“So when did you lose your virginity?” the female bartender asks me.
I’m scouting a VFW bar. It’s noon. Dimly lit. Fake wood-paneling. Three or four big guys bent over their beers far enough that I can’t see their faces. Today’s special: Jim Beam and Coke for $4.
The bartender looks to be about a decade older than me, though I have a sneaking suspicion I actually have a few years on her. It’s hard to tell anything for sure in this light. Her question is the first thing she’s said to me since giving me the OK to take pictures.
“Ah — ” I stammer, trying to get any hook into where this is going.
“I lost it when I was 15,” she interrupts, her voice gravely.
“Oh,” I say. Then, because the ensuing pause clearly implies I say something more: “How was that?”
“It was on a beach,” she says. She’s broadcasting for the bar to hear, but no one seems to pay attention.
“That sounds romantic,” I say, the sentence waffling between statement and question.
“That’s what we thought. We went at night, put down a towel. Well, you know what beaches have a lot of? Sand. And it turns out, sand is very uncomfortable for that sort of business.” She thinks for a moment. “Seems a bit obvious in retrospect,” she adds.
“That’s too bad,” I say.
“Oh, it gets worse,” she says. “Right in the middle of everything, it starts raining. So we hide under the towel hoping it’ll pass. But then it starts down-pouring, and then thundering and lightning like the world is going to end.
“So we’re running for the parking lot, only lightning is ripping across the sky and the car is too far and we think we’re going to die. We find a blue tarp someone stuffed in a trash can. And we grab it, and we roll ourselves up in it, and lie down as flat as we can on the beach. And we’re screaming, and the thunder keeps booming, and we’re getting soaked, and it’s freezing…”
She stops, lost in the memory. A beat, then she’s back to the present.
“You know, all things considered,” she resumes, taking a sip from a beer I didn’t know she had behind the bar. “That was actually one of the better times.”