Virginity Versus The Teenage Intersex Hopeless Romantic

Seventeen candles. A valentine poem. Gentle love-making with a best friend. My teenage fantasies were shamelessly plagiarized from John Hughes movies. Reality splintered far away from fantasy for me.

When I met the guy my hormone-blinded brain believed would love me forever, I discovered how I wasn’t like the other girls.

Robert smoked clove cigarettes in the parking lot. He wrote poetry to all his ex-girlfriends. He wracked up an impressive list of suspensions. He taught me my first dancehall moves in exchange for showing him what my ballet class was learning that week. Reader: he wore fishnets. Of course I fell in love with him.