The Night I Gave In

This is one of those first time sex stories that doesn't start with a party or a prom night or a spontaneous hookup. It starts with prayer.

My name is Ethan Brooks, and I was raised in what my college friends would later call a "purity culture" household. My parents were devout evangelical Christians. I signed a virginity pledge at fourteen. I wore a purity ring until I was twenty-one. I believed, truly believed, that sex before marriage was a sin that would separate me from God's love.

Then I met Jess Morales, and everything I thought I knew about love, sin, and myself came crashing down.

I was twenty-two years old and a virgin. Not the reluctant, embarrassed kind of virgin who just hadn't found the right opportunity. I was a proud virgin. A waiting-for-marriage virgin. A my-body-is-a-temple virgin.

At least, that's what I told myself.

The truth was more complicated. I'd had girlfriends in high school, nice Christian girls who wore modest clothes and talked about saving themselves. We'd hold hands. Exchange chaste kisses. Pray together before dates. And every night, alone in my room, I'd fight the urges that no amount of prayer seemed to erase.

By senior year of college, I was starting to crack.

I'd transferred to a state school after two years at a small Christian college. The culture shock was... intense. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who talked openly about sex, who didn't see anything wrong with casual hookups, who looked at me like I was an alien when I mentioned I was waiting until marriage.

I told myself I was strong. That my faith would sustain me. That all I had to do was get through these last two years and then I could find a nice Christian wife and finally experience what I'd been denying myself.

Then Jess sat down next to me in Introduction to Philosophy.

She was exactly the kind of girl I'd been taught to avoid.

Dark hair with purple streaks. Nose ring. Tank top that showed off tattoos on both shoulders. She smelled like coconut and something herbal, weed, I'd later learn, though I didn't recognize it at the time. Everything about her screamed worldly, secular, dangerous.

And when she turned to me with that crooked smile and asked to borrow a pen, I felt something shift inside me that I'd spent my whole life trying to suppress.

"I'm Jess. You look like someone who actually does the readings."

"Ethan. And yeah, I... I like to be prepared."

"A prepared boy. I like that." Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "So tell me, prepared Ethan, what do you think about Kierkegaard's concept of the leap of faith?"

I stared at her. Girls like her weren't supposed to know about Kierkegaard. Girls like her were supposed to be shallow, focused on parties and boys and all the things my youth group leaders had warned me about.

"I think... I think sometimes the leap is scarier than the faith itself."

Her smile widened.

"That's the most honest answer I've heard in this class. Want to get coffee after? I promise not to corrupt your soul. Much."

I should have said no. Every instinct I'd been trained to obey screamed at me to make an excuse and walk away. Instead, I heard myself say yes.

We became friends. Then best friends. Then something more complicated that I didn't have a word for.

Jess was unlike anyone I'd ever known. She was brilliant, double majoring in philosophy and gender studies with a 3.9 GPA. She'd grown up in a secular household, had lost her virginity at sixteen with her high school boyfriend, and saw sex as a natural, healthy part of life rather than something to be feared or controlled.

She also respected my boundaries. When I explained my beliefs, haltingly, waiting for her to laugh, she just nodded thoughtfully.

"That's not for me, but I get it. Religion gives people structure. Meaning. And if waiting until marriage is what feels right to you, then that's valid."

"You don't think it's... weird?"

"I think it's your choice. Your body, your rules." She bumped her shoulder against mine. "But I reserve the right to debate the theological underpinnings of purity culture if we're ever both drunk enough."

We had that debate three weeks later, over cheap wine in her apartment. By the end of it, my certainty had developed cracks I couldn't quite patch.

Not because Jess had argued me out of my beliefs. But because she'd asked questions I'd never let myself ask.

Why was sexual purity only expected of women in the Bible? Why did God create such strong desires if we were meant to suppress them? Why did the church care so much about what consenting adults did with their bodies?

I didn't have answers. For the first time in my life, I wasn't sure I wanted them.