My Real Memoir
“We won’t go all the way with a girl,” Marc and I had pacted, “until we’re married.” We’d been sixteen at the time we built that sacred wall. Unfortunately, our hormones, non-believers, had attended a secret alternative meeting regarding how to move that wall.
The first breach came when each of us fell in love: I with the smart, beautiful Martha, and Marc with the equally adorable Helen, who I myself had dated the year before. Both were good Christian girls with “no sex before marriage” policies. In fact, Martha had renewed her faith at church camp the summer before and was patently worried we wouldn’t be in heaven together.
However, it seemed Martha (who I now called “Marty”) and Helen’s hormones had also attended that secret alternative meeting. Result? Loose bricks in the wall, i.e. nonstop lip-locking and hand-roving. True, we were still on “first base,” but our hormones were looking for opportunities to steal second.
For Marty and me, that moment came in a cozy two-person cabin loft at the Winter Drama Retreat. There, with snow piled high against the windows and logs blazing in the fireplace below, the flame of passion began to spread—cheesy romance novel language, I know, but that really was how we felt. And so it was–mixed metaphor alert–that the wall began to move, and we ended up on second base (elsewhere Marc and Helen did the same).
(Side note: My dad chose that month to give me the sex talk. “Uh, hello, Dad? I already know about sex.” His response was that of a man who’d bartered away his own virginity as a 17-year-old soldier: “Well, don’t ruin a good girl, son. I could take you to a professional who—” “No, Dad! Just no!” (Even then I loathed that infamous double-standard.)
We became celebrity couples when all four of us were cast in The Sound of Music. Helen, a gifted singer/actress, sang the hills out of Maria; Marc played good-guy Max (Jeph from our band was Captain von Trapp). And when Marty and I, as Liesl and Rolf, sang “You are sixteen, going on seventeen…” every mushy-hearted teenager at La Mirada High School let out a unison sigh. Romance was in the air. And so the “no sex till marriage” wall soon became the “no sex till love” wall.
It happened during Spring Break. My parents allowed me to host a pool party at our house while they were away. After everyone but the two of us had left, Marty and I, as if by unspoken appointment, ran “all the way” to home base.
I drove her home in silence. Marty assumed, she later told me, that I was “glowing” like she was. I assumed that she was terrified, like I was, that she’d be pregnant. True, I was almost eighteen. But I wouldn’t actually become an adult…
Until about two decades later.
My Real Memoir is a series. To read the next one, click here.
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Oh that teenage angst!
Poignant but funny.
By the way, Mitch, the beard suits you!
Thanks, Alex. Likewise!
No one ever tells you during those hormonal years that sex, aside from being magnetically enticing, is also very scary if you have a lick of sense. Thanks for tickling old memories, Mitch.
I think I had half-a-lick at best, Steve.
Thank you for the distant memories.
Now for the rest of the story . . .
Oh no! What happened after two decades? I can’t wait! 😉👍
Ahh, the good old days when teenagers at least tried to be cautious!
Liesl and Rolf?! What a koinkydink! In my first novel the romance blooms against a backdrop of “The Sound of Music,” where the main character plays the role of Liesl opposite a very obnoxious Rolf, Until Rolf gets sick, and the shy understudy steps in … <3 😉
At the risk of being self-serving, I think you'd enjoy the story.
I read it, Annie, and saw the koinkydink, and did enjoy it!
Great memory! But why were you worried about her being pregnant if you stopped at third base??? And, almost eighteen?!! I’m about 7-8 years younger than you, decidedly NOT religious, and it didn’t happen for me until I was 20. — YUR
Good point, YUR. Maybe I should have said “fourth base” or “home run.” I don’t remember those terms being used; it seems to me we thought of “third base” as synonymous with “going all the way.”
Sometimes hormones rule, despite people’s best intentions. I had a friend who got pregnant shortly after high school, and I was surprise, because I knew both she and her boyfriend didn’t believe in sex before marriage. But as she put it, one night they just got carried away. And one night was all it took.
Exactly, Ann. Although, for us, it wasn’t just a one-time thing.
Aw…Marx & Helen.
Sigh
:>)
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Teenage romance is so sweet!
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Ah, those years of teen hormones, friends, weird feelings.