Why Was I in Such a Rush to Have Sex for the First Time?

Among her many other duties, Executive Editor Jesse Sposato does a fantastic job overseeing our Personals section, bringing in revealing and emotional essays from a wide array of writers around the world. But today we have a first: a Personals essay written by Jesse herself, which is part of a bigger collection she’s working on about coming of age. This one is, well, very personal, and just in time for Valentine’s Day. We think it will resonate with a lot of you. Keep reading for Jesse’s story, or click play above to listen to an original audio version of this piece, narrated by Jesse herself. —Narratively co-founder Brendan Spiegel

If there are two camps when it comes to your v-card, those who want to hang onto it, and those who are eager to get rid of it, I fell into the latter category, big-time. At 16, I wanted my virginity gone fast, with the kind of urgency you feel after a car has splashed you with a giant puddle and you need to peel your dirty clothes off immediately.

I wanted to be older than I was. Most of my friends in high school were years ahead of me, some weren’t even in high school at all. Having older friends meant there was always someone to buy you cigarettes or beer, but it also came with this unspoken push to hurry up and mature.

While we were all in a rush to grow up, my best friend, Emily, and her boyfriend, Bill — who was three years older — were already well on their way. They’d been dating since our freshman year and had done all kinds of grown-up things together: traveled from the small Long Island suburb where we lived to big-city Boston for a weekend and stayed overnight in a hotel, ate dinner with one another’s families, and most importantly, they’d had sex — not just had sex once or twice, but had it regularly. I wanted to catch up.

I met Brian one Saturday night at a Kinko’s — a late-night copy shop where punk teens went for entertainment in the suburbs. This was the late ’90s. He was tall, only a year older, and had a jet-black matted down bowl haircut that looked just like the hair of the little Lego figure I played with when