Crystal

I lost my virginity when I was 13.

Crystal had long brown hair. She was a little shorter than I was then, and was very pretty.

We were both eighth-graders and I guess we were in the "popular" crowd then.

We started going out at a football game one Friday night. Her friends told me that she liked me, so my friends told me to go out with her. That's the way things worked-out back then- always through friends.

After a month of being together, we were everyone’s favorite couple. Always together at football games, school dances, and any other big social events. To accommodate, we set up some of my friends with hers.

We always held hands, sat next to each other at lunch, and were well known for making-out in public. From the hallways to the ski-club bus, our lips were locked. -This was all a very big deal for the middle school kids. We were ahead of our time in that small-town school.

After going out for about five months, my friends convinced me that the only next step to mine and Crystal's relationship was sex.

Sex was a huge deal to me. Yet, I had no real morals against premarital sex, and I was a horny little kid, so I decided it was for the best.

I talked to Crystal about it, and she told me that she had been hearing the same things from her friends. Neither of us was ready. We sure weren't in love. But we did it anyway.

It was awkward and uncomfortable, but also fun and exciting.

Everyone knew about it at school. I think my parents even found out somehow, since I got 'the sex talk' from my dad a week after it happened.

Crystal and I only had sex twice after that, and then were broken up a month later.

We never really talked the rest of the year or even through high school. She remained with 'the popular crowd,' while I started listening to punk music, started attending concerts and raves, and stopped wearing brand-named clothing.

I did talk to her once after graduation though. We were both drunk at a party in Jamison Woods. We talked and laughed about how stupid we were -following whatever our friends told us to do.

Then she said she had to go. She kissed me on the lips and told me, "Have a good fuckin' life Damien Duerte."

 2002-01-04 - 5:29 p.m.

<<>>