My First Sex Scandal

They say everyone remembers their first kiss, their first love, their first heartbreak. And I do—every one of them. But the memory that lingers unruly in the attic of my mind, even through the fog of alcohol and half-remembered moments, is my first sex scandal.

Not because it was especially salacious (though it was).

Not because it was dramatic (though it absolutely was).

But because it held the earliest outlines of who I would become.

Ashley enters here.

Ashley wasn’t my first girl crush (Janine Loveless, the punk goddess from ninth grade, still holds that title). But Ashley was something different. She was the all-American blonde with a tan, a bubble butt, and a camp-counselor vibe. She looked like she belonged in a 90s teen movie, but she flirted like she didn’t give a damn about modesty. That contradiction was catnip to me.

At the time, I was still only seventeen, working the late shift at Five Star Pizza, navigating my blissfully slutty phase, and dating David. I was also casually hooking up with Bill, another driver—balding early, prematurely middle-aged in demeanor, but sweet in a way that made him easy to flirt with. Bill and Ashley were roommates, which is how I knew her at all. They had dated at one point, and though Ashley was officially dating Paul—the kindest manager at Five Star—there was constant speculation about whether she and Bill were still hooking up on the side.

The whole situation already had the structure of a love pentagon, which should have been a warning. It wasn’t.

One night, Bill and Ashley threw a party in their little Gainesville apartment. Jello shots melting in mismatched plastic cups, a keg sweating onto the linoleum, music vibrating through cheap speakers—the whole late-90s college-town starter pack. I played the part: tipsy, flirtatious, surrounded by delivery drivers who mostly wanted to get into my pants.

But my eyes kept drifting to Ashley.

The way she laughed.

The way she winked.

The way she moved her body like she was aware of its power, but not weaponizing it.

And then the way she kissed a guy against the wall—a sight that pierced me with a sharp, unexpected jealousy.

I don’t remember how I lured her into the bedroom—some excuse, some comment, something that made sense to drunk teenage us. But once we were alone, I kissed her. And she kissed me back with this warm, sweet, open-mouthed want that made my whole body go molten.

For a brief, perfect moment, the world shrank down to her lips on mine.

Then the door burst open.

A cluster of drunk guys stumbled in, hooting and hollering like they’d just discovered live lesbian porn. And in an instant, her kiss pivoted—no longer intimate, no longer shared, but performed. Her body angled toward their gaze, her kiss suddenly a show.

I hated that shift.

Even through the alcohol, I felt the moment being stolen.

The night unraveled from there. Or maybe it expanded—I’m still not sure. The alcohol blurred everything except the emotional edges. Before long, most people left, and those of us who remained drifted into the apartment’s hot tub: me, Ashley, and six guys whose names I barely remember.

Steam rising off the water.

Bodies everywhere.

Ashley getting passed between them like a game of drunken hot potato.

But here’s the part I remember with crystal clarity:

I didn’t want their hands on me.

I was absolutely fine being there—drunk, horny, curious, alive.

But I didn’t want to be touched.

I said so out loud.

“You can watch me with Ashley. You can touch her. But you’re not touching me.”

And in one of the few miracles of Florida frat-boy culture, they respected it.

But then Dylan—one of the drivers—decided to call Five Star Pizza just to taunt David about what “his girl” was doing.

A cruelty disguised as a joke.

I went cold inside.

I didn’t know if David would show up furious or heartbroken or ready to haul me out of the water by my arm.

Instead, when he arrived, everything softened.

He didn’t leer.

He didn’t look betrayed.

He didn’t become another spectator.

He looked at me.

He came straight into the water, held me, kissed me with this slow, grounding sweetness that didn’t match the chaos around us. He let me kiss Ashley the way I wanted. And when I told everyone that if I was being with anyone tonight, it was going to be David, he met me with such tenderness it almost broke me then and still breaks me now.

In a hot tub full of noise and bodies and beer-soaked bravado, David made love to me as though we were alone.

That’s what stayed.

Not the spectacle.

Not the drunken debauchery.

Not even Ashley’s soft lips or the thrill of kissing a girl in front of an audience I didn’t ask for.

What stayed was love.

Safety.

Being seen.

---

The Morning After

The next day brought the real hangover.

Ashley’s boyfriend Paul (the decent one, the respectful one), had been on shift during the party. Paul, who was genuinely gentle. Who never ogled me. Who didn’t reduce women to pizza-shop gossip or locker-room fantasies.

And now he knew everything.

He didn’t confront me.

He didn’t shame me.

He didn’t scold me.

But the heartbreak in his eyes did what no reprimand could.

It gutted me.

I wasn’t ashamed of kissing Ashley.

I wasn’t ashamed of being in the hot tub.

I wasn’t even ashamed of having sex with David in front of other people.

But I was ashamed of hurting someone who had done nothing but treat me kindly.

And so I quit Five Star within a week. I couldn’t bear the gossip, the sidelong glances, the way Paul’s hurt sat quietly between us every time we crossed paths.

It wasn’t the scandal that drove me out.

It was the collateral damage.

---

On Being Watched, Then and Now

It makes me smile now—genuinely—that the girl who hated being turned into a spectacle at seventeen grew into a woman who absolutely loves exhibitionism.

But that’s the thing:

I didn’t hate being watched.

I hated being used by a gaze I hadn’t invited.

Back then, what I wanted with Ashley was intimacy.

Messy, tipsy intimacy.

A kiss that was ours.

And the moment the guys burst in, she wasn’t kissing me anymore.

She was performing.

Pivoting toward their approval.

Offering herself to their gaze, not my touch.

Now, decades later, I adore being watched — but only on my terms.

I choose the stage.

I choose the audience.

I choose the moment the curtain rises.

I never perform like a circus monkey for someone else’s fantasies.

I don’t pivot my body for a gaze I didn’t consent to.

Back then, I didn’t know the difference.

I just felt something sacred slipping away the second Ashley shifted from kissing me to kissing for them.

But here’s the part I never could’ve articulated at the time:

That night didn’t only shape how I relate to men.

It shaped how I approached women for years.

I didn’t realize until much later how deeply that moment affected my queerness — how it taught me to hide parts of myself, to tuck my attraction to women somewhere small and private. Not because I was ashamed of being bisexual, but because I was terrified that my desire would be hijacked into someone else’s spectacle.

I grew up in an era where two girls kissing at a keg party wasn’t queer expression — it was cliché. It was punchline. It was for the boys. And I never wanted to be that. I never wanted my wanting to be mistaken for performance.

So I held myself back.

Pulled away.

Protected the part of me that wanted women.

And in doing so, I missed out on connections I still think about sometimes.

Women I could have kissed.

Women I could have loved.

Women whose interest I could never fully trust, because the question always hung between us like a ghost:

Do you want me — or do you want to be seen wanting me?

Even now, some part of me remembers how easily the intimacy was stolen that night. How quickly my desire was turned into a room full of applause I never asked for.

Now, I know that what changed the kiss wasn’t the voyeurism. 

It was the loss of intention. 

The loss of mutuality. 

The loss of mine-ness. 

Looking back, that night taught me my earliest lessons about desire, consent, the male gaze, and the erotic power of choice. 

It wasn’t just my first sex scandal. 

It was the first time I learned that I could be watched  

and still belong to myself.