I’d never sucked a dick (women’s anatomy remained unimaginable), though there was that shepherd in Japan with the permanently filmy glasses, who smelled like cough syrup, who’d lick me when I was trying to sleep. I decided what he did couldn’t possibly count against me. I hadn’t even been awake most of the time.

Dry-humping, though, that wasn’t a “one guy” sort of history. I’d participated in dry-humping with exactly as much enthusiasm as I’d participated in prayer meetings. Which is to say I was generally awake for it, daydreaming about anything else, and hoping it would be over soon. Neither activity was exactly avoidable; both occurred constantly. I did push a boy too hard once and he fell off my bunk bed. We both panicked. He was fine. And I had to let him go at it on my leg for weeks so he wouldn’t tell on me.

* * *

—

   After Coach Rhodes finished her talk with a resounding “If you let a guy feel you up, sex you up, you don’t come back from that,” and the boys in the back broke into the chorus of that fucking Color Me Badd song, the girls discussed the coach’s disjointed lecture on which body parts we could let a guy touch—everyone agreed that being felt up was fine. There was no consensus on oral, but no one wanted to press too hard and seem like a slut. Then Lisa Collins, who was a very good Christian, whose dad was a Church of Christ elder, said dry-humping didn’t count because it wasn’t even fun. I never asked anyone else. I had the answer I wanted. I was a virgin. I held to that fact like I’d beaten the Family at the game they played best. I was somehow still a fucking virgin. I won.

That I’d left a fucking sex cult a virgin might’ve been why I was so reluctant to give it up to my first boyfriend. I met him at the off-brand Taco Bell where Lisa’s older brother got me a job. My main attraction to John was he was taller than me and we didn’t look stupid standing next to one another, and his family had horses. He worked in the kitchen and drove a truck and wore a cowboy hat and walked funny because he’d already broken several bones riding bulls in amateur rodeos. The bulls were smaller but still bulls. The bull riders were already the sort of stupid that makes someone think riding a bull is a good idea. He wanted to drop out of high school. Auto techs made good money, he said. He didn’t need a diploma. John was stupid or sweet or horny enough that he didn’t mind my cupping his boobs while we dry-humped in the back of his truck. I didn’t mind the dry-humping because that’s the price you pay for not getting told on, or for riding horses. I liked horses. I should’ve let him fuck me, but getting pregnant meant staying in Amarillo to get pregnant again, and again. Maybe go to dental hygienist school once the kids were self-sufficient. But John found someone else who would go all the way and took her to prom. I pretended to care. My mom took me to Olive Garden. She ordered a bottle of wine with two glasses, and when the waiter asked for my ID, she said, “She’s my daughter.” Enough for Texas law. But of course she added, “Are you dating anyone?” Like there might still be time for him to take me to prom after his shift. He wasn’t single, or claimed not to be. So once I was good and drunk, Mom and I saw French Kiss over a large popcorn with butter because Mom doesn’t believe diets exist in movie theaters.

* * *

—

   Then I joined the Air Force. They sent me to the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey to learn Vietnamese. Why the Air Force needed Vietnamese interpreters in 1996 is beyond me. I never got far enough to find out. The point here is Monterey is a short drive from the storied gay mecca of San Francisco. And I knew I was a lesbian by then.

Airman Eudy, who was from San Francisco and therefore an expert on all things gay, had told me so in basic training. I respected Eudy because when they marched us to church that first Sunday, Eudy said she wasn’t going in. She was an atheist. I’d never heard someone say those words, “I’m an atheist.” I wasn’t expecting her to burst into flames, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. They said she could fucking sit outside if it was that fucking important to her. (I don’t think our training instructors gave a shit about our souls. That Sunday was the first time they’d get a few hours away from us, and they probably had laundry to do.) There’d been an ice storm the night before. But Eudy happily sat outside, freezing her ass to a stone bench. I was in awe. But I wasn’t an idiot. I went to the three-hour-long Mormon service with Airman Mock. Three hours in a warm room with no one screaming at me sounded like heaven. Sure, I had to listen to Mormons. But I was having a hard enough time expelling the Family’s crap from my brain. The Mormons didn’t have a chance. Then I kept going to Mormon church because I’d developed a crush on Mock.

   The night Eudy broke the news, we were a couple days away from graduation, final inspections done. Most of the airmen were huddled in groups, discussing their tech school assignments and the first thing they’d eat once we were free. I was sitting on my bed in my PT shorts and T-shirt, writing a letter to my grandma. Airman Mock was reading a letter from her boyfriend. She was lying on her back with her head resting on my leg. Just normal straight-girl stuff that straight girls do. Except one of us was straight and probably well aware the other was not. And I was way too fucking aware of the heat of her head on my thigh and trying to resist the urge to stroke her hair. It wasn’t gay at all. It wasn’t gay that we bought rings outside the PX with each other’s names on them. It wasn’t gay that I polished her boots for her. I was just better at polishing boots. Then Airman Eudy had to fucking ruin it. She walked past my rack in her towel and laughed and said, “You fucking lesbians.” Like that was a normal, friendly thing to say. Airman Mock laughed and sat up. I probably made a laughing sound. Odds are, no one heard it and no one cared. But I was humiliated. And I was pissed because Airman Mock would probably never lay her head on my thigh again. But I believed Eudy. Like I said, Eudy was from San Francisco. And it scared the shit out of me.