Warning: This is not a happy story. I'm writing it partly because I've been asked a number of times about it and partly for cathartic reasons. For those reasons, I'm going to stay as true as my memory allows, without getting into erotic embellishments in the interest of entertainment.
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This is a story about the time that I lost my virginity. I wish it were a story of wine, roses, candy, satin sheets and Prince Charming but it's anything but that. An unromantic tale that involves an insecure girl (me) a jerk (Prince Charming) and even a wicked witch of sorts. There is no hero and no virtuous maiden the events just happen. I was in grade 12 and just turned 18.
Grade 12 started for me much like grade 11 ended: uneventful. That was in a word the way I was feeling with myself, I'm not sure if I was depressed I just wasn't feeling anything. Each morning going to school filled me with a heavy malaise, the type felt most in my eyelids. I wasn't popular, I wanted to be popular, but I had no idea where to even start on that front. I wish someone had told me that being good at ballet, being good at math, being nice to people and liking my teachers wouldn't add up to being the belle of the ball. Really I didn't even need to be the queen but I didn't like it when the other kids made fun of me.
Growing up lanky also didn't help as I became pretty self conscious in a bad way. I certainly wasn't ugly, adults would always tell me how pretty I looked, but that was the problem kids my age didn't. Being slight and thin, my breasts didn't grow to mammoth sizes; or much of any size really. Top that off with the glasses, frizzy hair usually pulled back and an awkward shy manner and you have some wide open Friday nights.
As for being picked on, it was very difficult for me, it always seemed so immature. The boys I could deal with, I smiled at them and they were mostly nice to me. The girls on the other hand, well some of them were just really mean. I couldn't understand why some of them hated me so much. When I wasn't leaving them alone I was trying to be nice to them, but the latter just made it worse.
This one girl, Amanda, picked on me every chance she got. It's as if she planned her day around picking on me. It upset me horribly because we were friends in middle school, but she went the popular skip class to smoke route and I went my way. It gave me little satisfaction that people thought she was ruining her future, we lived in the now and the now more or less sucked for me.
The things she would say were so silly but after a while they would just get to me, like "Michelle, Michelle has a face like a gazelle" or just the timeless, "here comes horseface" or the charming, "Mich the bitch". The other kids would laugh and snicker or often join in if I showed any emotion.
It probably wouldn't have bothered me as much as it did if it wasn't for the fact that she had the one thing that I wanted more than anything in the world: a boyfriend. I was so jealous of her or anyone who had a boyfriend. Hand holding couples always looked so happy together.
I would daydream picturing myself walking down a busy street with my one guy holding my hand knowing that I was his one girl. In a crowd of people we would stand out shining in happiness. Brought back to reality by my mom's snapping fingers, "Mich! Are you still on the planet earth? Wake up and get your head out of the clouds."
The only place I could dream in peace was my bed. I would pull the covers over my head feeling completely isolated from the world outside. There I created entire movies in my head, starring me in happier settings with a co-staring boyfriend. As of late these dreams were getting more and more heated. Sweating between the sheets, I pleasured myself most nights. Since I turned 18, I had been masturbating to the point of a bad habit. Strangely frustrated and unfulfilled, I would drift into deeper dreams. There, my only worry was waking to the sound of my alarm telling me it was to go back to school again.
This is how grade 12 was for me. Not only did I feel lonely at school, but I also felt lonely at home. My older brother had moved out a few years earlier to go to university. At least his antics broke the monotony from time to time. As for my parents, with nobody to yell at, they seemed docile in a strangely sad way. I never really caused them any trouble, at times I figured that maybe I should, if for nothing else then to put some life into them.
I still really enjoyed dance class and was getting really good at ballet by this time. My instructor even thought that I could have had a future in it if I wanted it. In hindsight, I think she was just trying to motivate me, but the positive vibes felt good nevertheless. I had performed at the local performing arts centre where I was able to lose myself. I just had a different confidence on stage; like I was somebody else, maybe a princess or a debutant.
My parents adored my performances gathering a real sense of pride. I didn't even mind wearing the revealing tutus; they actually made me feel pretty and graceful. I loved being told I was pretty even if the loudest voice was my dad's. All the adults agreed too, after the performance praise would rain down as I was told, " what a lovely young lady" I was.
At school, I always did my homework on time and with care. This earns you points with teachers but not with your peers. Math is what I liked best and while I didn't like the idea of being a math geek, I didn't see any reason to not do something I liked. This attitude found me in the math club, the president of the math club...yet another subject of ridicule. Far from the Prom Queen, I was Queen of the Nerds.
I wouldn't have minded if I could have gotten a date out of it. Contrary to what you might be thinking, the math club wasn't a great place to find a date. Some of the boys were nice, but they were at least twice as awkward as I was and even more shy. They never made eye contact with me and some openly shook when talking to me. My level of maturity wasn't at the stage of making concessions to my ideals. None of them measured up to my vision of the pair that stands out on the busy street, radiating happiness in their wake with each fresh step.
As a result, I mostly just hung out with other girls. I had my two best friends, Angie and Sara, who were probably my equal on the social ladder. Ladders aside, we loved each other with an unspoken understanding of each others plight, and still talk to this day. The times we were together I will always treasure, but boys were always scarce from our gatherings. Angie would have a shy boyfriend every now and then, but they would never go all the way.
We were virgins, but that doesn't mean we didn't hear about the students at school who were having sex. The whispers always went around and some of them just had to be true. I had no illusions about what sex was, I had seen a lot of videos and there was no doubt that I was jealous of those who were doing it. It felt like it was us and them and we were far removed from the world the popular girls.
My 18th birthday came, and it came with no boyfriend to buy me flowers. I still got my weekly ridicule from Amanda and I remember it hurting me extra that week. I went to the washroom and didn't want to come out, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if she saw me crying. I really hated her and I felt helpless around her. She had the things that I wanted: popularity, sex appeal and a hot boyfriend.