Black Rose

Sweet nothing.

I was never really sure whether I had lost my virginity.

With girls, the lines were blurred. It was never as concrete as it seemed to be with guys. With girls, you could do things that were altogether different, and it was never clear to me the moment I really lost it. Or even if I had lost it. I didn't know.

My first kiss was at the church camp, with Jordan, but I didn't go near girls for a long time after that. I convinced myself that it meant nothing.

Then I met Natalie. She was a year above me, new to the school, and she sat next to me in band. I thought that everything she did was magical and wonderful. She and I had whispered conversations in between the conductor's notes, and each week, I waited excitedly for band. She told me she was gay one week, treating it as a casual side note in our chatter, and I went silent. I didn't chastise her or tell her she was wrong, though that's what my parents would have wanted me to.

Instead, I felt a flare of hope in her words.

I went home that night and prayed that one day, I could kiss her. I knew my parents would think it was wrong, but from that moment on, all I could think about was her. In every spare moment, I would daydream about talking to her and kissing her.

It was a few weeks later, during the rehearsal for the end of year concert, when it finally happened. She told the band conductor that she felt sick, and asked if I could take her to get some water. We went to the bathroom together, and I worriedly asked her if she was okay. She laughed, and walked along, checking that no one else was in the bathroom, a crazed glint in her eyes.

She briefly fixed her hair in the mirror, then turned to me and asked, "Do you want to make out?"

I'd nodded without a second of hesitation.

Her face lit up and she took my hand and gently pushed me against the bathroom counter and kissed me. Her kiss was more intense than my first, years before, with Jordan. She bit at my bottom lip and pushed her tongue into my mouth.

After a few minutes of intense kissing, I broke away, panting, feeling worried. "I'm sorry I'm not very good at this."

She had just laughed. "Don't worry about it. You're a natural."

Then she had glanced down at my shirt and gave me a questioning look. "Do you mind if I...?"

I slowly nodded, not really sure what she meant, but so excited and flustered, I was willing to try anything.

Perhaps there, in that bathroom stall was when I lost my virginity. With Natalie's hands on my skin, and her lips on mine. We didn't get far, but maybe it was far enough.

Then the bathroom door opened.

It was a girl from band, coming to check if Natalie was okay. She saw us, with me pinned against the sink, and my flannel shirt unbuttoned to reveal my white bra, and Natalie pressed up against me.

The girl screamed and ran straight from the bathroom to the principal's office.

My parents came and picked me up straight away. When we got home, they hit me so hard I couldn't sit for days. I didn't perform with the band at the end of year concert. I moved schools a week later.

They moved me to a Christian girls school, on the other side of the city. It seemed that God was looking out for me because it just so happened to be the school where Jordan went. We reconnected after years, and straight away, we were friends again. I became friends with her friends, and for the first time in forever, I felt truly comfortable and happy at school. I learnt about Jordan's family, and that her parents weren't Christians but put her in a Christian school because it was the best school in the area. That was how she had come to be on the youth camp years before.

I never told my parents that she was the girl I had kissed all those years earlier, and they never found out. One night, I slept over at her place, and we pulled our sleeping bags and pillows up the treehouse in her backyard, to sleep up there and escape the house full of her siblings. We stayed up all night talking.

It was just like we were back at camp, whispering to each other in the top bunk.

We talked about everything. From school to celebrities, movies, and books. We didn't talk about boys though.

In the dead of night, when the house below was dark and silent, and it felt as if it was just the two of us, the only ones awake in the world, I told her about Natalie, and I started to cry. I told her that for years, I had been told that being gay was wrong and that it was a sin, but the moment when I kissed another girl, it felt the very opposite of wrong.

She had gone quiet, and for a few moments, I worried that she was going to get mad at me and tell me that I was wrong.

Then she leaned over, brushed away the tears on my cheeks, and kissed me.

Maybe it was then I lost my virginity. In the dark silence of the night, in an old treehouse, exchanging sweet nothings with the first girl I ever kissed. That was the first night I truly knew I was in love. Sweet softness turned into passion and fire, then fell back into bliss.

In the dark stillness, wrapped in each other, I whispered to her the smallest of thank you's into her ear and kissed her temple, her curly hair tickling my cheek.

When we fell asleep, I was filled with complete and utter peace. The kind of peace I had never felt before.

I tried to recall that peace years later, lying broken and alone, tied to a bed in the basement of a psychopath, but I could barely even summon the memory.

Lying there, waiting as the blood between my legs dried, I knew one thing for sure. Whatever it meant, I knew that I was no longer a virgin. The last traces of innocence had been torn from my bare and broken body.

Alone, I cried, and no one was there to wipe away my tears.