Losing it

No lover but the first will ever know me as both a child and a woman.

By Lori Leibovich

Feb 13, 1998 | I was 17, laid up in bed with gauze stuffed into the corners of my mouth, sick to my stomach after having my wisdom teeth pulled. I felt woozy from painkillers and restless inside the stuffy house; it was summer. My boyfriend came by with daisies and a milkshake. He sat on the edge of my bed gently touching my cheek with the back of his hand, feeling sorry for me, with me. There wasn't much to do. We were stuck inside and couldn't even make out.

That night he carried me from my bed and placed me in the back seat of his black Jeep. The roof was off and he had made a bed with pillows and blankets in the back. He told me to lie down, then he covered me up to my chin and tucked the blanket around my sides. "Just look up," he told me. "Look up at the stars while I drive around, and try to forget about the pain." The elegant suburban roads were silent and the air was thick with humidity. With his left hand steady on the wheel, he reached his right hand back and held onto my leg for the whole ride.

That year we made our home in the back of his car and between the sheets of my twin bed, anywhere we could carve a small piece of freedom -- which, at that age, at 17, seemed more important than sex. Wordlessly we pledged to protect one another, to be each other's family. It was Us Against the World, an expression I didn't even know back then, I only knew what it felt like. I found my self -- or who I thought I was -- buried somewhere beneath the blanket that was him.

It was a feeling I had read about, the giddy splendor of finding someone who could show you how to read a map of yourself. Young love began with Judy Blume. When I was 9, her books, manuals disguised as literature, were the preferred contraband at sleepover parties and overnight camp, where the "good parts" were read aloud by flashlight. I kept my copy of "Forever" -- tattered, with the binding Scotch-taped -- under my bed. On the cover, the book was billed, as if in blinking neon lights, as "a moving story about the end of innocence."

Katherine, the 17 year-old narrator, meets Michael at a New Year's Eve fondue party in suburban New Jersey and the two fall hard for each other.

We kissed one more time and then he touched my face gently and said, "I love you Katherine. I really mean it ... I love you."

I could have said it back to him right away. I was thinking it all along. I was thinking, I love you, Michael. But can you really love someone you've seen just 19 times in your life?

Well, yes. Especially if you're 17.

"Forever" is more about sex than love, but then in high school it's hard to tell the difference. Katherine struggles with her decision to lose her virginity -- she feels her body is ready, but not her mind. Eventually, though, the time is right.

Page 115 of my copy of "Forever" was folded back, the corner creased. It is the "losing it" passage and I read it over and over, thinking it a was a blueprint for all girlkind, thinking that when it happened to me it would happen just this way.

I tried to relax and think of nothing -- nothing but how my body felt ... "Are you in ... Are we doing it?"

"Not yet," Michael said, pushing harder. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Don't worry. Just do it!"

"I'm trying Kath, but it is very tight in there."

"What should I do?"

"Can you spread your legs some more ... and maybe raise them a little?"

Katherine and Michael's early attempts at intercourse were strained and miserable. He came too early, she was in pain. But eventually things picked up. With access to her family den and the keys to his sister's apartment, the couple was able to sneak off and get some whenever they wanted. The sex added a layer of urgency and intimacy to the relationship and soon the young lovers were promising that they would be together -- yes -- forever.

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