When I lost it—tipsy from stolen beers

in a red VW bus parked on a suburban street, 19—

it wasn’t to my boyfriend. No, it wasn’t

to that good-boy baseball player.

Even though he had been waiting for a year.

Even though we would get back together

that fall and he would never know,

and he would think

he was the one. The taker

didn’t even know there was anything

to take. It was the last day of the summer

we spent holding hands in malls

for air conditioning, suggesting

but never actually seeing any movies,

sharing tall sodas, studying for summer classes:

the poet and the scientist, a dichotomy

I found strangely comforting, as if

I would be safe in the hands of this future

doctor, whose phone call I awaited

each night. Not-His-Real-Dad paid cash

for every VW he restored to be resold

to hobbyists. I too felt polished, pristine.

I was the prize rising out of the front seat

in white short shorts and Italian sunglasses.

He had worked on me all summer, and I

was ready, maybe. Maybe I thought

he deserved it, for all he’d gone through.

Maybe I liked it when he tapped

Not-Dad’s shoulder that afternoon at the pool

and disappeared inside to talk.

When they returned, we had two options:

Dad said you could sleep over,

in the house in separate rooms, or

in the bus…we could sleep together.

And just like that, my sex

had been negotiated,

certified and certainly happening.

With beers swiped from the garage fridge, we mounted

the red bus, with its red carpet and red curtains

and red sheets on the mattress, never slept in.

I didn’t bleed. At first, it kinda hurts, I said.

Then suddenly it didn’t, and we were

on the road, set

on drifting far in opposite directions.

When we finished, he poured water

in the rubber to check for leaks.

We couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

Maybe that’s why I waited. How my friends

will get a kick out of this someday,

when I can tell it without shame.

And I swear, I’d tell them

I never felt more like a woman

than months later when I saw this picture:

Him, with another girl from our school

posed in front of the red bus, parked on the PCH.

His hand poised on her shoulder, her big hair

wild from the sea. And I knew exactly

what he would do with her later that night—

How the thing worked, oh, how it tasted.