There are about 5 women of whom I would like to ask this question, “Why weren’t you my first?” The way it actually happened was a little bit crazy. The bottom line of the whole story is that I have met a few women in my life who were absolute gifts and I didn’t know it.
This story starts in German class. Really? Out of all the classes in the university course catalog, German? One woman in the class, a freshman while I was a sophomore, was at a party where I started talking to her. We hit it off, a rare enough occurrence for me.
We started dating, my first girlfriend. Things progressed nicely for almost two months. Then, “screeeeeech”. She hit the brakes so hard I got whiplash. To a young, immature, 19 year old male, “slow down” means “stop” and feels like “go away”. That was not her intent. She just felt things were going too quickly.
Enter Anne (not the real name). She invited me to her room. If my girlfriend was hitting the brakes, Anne was accelerating like a runaway train. On a Sunday we were doing backrubs, on Tuesday we were kissing outside of Marycrest, on Wednesday we were between 2nd and third base on the floor of an empty room in the Student Union, on Friday I was no longer a virgin. But you can’t do all of that in complete secrecy on a college campus. Or any secrecy whatsoever. On Sunday my girlfriend was getting angry with me, Tuesday we were spotted by my girlfriend’s pals and the news spread, Wednesday we were spotted by a janitor who turned the lights on, saw us, turned the lights back off back and left, Friday was interrupted by my roommate who had dibs on our room in Founders – my turn was the next night. And I did make the best of it.
But the following Sunday messed up my mind. Nothing happened, just my mind went kerblooey. I was no longer a virgin. I was thrilled, proud, but feeling like crap for treating my girlfriend that way. We hadn’t officially broken up but we weren’t exclusive either. So I felt like I wanted to rerun that last week. Either break up more deliberately or be more stealthful or stay with Anne. What happened? None of the above. I wound up with no old girlfriend, no new girlfriend, and none too proud of myself. But part of me said it was a rite of passage, inevitable. Now on to the next scene in my life.
That next scene would occur a month and a half later. I started dating someone else. Someone that I met in German class. Yep, the same class. I sat behind her and noticed her bra strap through her thin blouse. She and I would end up being married two and a half years later.
