The FIRST first

I was thinking back over my history with men two nights ago, because that seems to be one thing in my life that I can never seem to get right.

Personal relationships with the opposite sex always slay me.

But anyway, I was with my best friend, someone who has known me for the better part of my life, and we decided to walk down memory lane.

"So who was your first? Not the first person, maybe, that you loved...but the first? The first FIRST? I never have asked you about that and now I would like to know."''

I looked at her strangely.

"The first what?"

"You know, the FIRST. The first guy you ever were intimate with!" she said.

I should have blushed or been embarrassed but I wasn't. I mean, really, it was so long ago now so who cares?

But my first, my first FIRST, as my friend put it, is just another bizarre reason why I am me.

So yes, the FIRST first.

I hadn't thought about that in a long time.

But that night I did.

The FIRST first was when I was 15 going on 16.

I had become awkward in high school because I was smart. I had spent years beating that damn thing down but somehow it wouldn't go away. I wanted to be pretty and sexy but I had this big brain that seemed to matter more (or at least need more attention) than my boobs or my hair-sprayed hair did.

So I eventually gave up. I think it was the year between my sophmore and junior year in high school.

My mother lived in Florida at the time so I took my awkwardness down south once or twice a year.

That year, I wanted release. I wanted to be free from my awkwardness, my brain that did the thinking for me, my soul that did the feeling for me, and all of that... I wanted to control something. ANYTHING.

So I decided that my sexuality was the only thing available for me to control.

So I slept with a man who mowed the lawn.

Yeah, I know.

It should be a hell of a lot more dramatic but it wasn't. He was a virgin too (hey, we're talking 15 or 16 years of age here back in the early 90s) but he was fun if slightly stupid.

We had, um, "relations" all summer and then I went home. Back to Philly. Back to Connecticut.

It was not nearly as dramatic as I had pictured it. He was the blond boy of the type that I would come to never like (I love men of darker and more exotic shades) and who knows who the hell I was to him.

I expected to be traumatized by the whole experience, or at least left "breathless," or hopelessly in love...00but I wasn't.

I kind of liked it and knew that I would like to repeat it again.

Maybe not with him but if another opportunity arose...

But then he had to go and put me on a plate.

I left and he took the one picture he had of the both of us (sitting on a toilet of all things because my best friend happened to take the picture while I was doing my makeup in the bathroom and he rushed in for the shot and pulled me onto the closed toilet seat) and went to the mall and put it on a plate.

I would have never known this happened. I would have lived free of this knowledge and just like countless other girls who have lost their virginity to lawn mowing operators in South Florida except...

Two weeks after I left he showed up at my mother's house with a plate with my picture on it.

A nice plate, I agree, but with my face and a date stamp on it. Of me and him on the toilet together.

And he handed it to my mother solemnly.

I know my mother, I know her so well.

So she took it and said "thank you."

On the inside she couldn't wait to get to the phone.

"OK, so you didn't bother to tell me that you screwed him but now I have a plate with you and him sitting on the guest toilet in my china cabinet....what do you think we should do about this?" she asked when she called.

Nothing, I promised. It was over.

But it wasn't.

Oddly, my first FIRST first decided to stalk my mother and her husband for a few months. They had a wonderful house in South Florida that had massive windows overlooking the street and the pool.

So they couldn't hide.

So once or twice a week my mother and step-father had to throw themselves on the ground and crawl around on the floor to avoid my FIRST first.

He stalked them.

I have no idea why to this day. But that's what happened.

"That fucking plate, Patti. I never wanted this, this...this crawling around on the floor...this, this...what? I don't know what to call it but it is awful. Damn you, really. I mean it this time. Of all things! My daughter and her lover on a toilet, post-coital, in my china cabinet!"

It passed.

But every single year my mother brings out the plate for Christmas.

Sometimes, when my image becomes obvious underneath a plate of green beans, my mother says, "Yes, this represents the first time Patti got laid and her boyfriend stalked us. Then they took a ceremonial picture of themselves on a toilet. Did I mention how proud I am of her? Would anyone like more green beans?"