As it happened, we split the difference. Porn vedio I knew so little about sex I imagined I’d experienced it years before this was true. He agreed to have sex with me, and to the best of my knowledge at the time, he made good on our deal. When Josh and I started going out I felt that I had been delivered from my isolation, my uncoolness, and my family. It was harder than I thought. On the occasions when we found ourselves alone in bedrooms or on couches, our bravado dissipated and we became children again, unsure of what was expected of us. Or so I thought. We read On the Road and The Prophet. I saw him many times over the years, when I went up to look at the college he attended in Massachusetts, and when I went back to Provincetown for summer weekends in my twenties. I knew so little about sex I imagined I’d experienced it years before this was true. He was eager to make out and grope, but to my surprise and disgust, he seemed very uneasy about engaging in actual intercourse once I admitted—in the most blasé terms—that it would be my first time. Nobody would gasp if they heard a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old had lost her virginity. Josh had dark blue eyes and long, curly
