was a virgin – I really admired that fact about myself – it was the fact that all of these girls had done so much, and I was so inexperienced, let alone I’d never french kissed a boy or had real boyfriend (the fake ones in elementary school or the quick ones in my early, shy middle school years didn’t count). I couldn’t relate to how “amazing” it must have felt, how “amazing” it must have been to be in a relationship with someone you mutually love and care about. I felt out of place in the conversation, like I wasn’t meant to be there or part of it. Until I chimed in.

“I think I’m going to wait until marriage to have sex.”

Silence. All eyes on me. What else did I expect for revealing this uncommon ideal I had that not a lot of girls or guys at that age had?

“But, like, what if the sex isn’t that good?” Leah asked, biting into her apple. “You’re stuck with that unless you get divorced.”

I remember thinking, is that all that matters in a relationship? It doesn’t have to be all based around sex. As someone who had always been a hopeless romantic, fantasizing about someday falling in love with someone who would love me too, the idea of sex seemed so miniscule. I may have been a bit naïve, but I thought that as long as you had one another, why does sex matter?

“Yeah, you gotta test-drive the car before you buy it!” Kyra laughed, shaking her head. I caught a glimpse of myself in that same mirror, feeling like I wasn’t actually present in the conversation anymore. I didn’t fit in with the group’s opinion, I was being laughed at for my own, I just wanted to shrink down and disappear and forget I had ever even said anything.

“I mean, maybe if I find the right guy who I’ve been with for a while, then maybe,” I finally uttered. And soon after, the conversation veered off into another topic. However, I’ve never forgotten that encounter.

Looking back on it now, sex frightened me. The idea of being that intimate with a person, naked and exposed, each of us staring at each other’s bodies, it terrified me and was something I was obviously not ready for. I think in part because I was battling with body image issues, and if I felt uncomfortable staring at my naked body in the mirror alone in my room, a boy would feel that same way too (although I know that’s completely false now). But when I got to college, I did find the “right guy” with whom I felt comfortable with. I began to feel better with my body and who I was, and the idea of sex didn’t seem so scary as it once had. I’m no longer a virgin, and I look back at that encounter with those girls that I’m not friends with anymore and judge myself on how naïve I was to assume I would wait until marriage, instead of seeing it as myself and my ideals, thoughts, beliefs changing. It was a strong belief of mine at the time, but that’s the thing, at the time. As I grow older, I continually change. And even in the future, possibly some of my beliefs will stay the same, but a lot of others will become something else entirely. I’m a self in process – a work still in revision, and I’m still not complete.