"I really want to make love to you," I said.
"OK," replied Diana with surprising nonchalance. She was laying on her side on my queen-sized, paisley-patterned futon, her cheek resting on her palm.
I froze. I hadn't actually expected her to be quite so amenable.
Diana was a sexy and brilliant Freshman three months out of an all-girls Catholic high school whose level of sexual experience I had also completely misjudged. She drank heavily, and smoked occasionally, but she too was a virgin.
"Umm... great," I said, both excited and terrified. I scrambled to my feet and opened the top drawer of my dresser, which contained briefs, tube socks and eight of the twelve condoms I had bought when I was dating Carrie.
I rejoined her on my futon and fumbled, once again, with the foil packaging. It struck me that the awkwardness of opening and applying a condom was, in and of itself, a form of birth control.
By the time I had finished wrestling with semi-transparent latex, I had already begun to lose confidence. I felt a familiar panic in my chest and grimaced as I felt myself flagging.
"Damn it," I said.
"It's OK," she said. And then, when I didn't answer, she said it more emphatically. "It's. Oh. Kay."
I pulled the condom off and tossed it into the trash, where it joined used beer bottles and crumpled-up drafts of essays.
"I'm sorry," I said, turning away from her, desperately wanting to be alone, or dead.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," she said. "It'll happen when it happens."
She snuggled up to me, her body molding itself to mine. She kissed me on my neck, my upper back, then draped her arm around me. We lay together on the futon. I listened to her breathe, felt the warmth of her skin, and my anxiety slowly evaporated.
"I think I'm ready," I said. I put on the condom, somewhat less awkwardly this time, and we kissed for a while, losing ourselves in each other.
And then we made love.
I did not, it is fair to say, set any endurance records. But it was easy, effortless, beautiful, meaningful. And, in the two years we would spend together — until she decided, with unassailable logic, that it would be more rewarding to spend her junior year in Italy than with me — endlessly repeated.
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Bad Sex & Good Scotch: A Reunion Story
Short Story#86 in Short Story (7/11/15) Remember your "first time?" Well, I wish I could forget mine. As a Freshman in college, I met Carrie and we fell in love. We thought we were the perfect couple. We thought we would always be together. But after we decide...
