Virginity Stories: Absolutely Everything by Brian Tibbetts
“stars drag their fingertips through the flesh of my body”
Virginity Stories,” a series within NAILED’s “Sex Stories” in which all kinds of people write about losing their virginity. To submit to this column, email Shenyah at shenyah@nailedmagazine.com.
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It was absolutely everything. I’d studied for years, still managed to fuck up in so many ways, and absolutely none of my teenage fumbling mattered. It was the flickering light of the streetlamp a block or two over. It was hunkering down against her whenever a car passed on the main road. It was the wind buffeting the car against the motion of the interior. It was absolutely everything.
It was long dry pine needles on the moonlit ground beneath the basketball hoop behind the church over off Western. It was Purple Rain on the dashboard cassette deck. It was the itch of her cable knit sweater on top and nothing but smooth unbearable beauty below. It was what I was born for. What I was meant to do.
She was the most beautiful when she was laughing. She was so much smarter than I was. She wore hats, like she was in a movie. She was a flutist, with the delicate pout that everyone understands. She carried no darkness inside her, at least none that I could ever see.
She was so much older than her body. And she loved me. She had delicate moles and a nose that seemed to understand the cold better, red and raw against the January night. She was built exactly as she should have been, but in ways I had to come to understand, everything so much lower and better than expected.
That night I felt the stars drag their fingertips through the flesh of my body, elevated and laughing. When I collapsed against her white cable knit sweater in the laid-back virgin leather passenger seat of her father’s BMW, I finally had clarity. I understood that this was what I was made for. And I committed to the reordering of my life’s priorities in that lavender cloud of bliss, "Computer Blue" whispering behind me.
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Header image courtesy of Kelcey Morette. To view more of her work, go here.
Brian Tibbetts is a printmaker, musician, and writer living and working in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of The Best Goddamn Book on the Table, Vol. 1, and Shaking Hands with Uncle Dick. His work can be found in a variety of print and online publications.