I sit back on the sofa, sinking in deep, pulling the rug up to my chest. I can hear the rain outside the window. Resting my head against the cushions and closing my eyes, I try to look back through the years… but one of the things about childhood trauma is that it strips you of the first times.
It’s something no one really talks about, at least not that I’ve heard. Except once, sitting around a bonfire with a group of women who have never gathered in that same configuration again…
I remember the cold, and the dark, and the stars. I see their faces in the firelight, flushed with the warmth spread by the tongues of orange and warmth of the wine. l can hear from the fire, and looking down through the years, I see too the blush of youth on those smooth cheeks.
We were burning clothing, dresses as large as tents, in a ceremony in celebration of one of us having lost two entire people in weight – her description, not mine. It had taken her a few years and this was a milestone we were celebrating with her. The conversation turned to sex, and experimentation and first times as it often does when young women gather in sisterhood. I squirmed inwardly, swigging back another gulp of whiskey, not the wine the others were drinking. Johnny Walker was my drink of choice in those years, far too much of it.
My silence was noticed, I was mouthy in those days, a “life of the party” kinda gal. “You’re a real dark horse Michelle,” said a friend, “you never spill the beans.”
Caroline, who’s ceremony this was, looked at me, and in that look, I could see all my dark horse secrets. Her eyes told me that she knew, and that she was a dark horse too.
Somehow the cathartic, hypnotic pull of the fire drew the words from my mouth, and from hers. I don’t remember exactly what I said or what she said, but we were two dark horses speaking the unspeakable, out loud, in front of the uninitiated.
“So, there’s never really been a first time,” I said. We all stared into the fire, and then Caroline stood and shrugged out of the dress she was wearing, much smaller in size than the ones we were burning. I stood too, pulling my t-shirt over my head and letting my jeans drop to my ankles. I never was one for dresses. Almost as if we’d rehearsed it, we gathered up out clothes and threw them onto the fire.
The others applauded and toasted us, then they were all stripping and burning their clothing. We were all left standing in our underwear. Someone reached out a hand to the girl next to her and then we were forming a circle around the fire, hands clasped tightly.
There were no words spoken, no empty platitudes, just a group of half drunk young women standing together in silence, holding space for their sisters.
It was a strange and wonderful night, and when the conversation turns to first times, that is the time I think of, the time I choose to remember.
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