It felt so good, so simple and freeing, to revel in my nakedness, in his nakedness, in the smell of sex in our hotel room, to have him be there whenever and however I reached for him. How liberating to try out anything I felt like, to know he'd be in the room when I got there and to languidly make love for two or three hours before going out again. How delicious to stay in bed tasting each other until early afternoon, after making love all night, practically...to sleep pressing our warm skin tight to each other (when we did sleep), to lie in bed and rub each other's backs and to spend hours with his face buried in my breasts, licking and sucking my nipples, because I asked him to and because he wanted to. I felt so desired.

The fact that we spent a whole weekend together, I've decided with hindsight, was a huge factor in how ideal the experience felt. I think it would have been difficult to have my first serious sexual adventure, even though it was clear from the outset that it was just going to be a fling, happen within the confines of a single evening. The luxuriousness of a whole weekend together was very affirming and healthy and sensible. I needed a bit of time for this event. Having the spare key to his hotel room in my pocket that weekend was, well, key.

I often think about a line from The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love with regard to that weekend, which is, "That night she went from complete ignorance to knowledge about the act of love." I think I did to a certain extent burst full-blown into some kind of sexual maturity, informed by a full panoply of encoded human urges and years of preparation and waiting and backed-up horniness, but I definitely had (and still have) miles to go in figuring out who I was sexually.

For instance, although I was completely revved, very sexually aroused, and discovering things I had just obliquely known about myself before then, such as that I am very comfortable being honest when naked with someone and saying what's on my mind and what I want, I still felt the need to fake it a few times. A few times when he was going down on me, although it felt amazing, I wasn't really anywhere near orgasm. Out came the ancient hat trick -- one I'd never practiced -- the fake orgasm.

Orgasms, and the way I achieved them had never up until that point, for the entire twenty years or so that I had been pursuing them, had never involved anybody but myself and sometimes a good piece of machinery. When I finally found myself having sex with someone, the goal of orgasm basically flew out the window. It's almost like I forgot about it. Sex felt so good that I forgot I was supposed to be coming. So I faked a few when it seemed appropriate and spent the rest of the weekend in an incredibly aroused haze, very turned on and stimulated and horny as hell, but not chasing orgasms, exactly, and not, despite the faking, even really remembering that I was supposed to have been having them until much later.

In all, though, the weekend was basically as perfect as I could have wished it. I remember seeing in a housewares store not long after this weekend a $99 "Kitchen Starter Kit." I thought looking at it that that's what my weekend had been: a perfect starter kit. Complete, contained, versatile, well-designed, and bought at the right cost without expense to my sanity or self-worth. That comparison in its rather drearily phlegmatic inappropriateness made me snicker for a long time afterward, but it's true: I'd had the perfect sex starter-kit weekend.

I'll never forget how it felt, reaching for him at around 3:00 in the morning on Saturday, in a sleepy erotic haze after only an hour or two of watching free porn videos. We'd already fucked at least twice, I think...but feeling his lips meet mine, our hands reaching for each other in the dark under the sheets, our breathing close and heavy, my breasts pressed against his chest, our legs tangling...I'll never forget that or how it felt. Some of the ancient hungers that had gone so long unfed in me started to feel slaked at that moment.

So I had sex, finally. Everyone wonders who they're going to be on the other side of that divide; who they're going to become. I don't know all the answers to that yet, but I can say that losing my virginity (and I've always really disliked that phrase, by the way -- it's so loaded, so coy in its connotations, so negative) did begin to lend me a sense that I was part of the world in a way that I hadn't ever felt before. For me, maybe because I waited so long for the experience, having sex for the first time didn't have me waking up the next morning feeling not much different than normal. I really wasn't the same person, and I'm not the same person now.

I certainly don't have it all figured out. Who does? I've had sex with other people since that first experience, and sometimes find myself more rather than less confused, having ventured further into what it means to be a sexual, engaged person. I was better equipped, maybe, than someone younger might have been to deal with all of the responsibilities and emotions that arrive with being a sexually active person. They can still catch me off guard, though, sometimes only because I was so used to thinking of myself as somebody exempt from them. And yes, I am still, as you might expect, working some backed-up urges and idiocies out of my system now in a way that I don't think is inappropriate to describe as a kind of second adolescence. It's very interesting -- exhilarating, but occasionally difficult -- to be in my thirties and feeling this way.

One of the worn-yet-true clichés that has informed all of the best changes in my life in recent years is the idea that it's never too late. It's not more true of anything than it is for sex, even though sex is often considered to be the province only of certain people who look certain ways, and then only at certain predetermined ages. While I occasionally still feel embarrassed to relate that I was America's oldest living Gen-X virgin, it's exquisitely clear to me now that I had sex exactly when I was ready for it and not a moment sooner. For me it was the right time. Anybody who feels the need to be smug and superior that they did it earlier than I did can go soak their head.

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If I could reach back to the ashamed person I was five, seven, thirteen years ago, and tell her anything, it would be this: that my birthright of sexual pleasure would be waiting for me when and as I was ready for it, not just when I lost my virginity, but in all the infinite ways it manifests itself along the road...that losing my virginity when I was actually ready to do so would put the reins in my hands in ways impossible to imagine in the days when I had no way to envision myself as part of the sexual world at all...that once I found my right way there there would be nothing to be ashamed about, and everything in the world to celebrate.