Hello, darlings. Beau here, still filling in for Nathaniel* in this last gasp of August. (Thank fucking GOD, I’ve never been a fan of summer. Bring on the fall and the awards fodder and the pumpkin spiced lattes!)
Leslye Headland (whom you’ve all met by now) wrote something very interesting the other day that ignited a particular memory I’d long since forgotten from High School.
Follow me back all the way to late 2004...
See, like Leslye, my first sexual experience also had to do with cinema. It happened, however, during an actual film.
I’m a shit date. I’ll admit that. As you’ve already read in my review of Magic Mike, going on a date with me to the movies is like taking a stoner out to a Jimmy Buffet concert; you’re just not going to get my attention.
I’ve only ever gone on one date with a woman, and that was back when I was 17 (a mere three months before coming to terms with my sexuality). The film was Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
OMG SHUT UP SARAH MICHELLE, I KNOW!
SEE? Even Sarah Michelle Gellar is judging me.
I paid as much attention as I could to the screen for fear of making eye contact with her and then having to engage in some semi-reciprocal affectionate act. Terrified, I just remember thinking, ‘Focus on Silverstone, Focus on Silverstone...’ Somehow, that and the memory of Clueless kept me going.
Thank you, Alicia!
The relationship lasted three weeks. She tried holding my hand the second week in across the courtyard at lunch, and I felt so genuinely uncomfortable with the situation, (lord only knows why) that I pulled her aside after school the very same day and said, as earnestly as I could:
I think we’re moving way too fast.”
She broke up with me a week later. I’ve never felt so relieved in all my life.
We never kissed.
My first sexual experience came later that same year. My boyfriend and I had been dating a little over two months. Our first date had been Saw (I was never a good judge when it came to what movies were appropriate on dates), and we’d seen The Polar Express, The Incredibles, and a couple of other titles together as well. He lived about ten miles north of me, and had an incredibly warm family. He was black, and beautiful. I never loved him. But I loved having him there.
When you’re younger, these things make sense. And when you’re older, they make even more.
His family was home.
We locked the door, (as we were wont to do) and put on Zhang Yimou’s Hero.
I still remember the feeling of being in three places at once. Trying to be present in the moment and enjoy the sensation of being loved this way, trying to stop myself from running outside bare-ass naked and jumping up and down excitedly in the street (before going back in to finish), and trying to marvel at what beautiful images this enormously talented director from the East was giving to me.
We finished. I don’t remember much else. I had to rewatch the film later. We never had sex again after that.
We broke up a month later after Million Dollar Baby. I left to Cal State Long Beach, he stayed in town. We only saw each other once after that, before delegating the other to the empty abyss of ‘Numbers In Your Phone You Keep And You Don’t Know Why’.
And, ironically enough, I wouldn’t classify it as being a bad experience.
I wish in retrospect I would have waited. You never understand things while they’re happening; it’s only after that you can make out the forest from the trees. You see where you’ve come from. As I drove home that night after our Hero session, I ruminated on what I had just done. A sense of shock kind of wafts over you. You weren't the same as you were when you woke up that morning.
I walked in the door of my house. Family was there, lights were on, room was the same.
You expect a shared orgasm with someone who has feelings for you would rock the foundation you’ve been built on. And I live in California, goddammit. We’re built on a fucking fault line.
But there wasn’t any earthquake, or even a rumbling of any sorts. There was just this quiet sense of wonder that these moments, defined by or against our actions, seldom come. And you have to appreciate the magic that they offer. They make themselves scarce right quick after that.
It seems only appropriate then, that I lost my virginity to Zhang Yimou’s Hero.
At least I know something beautiful happened in conjunction with something equally wondrous.
In that moment,
in a low tone I probably never heard or will ever hear again,
the world sang.
And you, dear reader, if you feel comfortable enough answering...
- have you ever had sex during a film? And if so, were you distracted?
- Was it a pre/post-coital follow-up?
- Does cinema make you more attuned to your emotions or give you an escape from them?
Let’s hear it.
*Nathaniel will be back Thursday morning. Tomorrow's guest blogger Melanie Lynskey!