The clock was ticking. We read On the Road and The Prophet. Indianporn Josh, I knew, was as confused about what this entailed as I was. I was looking for myself. For the following year I told anyone who asked that I was not a virgin. I never brought it up. I was curious about sex. The experience was so underwhelming, so strikingly devoid of the blissful, painful, or intensely emotional sensations I’d been promised, I wondered what was wrong with everyone for imbuing intercourse with so much import. I knew so little about sex I imagined I’d experienced it years before this was true. But the acid was a classic bad trip, during which I thought I heard the breathing of dead people. He hung out on the steps in front of our high school with other boys who smoked cigarettes and, occasionally, joints in the bushes. We wore tie-dyes. So, when I was fifteen, I started going to bars with a pack of girls who
