Marissa Duke

Who doesn't remember their first time? Well, I don't. I mean, I have a vague recollection of there being some guy, and we were outside, but I think I passed out, too drugged to feel pain or to notice the blood until the next morning.

It was already 2003 on the East Coast, but in California the clock had not yet struck twelve. I spent New Year's three time zones away from home with a childhood friend. Peter and I hadn't seen each other in over ten years, but my parents decided that we needed a family vacation, and I decided that I needed to enter the new year with people my age. So while my parents sipped champagne at home, I went out with Peter. His friends, I knew, partied hard. Peter had already been arrested twice (public intoxication, possession of marijuana), and they were all light years ahead of me in terms of sex, drinking and drugs. For me to say I was nervous would be an understatement. Terrified, uncomfortable and uptight would be more appropriate adjectives. I sipped a gin and tonic while the rest chugged beers, lit joints and snorted thin lines of coke off of dirty countertops.

"Having fun yet?!" the stranger next to me yelled above the noise.

"Not really!" I answered truthfully.

"So who are you?!"

"Marissa! I'm a friend of Peter's!"

"Oh, me too!" He introduced himself but the music drowned out his name. "Fuck, it's loud in here. Hey, let's go outside. I'll get you some champagne. It's not New Year's without champagne!"

"All I could find was Carlo Rossi," he said, handing me a glass of wine as we stood on the back porch. "Cheers."

We drank to the new year. In a few months, I would turn eighteen and graduate from high school. In a few more months, I would move to Chicago and enter a prestigious university where the president would call us the brightest class to pass through its doors.

But I was so dumb, because that was the last thing I remember.

I woke up next to empty bottles and cigarette butts. Leaves stuck in my hair and I was covered in sand. I couldn't find my shoes. My cell phone showed about twenty missed calls and frantic voice messages from my parents. Still dazed, I stood up and dusted myself off. I looked around but was alone.

I made up some lie about misplacing my cell phone, not being able to find a cab, and sleeping in Peter's spare bed--a lie my parents grudgingly accepted, probably because they didn't want to believe anything else. They called the police and told them I had been found. I threw up in the bathroom, turning on the water so nobody would hear me, and fell into a fitful sleep upon the hotel bed.

I should have known better. I was young and unaware. It could never happen to me, I thought when I read articles in Cosmo Girl or Teen Vogue. But then it did, and I felt numb, dirty, used and discarded.

The pregnancy and STD tests came back negative. I was both lucky and unlucky. Rage turned into relief then humiliation, depression and, once again, anger. I stopped trusting men--all men, even my father. I spent the following summer almost too afraid to kiss the guy I was seeing. The next New Year's I cried as my parents and I watched the ball drop on TV. But I wouldn't tell them what was wrong. I went to bed at 1am and dreamt of blood and cigarettes discarded in the sand.

But life went on. Gradually, these feelings subsided as I came to terms with what happened. Even so, I started bringing my own drinks to parties and my stomach still lurches when I'm given a glass of jug wine. I feel I was cheated out of something special. First times are supposed to mean something. You're supposed to think you love him. You're at least supposed to remember his name. For some, the first time is wonderfully unforgettable. Instead, it was something I long to forget, but neither time nor therapy can erase the memory.

(2005-10-18)

Also by Marissa Duke

The Agony and the Ecstasy
I look over at the slimy little man suddenly squatting by my chair. A tacky, striped shirt covers his pale body and tiny glasses perch before a pair of beady eyes. His hair is greased back and almost hidden by a beanie cap. Didn't those go out of style in, like, the nineties?
(2005-09-20)

The Agony and the Ecstasy
So apparently guys don't like to be written about in magazines
(2005-09-06)

The Agony and the Ecstasy
I love kissing and I love sex, but merging mouth and genitals makes as much sense as putting ketchup on ice cream
(2005-08-09)

The Agony and the Ecstasy
Refusing to let men use us, we use them. For their penises
(2005-07-26)

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