The "First Time" (sexual content)

My name is Cristina Johnson

It's been a tough week. I went through my phone and deleted all but one photo:

I was mesmerized by this picture. I cried as I deleted photos ...oh did I cry... but this one...this one I couldn't delete. It seemed to epitomize so much of our relationship. How much we looked like the "perfect couple" which - I'm sure - Gary always looks like with any woman. The "perfect couple." People never imagined we would split. This photo for some reason, had me bawling all day, all evening.

I cried. I called him. I left a sobbing voice mail. I was torn apart. So many memories...gone with a tap on the trash can icon.

My supporters have encouraged me to delete the photos from facebook as well. "Time to let go," they say kindly, supportively.

Then, today, I braved the hundreds of photos I have on my facebook, in an attempt to delete some, but not before offering (over voice mail) to let Gary have whichever ones he wanted. He never responded, so I will try to pick and choose the ones he'd like and try to get them to him.

But as I was going through them, deleting those of me and "Dee" and some of him and I (interestingly almost ALL at the bar or on the boat), I came across this one:

=

and I couldn't stop crying.

I sat in the living room, in the dark, except for two candles burning. I kept looking at this picture, which I couldn't bear. Across from me, on the coffee table is a beer bottle, cigarettes and a green lighter, the two candles going and a plate - given by "Dee" which I deliberately use as an ashtray because of the negative energy tied to it...I've already thrown away most of the junk she gave me). There's a small remote that goes to the shelf stereo where I sometimes listen to David Lanz, Leonardo Ludovico and George Winston (I prefer the sounds of piano, cello and piano in harmony)....

And a razor blade. It sits on the table, occasionally reflecting the flames on the candles. I hold my head and cry.

I used the blade last night, ran it along my thigh. Nothing major.

But I was in so much pain....

One thing taken  from an incest/rape victim at the age that I was, is the first time.

At the risk of embarrassing my daughter (which probably won't happen - she doesn't read my blogs), she texted me when she was 16. Told me she'd "gone all the way" with her boyfriend of a little over a year.

My feelings were mixed. I called her immediately.

My first question was obviously, "Did you use a condom?"

"Duh, yes."

My second question, spoken rather awkwardly, "Well...how was it?"

"It hurt like hell!" she said. She gave me further details - I suppose that's one of the good aspects of having her live so far away. She talks to me about everything. I listened intently. I was secretly so elated that her first experience was with someone she 'loved' (at the time)...that it wasn't traumatic.

I once told Gary that I was "still waiting for the first time," and he got angry, stormed off.

A couple years later, it came up again. This year - 2010 - we went to Selden's Creek. It was always awkward for Gary and I to be alone together. We never really knew how to "be" with each other. But this night, I drank a couple beers as we sat tied to a huge tree and a limb that was tangled in the marshy grass near the boat.

I started talking with him about sex. About that "first time" thing ....I explained it to him.

"I want to know what it was supposed to be like," I told him, afraid, ashamed.....not really knowing what his reaction would be.

We were surrounded by nature, not a soul in sight. We watched beavers and otters swim by, took the dinghy out and saw a whole flock of beautiful white swans. Trees like you've never seen. It was truly beautiful.

And by sunset, we were alone on the boat again. I made dinner. We continued talking, although I can't remember about what.

And then he attempted to give me my "first time"

He was attentive, gentle, kind....much different than usual. He spoke to me, kind words. He went slow, calmly, rather than treating me like a conquest, the way it typically felt.

I opened up that night, more than ever before. Tried - tried so hard - to stay present and be there with him, throughout the experience. Mostly accomplished, but still struggled. (I dissociate during sex).

It was a truly beautiful experience....

...I thought.


After that, we took a trip to Shelter Island. We anchored out at Sag Harbor. Oh the wind was horrendous. The boat wagged in the water like an excited dog's tail and neither of us could sleep. We anchored there about two or three nights.

We hadn't made love since Selden's Creek, so I was still lost in that emotional experience, as far as intimacy and I kind of believe that he, too, was somehow touched....although that belief was short-lived.

Anchored out about two hundred yards away from another boat, he decided he wanted to have sex in the cockpit, out in the open, in view of the other boat.

I completely shut down and every thought that he might have "gotten it" (as far as my need for tenderness, gentleness, slowness, calmness), disappeared in the wind. I did whatever he wanted....as usual. The "first time" was instantly deleted from my brain. I thought he cared....I thought he got it...Oh....I was so wrong.

That was in 2010....when he carved our initials in the picnic table at the beach at Coecles Harbor.

The First Time, I realize now, will never come. The reason is because for me to experience the "first time," I'd have to experience it hundreds of times, to replace the hundreds of times I was molested or raped. He thought, by giving me one "first time," I would suddenly be "fixed" and we could just go back to being an emotionally devoid, sexually perverse couple.

He was wrong, and so is anyone else who thinks they can give us back our first time. Our first time was taken. Taken. Oh my God how that hurts.

I'll never have that "first time" like my beautiful daughter did.....I envied her, I admit it, shamelessly but with utter love.

What's the first time supposed to be like?