Let’s get something straight right off the bat, I am very gay. However, the story I’m about to tell is about a man. Well, he was a boy at the time. This boy, I’ll call him Carl for the sake of his privacy, was a part of that weirdly wonderful friend group I was in. Although I spent much more time dating my uber Christian ex-boyfriend, Carl takes the cake for being “that person” in my adolescence, even though we only dated briefly in middle school.

There were a couple of times we almost dated for real in high school. The most poignant being when he had another girlfriend from a neighboring school in our district. It was the week leading up to the neighboring school’s Winter Formal. Carl had a gf from the other school and I was going to the same dance with a friend of Carl’s girlfriend, who had a major crush on me.

So, it’s several days before the dance and I found myself at an Everwood viewing party with Carl. My guy friends and I used to get together every week to watch Everwood together. You know, because we were super emo high school kids and Everwood had a lot of emotions. Anyways, at some point that night, Carl tells me that him and his girlfriend broke up. We ended up making out a bit and I left that night hoping something was finally happening between us.

Then came the dance.

Just before the dance, at the girls’ pre-dance getting ready party, I overhear his girlfriend saying, “I think Carl is going to break up with me tonight.”

If I wasn’t an awkward teenager, I’m sure I would’ve been pissed. But instead, I felt dirty and as if I had helped him cheat on her. I had to go through the whole night, watching Carl and his girlfriend from afar, not wanting to give anything away because a lot of people’s feelings were hanging in the balance. I kept my distance from everyone.

Carl eventually broke up with her… “again” because, according to him, she didn’t “get it” the first time. I was still skeptical so to convince me his feelings were real, he pulled a grand gesture and, truthfully, it is probably the cutest thing anyone has done for me to this day. He had made hundreds of little origami cranes, then he snuck into my car at lunch, and filled the car with them.

Somehow his ex gf and I were hanging out later that day and somehow, she ended up getting a ride in my car. She obviously saw the cranes and freaked out. She straight up told me she’d never be friends with me again if I dated him. Although she was upset, I told her I needed time to think about it.

Within a week, our mutual friends were telling me he would not be deterred. I heard through the grapevine that Carl had plans to sneak over to my window at the stroke of midnight on Valentine’s Day. In my mind, this was way, way, way too scary. Having this guy who I like so much come to my bedroom on Valentine’s Day wreaked of sexy times. And this closeted gay was not ready to have sex.

So, I did what I always do, and I wrote him a long letter pouring my heart out and tell him I was picking my friendship with his ex over him. He canceled his Valentine’s Day plans and we stopped speaking. The whole situation even caused a big rift between Carl and my friends. It’s not unfair to say that I ousted him from the friend group – something I apologized for years later.

You might be sitting there thinking: wait, I thought this was a story about how Kim lost her virginity to a guy! That’s what I was promised! What’s this stupid high school drama I’m reading about?

Well, I’m hoping the background explains some of how the rest of this happened:

It was 2009, after college, and I was living in Seattle in my second rental house. After a long afternoon of day drinking, I, randomly, invited Carl to come hang out with us even though I hadn’t seen him in years. Since I’d been day drinking, I was already hammered when we went to Pies and Pints that night. In my extremely drunken state, I decided I should follow Carl into the (disgusting) men’s bathroom. We started hooking up in there, then eventually migrated to… the back alley. It was there that I lost my virginity to the man I had always assumed I would take it.

So, after years and years of waiting and being afraid, all it took was standing up from a barstool and going after it.  It wasn’t about anyone “taking” my virginity but rather, I reached a point in life where I was willing to give it.

And although it may seem like I should be embarrassed by this hot mess of a tale, I’m not. Before that day, I don’t think I ever realized how fraught my relationship with sex was. I wasn’t just scared of having sex with a man, I feared sex period. Brushing it off that day was probably one of the greatest things that could’ve happened to me. That day started a long journey into accepting myself as a sexual being.

Tune in next week when I finally have sex with a woman for the first time! The tale is equally as ridiculous and embarrassing!