Latecomer

Waiting until age thirty-eight to have sex for the first time is perhaps not the best way to go through life. Take it from me, because that's what I did, though not by choice. I don't recommend it for anyone else, but if you're determined to try, here are a few pointers. It helps to be physically unattractive. It helps to be strange. It helps to have few or no friends. It helps to be shy, unpopular and socially awkward at school. It helps to be shy, unpopular and socially awkward well into adulthood. It helps to get ignored and rejected by as many potential romantic partners as possible, not just in person but also online, because the wonders of technology mean that, with very little effort, you can discover a whole universe of people who want nothing to do with you. It helps to start wondering — as you probably will, after all that rejection — what the hell is wrong with you. And it helps to keep wondering what the hell is wrong with you.

After you've achieved the coveted status of thirty-eight-year-old virgin, however, where do you go from there? In my case, to a whorehouse. The idea had occurred to me before many times, but I had always resisted. I wanted my first time to be special — to make love to someone I cared about. Or, failing that, someone I liked. Or at least knew. And I hung on to that idea — and on, and on.

Until I didn't. I had tried the more conventional, not to say respectable, ways to finding love and sex for more than long enough. Now I adopted a new, simple motto: fuck it. Fuck special. Fuck liking. Fuck caring about. Fuck everything except fucking itself. How hideously awful it would be to go through life with no love, no sex, no physical intimacy, little hope of any of the above, a constant fear of dying a virgin and frantic masturbation as the only relief, and not very much relief at that. I had to get laid, or I would go out of my mind, so I welcomed the prospect of the consolation of whores.

I had little idea of the going rate (was there one?), but, as I made a good living, I was pretty sure I could afford it. I was also well aware that in some places, such as Nevada, consenting adults can have sex in private without breaking the law, so there was no need to risk a police record and perhaps screw up my life just for a little pussy. I looked at the websites of the brothels just east of Carson City and picked one. Open all the time. No appointment necessary. I could take my fun and leave it, and no one would object.

*

There are no commercial flights to Carson itself, so I flew into Reno, got a hotel room and headed south the next morning in a rental car. I was intensely curious, of course, but also nervous to the point of sheer terror. What if I simply couldn't have sex with a stranger? What if something went horribly wrong? What if I got so excited that I came in two seconds?

I found the whorehouse without difficulty, parked, went up to the gate in the fence, rang and was buzzed in. A short walk brought me to the door. Entering, I was greeted by a middle-aged woman whom I assumed to be the madam and who asked me whether I had been there before. Learning that I hadn't, she explained the procedure and then had the women available at the time line up. Each was allowed to say only her name. Based on that and on what I could see of their faces and bodies — they were in various states of undress — in the somewhat dimly lit foyer, I could pick one, or I could sit at the bar and let them approach me. The choice was not hard, as I found most of the women less attractive than I imagined whores would be. The best-looking one, by a considerable margin, was Alma, from Mexico (as she later told me): fairly tall, in superb shape, with long, slim arms and legs, a taut belly and straight black hair falling below her shoulders. She wore only lace panties and a push-up bra, both black, and high heels.

Rather than pointing, which may have seemed somewhat rude, I held out my hand to her, palm up. The other women disappeared, and Alma, following standard procedure, gave me a tour of the place. Then we went to her room — four-poster bed, night stand, low lighting and a second door, giving onto a bathroom. We sat on the bed to negotiate. I was still nervous, but she calmed me. I told her that I wanted an hour, with oral and vaginal sex. For my first time, there was no need for anything fancy — my wildest sexual fantasy at that point was sex with someone other than myself.

She suggested a ludicrous figure, but I bargained her down to a ridiculous one. My brain still objected, but my cock said, "Why not?" You can guess which one I listened to. I had traveled hundreds of miles, after all, and only that sum stood between me and the fulfillment of a decades-old wet dream. So, naive, horny, desperate, and a whorehouse novice, I let Alma rob me blind.

We went to the office to settle accounts. Back in her room, she put on music. I took off everything save socks and boxer shorts and had her stand in front of me while I sat on the bed, and we held, touched and stroked each other for a while. I loved the feel of her extraordinarily soft, smooth skin. She then turned around, and I unclasped her bra; once she faced me again, I pulled one strap, then the other, off her shoulders and then the cups from her breasts, which were smaller than I would have liked but still shapely and delightfully soft to the touch. I fondled and kissed them, then removed her panties and used my hands to explore her whole body, especially her shaved vulva and voluptuous ass.

She got on the bed, and I took off my boxers. She lubricated and stroked my cock, then put a condom on and sucked it, but to no avail. After a while she straddled me and slipped my cock into her pussy. We fucked, with her bouncing up and down on top of me, but I didn't feel much closer to coming, and I suggested that I be on top. She lay back on the bed and spread her legs, and I put my cock up to her pussy; she slipped it in, but after a number of strokes, I realized that that wasn't working either, and I lay down beside her and told her how surprised I was because I had thought that, it being my first time, I would come very easily. But Alma said that kind of trouble was normal. I realized at that point, and shared with her, that sex with an actual woman was quite different than imagining sex, as I had gotten used to. After we lay there a while longer, talking and stroking each other, we tried again, and this time, with much effort on my part and the aid of her hands and mouth but not her pussy, I did come, and quite pleasurably. We cleaned up, then touched and chatted a while longer. Another erection seemed out of the question, at least in the time I had bought. After the hour was up but before we left her room, she went into the bathroom to adjust her hair and makeup, and it struck me how extraordinarily business-like she suddenly was — a different person, almost, than I'd been in bed with a minute before. Everything about her now said, "OK, who's next?" I wasn't upset or hurt — this was her living, after all — just slightly taken aback at the switch. Once she was ready, we went to the bar and talked a little more. I drank an overpriced glass of red wine. She gave me her card, we said goodbye and I left.

*

It had been an hour of pleasure. Alma's warmth and welcoming spirit helped everything feel perfectly natural. I took to her body quickly and easily and made free with it, without the hesitation or awkwardness that I'd always heard accompanied first-time sex. I delighted in the chance to be kind, gentle, and affectionate with a woman in bed. And there was a bracing honesty about the whole business: she knew what I wanted from her, and I knew what she wanted from me. Also, after decades of imagining what sex would be like — based on what I'd read, seen and heard about — I finally had a taste of what it actually was, or at least what it could be with someone I cared about: not just direct stimulation and orgasms but also an adult playtime, a way of being completely comfortable, intimate and vulnerable with a partner, not just physically (naked) but in all regards — of being as close as possible to someone else as you can be, given that in our consciousness, we are always alone.

But it had also been an hour of disappointment, perhaps inevitably so. Even amid Alma's and mine most physically intimate contact I felt little or nothing beyond one body part touching another. The condom limited my physical sensation, but there was also the fact that I was in bed with a stranger, someone whose existence I had been unware of a few hours before and who was putting on an act — a good one, but still an act — for my benefit. I felt no embarrassment about my difficulty coming because nothing was really at stake — certainly not love. It didn't matter what Alma thought of me as a sex partner because she was fucking for money and because I would probably never see her again.

Above all, though, it had been a curious, even surreal, hour of paradoxes: intensely intimate yet impersonal, erotic and stimulating but tame. I had transgressed the boundaries of my everyday life, but, far from doing anything exotic, had done something that billions of other people had done before, were still doing every second of every day and would continue doing, though on different terms in most cases.

The whorehouse itself was part of the paradox. Here was a wonderful respite from indifference and rejection — an enchanted, otherworldly, fictional-seeming space with its own social and sexual rules: as long as you could pay and you were clean and polite, you were virtually guaranteed sex, and attractive women were immediately available simply for the asking and would even seek you out. Here also, however, was a setting for empty, meaningless friction — for brief, bought, artificial, superficial acts that allowed a man to momentarily imagine that a woman wanted him — which is just as pathetic as it sounds.

For me, however, it had all been worthwhile — for the relief, for the experience, for the memories, for feeling less cut off from the rest of the human race. Perhaps the ridiculous price had been a bargain after all. In a world where no one is guaranteed love, whorehouses allow intimacy of some kind, with someone, on some terms, making human existence a little more tolerable. Alma's fake warmth was still better than the genuine indifference and rejection that I had gotten from so many other women. I was a little calmer, a little less bitter and hateful. I could read and think about sex without an awful mental cringe. And at least I wouldn't die a virgin.

Meanwhile, my search for love — or at least for a girlfriend — goes on. If I ever find one, I'll probably have to tell her, sooner or later, about my sexual past and risk her not understanding. I wouldn't lie or pretend it never happened: once you've gone to the whores, there's no ungoing. But if I never find anyone to love who also loves me, then, as disappointing as that will be, at least I'll know where to get laid. In that case, the whore the merrier.