v-cards: part two, the higher education edition.

This was sort of what I was like, except I didn't have any friends.

God, I hated college.

College is really weird because essentially you're just throwing horny, inexperienced children into a building where they can sleep together and throw up from drinking too much Bacardi 151. You don't know ANYBODY and you're desperate to make friends, so you hang out with people who have absolutely nothing in common with you and would otherwise make your skin crawl. You'll try anything, you'll talk to anyone, you'll wear whatever. You'll encounter many people that are nothing like you.

So anyway, I met a guy. Actually, I met a lot of guys. A lot of virgin guys.

My whorish self was quite unaccustomed to having someone stop me when I reached for their pants.

"Wait, Chelsea, I have something to tell you... I'm a virgin."

"Are you fucking serious? AGAIN?"

But, I fell for one of the never-been-touched crowd. I have no idea what it was I liked about this guy. Really. I couldn't articulate it if I wanted to. He was unambitious, pretentiously into literature, and ridiculously jealous of my success in school. He was one of those guys that sits in basements and plays World of Warcraft. His mother still did his laundry. He wasn't very good at oral sex. I had to pressure him after three months to actually become my boyfriend. Yes. I had to talk him into it. I'm not going to go into how wrong that is - you should already know.

But you know how these things go. You love people, for reasons that no one, especially not you, understands. You pretend to like metal and get taped for the Killswitch Engage tour DVD. You pretend to enjoy playing MMORPGs and hanging out in his crappy small town in central Massachusetts. You pretend to like his mother. You pretend to understand the big words he drops to make himself feel intelligent. You pretend to like his poetry. You pretend, and pretend, and fake everything because you're so desperate to keep this person near you.

And so I pretended to treat taking his virginity like a BFD (big fucking deal, for those of you not versed in hip acronyms). 

It was an afternoon, just like any other afternoon. The door to my single bedroom was closed. I don't think any of my other roommates were home. The shades were drawn on the windows, which overlooked a 6' by 6' concrete courtyard with dead pigeons in it, and the light was soft. I don't remember the exact logistics - a problem to be blamed on my overzealous alcohol consumption and the fact that I try to block out any and all memories of my mouse-infested shithole of a freshman dorm room. His apprehension was boring, as all perceived apprehension about something is when you're the one who's done it a million times. I believe it was missionary. I don't believe it took very long. I believe he made some statement post-coitus about his feelings, which I'm sure I dismissed with some kind of assuaging statement. And all I remember thinking was: I shaved my pubes for this?

 What a waste. Razors are so expensive.

Every first time, for the most part, sucks. It has to suck. It's a sport - some would say, even a game - and everybody sucks when they start playing. This is why I don't understand why virginity is valued so highly. It just means that when you finally have sex with that person, it's guaranteed to be awful.

I like to think of my v-card takings as an act of valiance, freeing these men from the inevitability of terrible intercourse with hopes to set them on a path toward a more fulfilling sex life. It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it. I've gone into retirement, but I'll never forget the acts I did in the name of mankind.

I slept with a hipster once. second worst lay of my life.

It was a very, very low point in my life. I was trying really hard to be part of that lifestyle.

Yes, I say "try" because that's all you can do. Nobody just "is" a hipster, they actually have to try to do it. They have to spend hours scouring Etsy for appropriately large non-prescription glasses, because it's totally cool to wear things you don't need. They starve themselves so they can squeeze their asses into American Apparel jeans and they save pennies so they can buy Parliaments. I know. I was a coke-addled poseur at one time, too.

I know it's hard to believe that someone who owns more than one item of clothing with tulle would identify with those people, but I wanted to. I always felt like my stupid black-streaked hair and multitude of studded belts and math rock playlists would bring me closer to that ultimate idea of cool, but it failed. It failed so hard that I became a yuppie with an anchor tattoo (so sue me).

Lately I've come to revile all the shit that screams "I have nothing better to do than drink PBR and waste my parents' money," and I was reminded of this the last time I looked at the Urban Outfitters website. I used to shop there, but now, I can't understand why people drop legitimate money on this crap.

You know what's the greatest thing about these? They're EIGHTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. If only I had remembered to save the leggings I got from my Walgreen's halloween costume three years ago.

By "I fought the law," I mean that I had to go to traffic court once, and my dad told them what a good kid I was so they continued my case without a finding for a year. (This really did happen to me. What can I say, it's easier to make fun of kids who think they're cool when you know for sure that you're not).

 I wish someone told me 15 years ago that my bedspread, my mom's jeans and the sewing skills of a fourth grader would be all I'd need to have a totally rad outfit in 2010.

I'll never understand why hipster companies are so intent on only selling their clothes to ridiculously skinny people. Fat money is good money too! Personally, I know about two women who have boobs that could actually be small enough to fit into one of these things. And they're both incredibly thin. And I hate them for it, but most of all I hate myself for hating them for it, and I hate reconciling my feminist views with my body issues, and I hate having to apologize for feeling that way. Anyway, fuck you and your stupid bralette.

 One of the words I hate more than anything is "flouncy." Flouncy implies that something is both decorative and cheerful, concepts which make me want to stab a piece of glass in my eye. Accordingly, I find these flouncy shorts extremely offensive. Not to mention ugly.

YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. Pick a shoe style, and stay there.

 This is marketed as a jacket. On what planet is this a jacket? In what universe?

Come. On.
What. The fuck. Is this.

v-cards: part one of a two part series.

Back in the days when I actually wore lingerie and bathed on a regular basis, I was a burgeoning sex kitten. I had a belly button ring and a list of makeout spots. I was a self-titled "good time girl." I liked being kinda slutty - it was a badge I wore with pride.

I wasn't unusual. Of the hundreds of people in my graduating class, I knew only a handful of virgins. Everybody did everybody. Sex wasn't so much a rite of passage as an unwritten rule. We were young, we drank Popov vodka, we went skinny-dipping. My group of friends was so sexually voracious (and bored) that many of us ending up hooking up with each other. Most of it happened in my basement (sorry Mom and Dad). And most of it was messy. I'll never forget certain incidents involving a stained t-shirt and a midnight romp down my street clad only in boxer shirts.

I don't regret any of it. My sexual exploration as a teen was completely natural and entirely pivotal to my development. I wouldn't be as awesome as I am now had I not learned a few things along the way. Among my greatest learning experiences were the two virginities I destroyed.

The first one was an accident. I didn't actually find out about it until a good three years later.

At age 17, in the middle of summer, and in the midst of a dry spell, I proposed what I liked to call a "business arrangement" with a friend.

This friend was more than a friend. He stuck his tongue in my mouth when I was 13. We spent our entire eighth grade Washington, D.C. trip with his hand surreptitiously down my pants. We fooled around everywhere, and we had a lot of firsts. We parted after middle school, when he was sent to boarding school and I went to a public high school.

We stayed in touch and went for friendly car rides on some weekends and holidays. I hadn't viewed him as a potential sex partner - I was young and had lost my virginity to my high school sweetheart just a year prior. He was back at his parents' for the summer. He was kind and gentle and nothing like me. He liked lacrosse and wore khakis. I had come out as bisexual and listened to Alkaline Trio. But goddamn I was desperate.

I hadn't intended on making it with a virgin. He had told me previously that he met a girl at school named Kate who had popped his intangible cherry, but that it had gone kaput prior to the end of the school year. Finding myself adrift in a sea of losers, he seemed like the perfect option. I gathered my courage and sent him an instant message. I proposed an agreement - hookups whenever one of us felt like it, with no strings attached. It was perhaps my most brilliantly engineered relationship to date. He eagerly agreed, and I made a date for our first rendezvous.

I showed up at his parents' whitewashed stately colonial house around 1 pm. He had the kind of parents who had money but you really didn't know how; they drove brand-new Volvos and played tennis and were never home. He came to the door and planted a sloppy, wet kiss on me. It didn't get much better from there.

We hurriedly made our way upstairs and started getting down to business. It didn't take long before I started wondering why he was so... bad. No rhythm, no natural sense of movement. I got on top and remember staring at the sports-themed border in his still-pristine childhood bedroom, and all I could think about was... balls. I worked my magic and expected results, so we could wrap it up. I was surprised at his longevity. He suggested we go take a shower.

Now this should have been it. I should have known that any man who would get in the shower wearing a condom and proceed to poke around my behind was definitely green when it comes to intercourse. He was too excited and all too eager to push the boundaries of our interaction. I yelped in pain and he backed off. He left me to finish my shower and was ready and waiting afterward with a new rubber. I admired his persistence and obliged, but I was weary of any future hookups. I held out for a month before getting back in the saddle.

We went on to have a lot of good times together, and I let the inelegance of our first time together slip my mind entirely. Several years after everything romantic or sexual fizzled out, on the heels of a very casual conversation, he dropped the bomb that our fateful afternoon was his first time. Part of me was horrified that he hadn't mentioned it sooner. The bigger part of me was relieved. At least he had an excuse for why it was so uncomfortable. My ass didn't.

an ode to beaus of days gone by.

Ah, the good old days. When I was young, carefree. When I dated complete morons.

As I get ready to embark on this crazy journey you kids call "matrimony," I can't help but be reminded of my expansive and often frightening romantic history. I find this to be a good time to reflect and put it all behind me as I get ready to start life with the only person I've ever been in a relationship with who can actually deal with all my bullshit.

I put forth, for your examination: three of the most screwed up couplings of my 23-year-old life.


Exhibit A: Chelsea's Traveling Circus, featuring The 180 Degree Man

When I was 18, I was probably the most miserable person on the campus of Northeastern University. I was also the biggest mess. I smoked far too many cigarettes. I ate horrifyingly fattening cafeteria food every day, I wore way too much glitter for my own good, and I drank Southern Comfort religiously. after screwing around with a misguided emo kid, an actor, a software peddler, a pagan and a hipster, I fell for - you guessed it, or, actually, probably not at all - a long-haired World of Warcraft player English major who pretended to play bass. Who was a virgin. Pro-life. And a Republican.

Not a very long story short, we dated for a year and a half. He broke up with me over the phone right after my mom got out of the hospital, where she almost bled to death (not that there's any ill sentiment remaining). It appears that after we split, he cut all of his hair off and voted Obama. How charming! I like to think it was my bold, overtly feminist ramblings, but it seems to me now that he was either 1) naively under the political direction of his overbearing Catholic mother, who continued to buy him action figures for Christmas when he was 19, or 2) claiming to have voted for Bush and and against abortion simply to irritate me. I wish him all the best, regardless of the fact that I actually have no idea who he ever was to begin with.


Exhibit B: Work Relationships are a Bad Idea, Even if One of You Doesn't Work There Anymore

Fresh on the prowl in January 2008, I admitted to a former coworker that I had a crush on him following an inebriated night in the city. We had worked together as co-ops and had spent most of the 6 month period making fun of each other. He admitted the feeling was mutual. Things are supposed to progress grandly from there, are they not? We met up in Allston for drinks. Drinks turned into hanging out at my friend's friend's house until 3 am. That turned into an awkward sleepover on my parents' couch. We made out in a stairwell at Jillian's during a work party. He took me to lunch and left me on the stoop of my office building, and he didn't call me again. Until he found out I met someone else. Turns out he was "cleaning up the mess" of his psychotic meth-addict ex-girlfriend, who has her eyebrows tattooed on. Last I heard, they had a beagle together. Mazel tov.


Exhibit C: I Thought I Did a Dead Guy

I just want to preface this story by saying: when I was 17, I was an idiot.

I met a guy on the internet. I'm not going to go into my internet rant, and I'm not going to discuss how the internet has led to two engagements of people I know. Including my own. All I will say is, I met a guy on the internet. And he was a lot older than me.

Seven years older, to be exact. I invited a guy seven years older than me, who I had never met before, to come to my house. And he did. And he brought pot. And I hooked up with him.

We went for a walk around my neighborhood and he invited me to go "camping." Now, we all know about "camping." "Camping" is not cooking on an open fire, sleeping under the stars and enjoying nature's pleasures. "Camping" is going somewhere so you can have sex in a tent. Foolish me, wanting adventure and more of this guy's pot, agreed. I met him at a forest in Taunton. He regaled me in stories of jam band festivals and sleeping with a woman in her forties so he could get unlimited use of her Cape Cod beach home. He told me all about the trailer he lived in while we sat in my Jeep to avoid mosquitoes. I was bored and he was an asshole. I drove home the next morning and never saw him again.

One day, curious about the hippie douche I went "camping" with, I Googled him. Much to my surprise, I found an obituary for a person of the same name, and approximate same age, from New Bedford, where he claimed to be from, but the obituary was dated 1999. I convinced myself the loser I met assumed a dead man's name so he could screw high school chicks from the North Shore, and fell into a miserable shame-slump about it.

Recent Facebooking has refuted my initial conclusion. The guy I met from the internet did provide me with his real name. He only used his weed to bed me. His about me says it all: "you could never understand this shit." I think I do, Brian. I think I do.