Because your mother raised you Baptist, buy into your pastor's definition of fate. Believe in the existence of a soul mate and search for her. It’s never too early to find “The One.”
For guidance on this journey maintain perfect attendance at the Sex-Ed classes your church offers. The boys who share your curiosity about how and when God wants you to have intercourse will raise their hands and ask all the questions fumbling in your mind.
“So, when I get married I can do anything I want with my wife?” one will ask, as you imagine all the dirty things you’ve witnessed on late night web-browsing sprees.
“With your wife? Sure,” the pastor will guarantee despite the stunned look on his face.
When another kid asks him if he ever masturbated, he’ll end the class with a prayer begging the Holy Trinity for assistance.
***
At sixteen pursue a sweet Christian girl in your classes who’s impressed by your purity ring. She happens to be half Cuban, even though the only traits she inherits from her immigrant mother are her abilities to maintain a metabolism that sends food straight to her ass and to speak so fast that you have trouble keeping up with the words departing from her virgin lips.
Convince yourself you’ll end up with a Latina because the more time you spend swooning over the white girls at school, the less action you’ll get. God knows you’ll never make enough money to impress their fathers.
Develop a friendship before professing your love to her. That way you’ll know what songs to spend hours learning when you pick up the guitar. And she’ll appreciate that you sing her the one she likes to belt out of her window while driving around town on summer nights. Remain patient through the months she spends deciding if she’ll reciprocate your feelings.
During Youth Group discussions, when she defends the biblical condemnation of committing suicide, nod your head in agreement despite thinking life can be fucking depressing. Don’t mention that your father’s alcoholism looks a lot like someone ending his life “before God intends to.”
Ignore the invitations from your closest friends to party at the beach. To get drunk off light beer, get high on cheap weed, and roll around in the sand with girls who have daddy issues.
Instead, write your prudent girlfriend flattering lyrics accompanied by your guitar. Write her four-page letters explaining why you can’t breathe as easily now, because loving her has enlarged your heart so much that there’s hardly any room for your lungs. Or some corny shit like that.
Relish every opportunity to caress her round, soccer-toned ass. After your hand slips underneath her bra to grip her breast, her nipple poking the center of your palm, she’ll never allow you to do so again. Settle for dry-humping on your bed, the TV volume turned up so your mom can’t hear. One day the girl will mention that the friction between your jean-covered privates feels wrong. Because your religion has programmed you to associate pleasure with guilt.
That’ll be the extent of your sexual relationship for the three and a half years you spend admiring the virtue of her intentions.
***
In college, the two-hour drive between you will provide the space she needs to grow closer to God and for you to question whether He ever existed.
The Real Estate market will crash. She’ll know you transferred schools to help your parents so they don’t lose the house that represents an inkling of success after being uprooted from your homeland. But they’ll lose it, and she won’t call to ask how you’re doing.
When she does, she’ll say, “I don’t think we’re meant to be together.”
Realize she never loved you. Next time, listen to your mother, who foretold your heartbreak as if she were a prophet.
Go to your best friend’s house and drink your first beer, toasting the girl who wasted too much of your time. To hell with her and the morals she instilled in you.
***
Hang out with a good friend from high school who still talks to your ex. Lay a blanket at your favorite beach spot and drink a few brews to build courage. Tell her you always thought she was beautiful and kiss her when she tackles you onto the dunes.
You’ll drink too much on your twentieth birthday and almost hook up with the cute Colombian girl crushing on you. But your conscience will tell you you’re not ready. Her incessant texts after the party, outlining your future together, will prove it would’ve been a mistake.
At twenty-one ask out the cubanita who frequented the Spanish service at your church years ago. After a few dates she’ll sneak you into her house for foreplay, and you’ll wonder if she took that Sex-Ed class with the pastor’s wife.
Attend a drunkfest at your buddy’s pool. Your cubanita, who couldn’t look more like a white girl with her curly blond locks and icy blue eyes, will seduce you at the party and lead you to her car. Apologize when you leave her unsatisfied. She’ll say, “It’s okay,” and kiss you on the cheek before driving away.
Don’t think about your ex, who’s saving herself for marriage and expecting the same from her devout future husband—thereby forbidding your reconciliation. Don’t wonder if sex is the final Right of Passage to becoming a man. A man she would describe as ungodly.
Drown your regret in your father’s firewater. You’ll be unable to decipher what’s making you sick, if it’s the rum or the realization that you lost your virginity to a girl you’ll never love.
Written by: Eric Zurita
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
