The Virginity Letters

The Virginity Letters

Between sisters Paula (17) and Jenni (15) McGill
Dear Jenni.
         Well it happened and I know you said it shouldn't and it would hurt and I'd wreck my bedspread and nothing would ever be the same for bad but it happened and I liked it so there.
         Sweet Jenni. I am not mad but just only confused. You were right but not really. But sort of. You said it hurt and it did like the time you burnt a hole in my back with a hot coal. "Ow!" until he wanted to stop because he didn't want to hurt me. (Jenni. I know you don't like him but he really did say that.)
         But we kept doing it and yeah there was a stain (it looked sort of like Buster's one brown ear) but I didn't see until after because during I was too busy sweating and remembering to breathe and moving my legs without poking his gut and watching his face and counting the bed squeaks (37. How vulgar! Mima would say. Ha.) until I felt and hear this giant whoosh of air in my face and he flopped still on top of me.
         He hugged me all over and we laid there still fit together naked until he said the rubber started feeling funny so he got up to put it in the trash and I went to go pee. (Tip. Always knock on a bathroom door in a shared apartment bathroom. Especially if you're naked.)
         And that was that so he got his hat, right? No!
         Jenni. I know it looks like I am bragging but I promised to tell you exactly how everything turns out up here and if I am honest I will tell you that I am slightly worried about you because you seemed so sure he'd yank it out and bolt and why would you seem so sure except if it happened to you?
         Anyway. After we did it and cleaned up we got back into bed and turned off the lights and I looked out his window and I felt him warm on my back and I listened to him start to snore and then I fell asleep too and it was the most comfortable spot in the world.
         Quincy got a naked surprise (pun) in the morning because I forgot to write on the white board out front but he was cool once I hid in the closet and locked it so his mom could bring up the rest of his suitcases without thinking they're moving in with a whore.
         So that's the biggest thing that happened this week. I heard "500 Miles" on the Boombox Guy's walk Monday and thought of you but then this happened and I wanted to tell you so I waited to write until now.
         Hopefully you and everything down there is going fine. Let me know, okay kid? Tell Mama and Dad "hello" for me (but that's it! You know how they freaked out over you and I'm suppose to be the good one. Ha.) and let Buster have your pizza crust. He likes pepperoni.
Love.
Your big sis Paula
***
Paper clipped to a pair of underwear on the floor of dorm room 389
To Dan, King Asshole of Ninth Hall—
         What the hell else do you want from me, you ball-snipping shit-eating donkey-fu—
         I was about to call you a donkey-fucker, but that would make me the donkey. More appropriate than I would like the admit, actually. I am a complete and utter jackass for ever letting you near me.
         I gave you my virginity, you bastard. It wasn't much but it was all I fucking had, and then you acted like it was such a big fucking deal. You said you'd take such fucking good care of it. Like my uninvaded rectum was a fucking lost kitten in search of a fucking home.
         I hate you.
         I'm sure that means nothing to you, this means nothing to you, and I mean nothing to you, but.
         I still hate you.
         I hate you for corrupting all the good books we read together. How the shit can I ever watch Brenna laugh at her ridiculous teacher without remembering you acting it out, freckles and everything? I hate you for making me like cherry soda so much I won't drink anything else. I hate you for showing me how to swear and listen and fuck.
         I hate you for what you said last night. I hate you irrepairably for that last, annorexic straw broken over my razor-sharpened back.
         So fuck you. No, scratch that. I hope nobody fucks you until you're too old and toothless to enjoy it.
From Peter, former donkey boy
***
One of 27,000 pieces of fan mail in mail bag 4
Dear To Steve Mr. Tyler Aerosmith:
         This is embarrassing. I mean really, really embarrassing. I don't even like your music.
         Especially "Don't Wanna Miss a Thing." I mean, Jesus. How much cheesier can you get without macaroni? (Don't answer that. Tyler, I will rip off those giant lips and shove them up your ass just to see how funky your strut is then, I swear.)
         He made me like that song. It's all his fault.
         In fairness, I ascertained his music tastes long before we touched each other—that's how it started, actually, taking a break from studying for the impossible bio section we're both in. We both kept iPods tucked into jean pockets and headphones wrapped around our necks when they didn't hug our ears.
         We're both DJs for our college station, okay? Glorified CD changers but we both love it and we met when we backed into each other at the rock L-O shelf.
         So we did the meeting dance college kids perform. Major, hometown, year, dorm. When we got to classes, we discovered Bio 210 was kicking both our GPAs' asses, so we decided to combine brainpower. We hoped that zero plus zero added up to more than the sum of its parts.
         Both of us are terrible at math.
         The night we compared playlists, we laughed so hard I saw the impish boy hiding inside the serious, future professor skin, and we leaned in so close I could smell the watermelon gun he swallowed half an hour before. I felt like a defibrillator went off under my left boob.
         I don't know what he felt then, but a week later we fell into a kiss by the state building fountain, and two weeks after that we were fucking on the top level of a parking garage. Listening to your song.
         It was my first time, my first boy. His third or fourth girl.
         I lost my virginity with my back scratching concrete, the city sprawled out around us like a dark quilt sewn with orange sequins of streetlights, sweating under my black wool peacoat and watching my breath puff in the night air, feeling rhythmic queasy hunger and pain shoved into my underwear, his earwax wedding to mine on the earbuds we shared.
         It took exactly four minutes and thirty-six seconds, too.
         He apologized profusely right after, staring at me with such horror that I figured he either thought I'd run to the nearest police call box (seven stories down) and scream "RAPE!" or had realized what I actually looked like and would run down the stairs himself. Either one of those things would've been preferable, I think, to him 'fessing up to a girlfriend waiting for him in West Tower.
         Every time I hear "And I don't wanna miss a thi-i-ing..." I remember his sweet brown eyes and his soft wheat hair and his hard pointed warmth inside me, and it hurts a little less. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, thanks.
         I'm sure you get millions of letters from college girls still (even though your mean age has to be—what, 60? 70?—Let me say: eww.), so there's a very big chance this'll end up in the trash and you'll never read it. Hopefully.
Reluctant fan,
Leigh Preston
***
Sent to Heather Heartfixer, weekly columnist in the University of Hampton's student newspaper the Howl
Dear Ms. Heartfixer,
         I am a twenty-three-year-old graduate student earning my Ph.D. in communications theory (after taking an elective Communications and You course as an undergraduate, I found the subject so fascinating I had to pursue it) here at the U. of H. Some of my colleagues I've heard refer to our institution as the University of Hell, but I disagree. It's a lovely campus, laid out in geometrically pleasing and accessible patterns, with a very rigorous academic agenda that I find quite fufillingly stimulating. Did you know that a full twenty-five of our nation's current Congresspeople attended this University for at least a semester?
         But I digress. No doubt you are full aware of Hampton's rich history; judging from your headshot (which, I realize, is not ideal material even insofar superficial judgments ago, but one has to work with what one is given in these matters), you seem a bright, capable young woman with kind eyes and a smile anyone would be proud to coax from its hiding.
         In your beauty you are far from alone on this campus. I cannot walk from the research lab to my office (a distance of thirty point two feet) without noticing at least one extremely lush female breeze by, snagging a bit of my heart along the way. Neither can I eat my meals at the student union without going into abstract fantasies that sidetrack me from the work I bring along.
         I do not seem to exude the same appeal, however.
         Over the course of my six years at Hampton, I have conducted exactly one "date" that ended no more intimately than it began. I have no idea how to rectify this situation, and I badly want to.
         I would like to think that I am above such primitive urges and braggings as afflict my average peers, but I am not. Academia is my life, my haven, my hope, and my pride, but it is, ultimately, dusty and silent. The touch of a woman, as I imagine it, jumps with life I yearn to feel.
         As I believe the common phrase is, "Lonely nerdboy needs to get laid." Please help.
Thank you for your time,
William S. Henriquez
P.S. If it is not too presumptuous, would you like to meet in person for better analysis? Word count for letters to your department are rather restrictive. On my envelope I have included my phone number and office hours so we can perhaps meet sometimes this week. Maybe for coffee. Please.

THE END