Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

“Wanna Fuck?” he asked as he drove me home. “Sure” I responded. With my 14^th birthday just weeks away I knew I was getting close to the wire. Carol or Michelle or someone had told me that their mom had told them that any girl who smoked cigarettes also had sex by the time they were 14. I now suspect that what that parent meant was that bad girls (you know, the ones who smoke) were likely to have sex early too. Being who I am, I heard it as a rule or edict. Since I smoked I thought it was my duty to have sex before I was 14.

So he pulled his old Ford truck to the block behind mine where it was quieter…and darker. I don’t recall most of it. It hurt…a lot! Since I was told that sex was supposed to feel good, I was very surprised at the pain. Dammit, I was supposed to like this and I sure didn’t. But I was getting the job done. Virginity lost, check.

When he was done he asked why I didn’t tell him I was a virgin. I told him he hadn’t asked. It really felt more like a business deal than any romantic notion of a girl’s first.

Danny was maried and 25. While dating older men never really became my thing, married men did. I felt important that they wanted me enough to break their vows. I believed in marriage vows back then. I don’t anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I think marriage is fabulous for those who want it. I just don’t see the sacredness any more. I’ve never been married but had lovely committed relationships. And I have have yet to see a paper marriage that one partner or the other hasn’t cheated at least once. I have no judgement around that…I would be a hipocrite if I did. I’m just saying marriage no longer holds the weight I once thought it did.

Let me be clear…I used to love to find married men in bars and take them home for one night stands. We were always drunk. I knew what I was doing didn’t really agree with my own morals so I had to drink to get the job done. I’m sober now and am abhorred by my behavior. I’m deeply shamed by the harm I participated in that may have affected those stranger’s marriages.

For years sex was a tool and not too often fun (although sometimes it was…we’ll talk about that later ;). My first time was just a symptom of my warped ideas. Ideas about the role I had in the world. Ideas I perpetuated and perfected.