Chapter 17: No Way Out

November, 1979, Hovås/Göteborg, Sweden

“«Steve, Jag skäms över vad vi gjorde!»” Annie had said.

Those words rang in my ears like the pealing of church bells. Annie was ashamed. It wasn’t just regret, it was shame.

With all the girls I’d been with, with all the virgins among them, there had never been regret immediately after the fact, and any regret that did come was based on a sequence of events, not just from having sex, and was understandable. For example, I regretted having sex with Kellie and, to some extent, Becky, though for very different reasons.

Shame, on the other hand, was something completely new to me. It meant that she felt what we had done was morally wrong. She had surrendered her virginity, and she was ashamed of that. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, and it was just the timing or the place, not the act of sex itself. And that required me to snap out of my daze and talk with her.

“«Annie, kan vi ta det på Engelska? Jag vill inte missuppfatta vad du menar.»” (“Annie, can we speak English? I don’t want to misunderstand you.”)

“Yes. I am ashamed of what we did.”

“That I understood, that’s why I wanted to switch to English. Can you tell me why?”

“It was wrong to do it! I shouldn’t have done it! We shouldn’t have done it!”

Oh hell. It was sex that was the problem. I was deep in it now with no way out that I could see.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” I asked.

“I was going to before you put your hands down inside my jeans, but after the two orgasms, I was so excited that I couldn’t say ‘no’.”

That reminded me of Kim, but Kim’s response had been to screw me silly and keep screwing me silly for as long as I let her. That was certainly not the case here.

“You should have stopped me. You should have just said ‘no’ and that would have been it!”

“You had me so excited I completely lost control! I’m so ashamed that I had sex with you.”

“Why ashamed?”

“Because you’re not my boyfriend yet; because you’re not going to be here after this year. I wanted to wait for a guy who I could be with for a long, long time. Now I can’t.”

She was right. I could not restore her virginity, just as I couldn’t give Becky hers back. Of course, Becky had set out to give me hers; Annie had never once given me any signal that she wanted to be a virgin for her life partner. I knew girls like that back home and they were very clear about it, to the point where most of the school knew about it. They were girls that you didn’t ask out if you wanted to screw before marriage.

From my perspective, that seemed like a bad idea, but then again, I was probably a bad judge because I’d personally made that impossible for more than a dozen girls. Granted, they had wanted to do it, but I could see how people might put the blame on me. Joyce did, to some extent. That just drove home the fact that I was totally out of my depth here.

“You should have told me when we started going out. I know how to follow limits. I know what ‘no’ means.”

“It’s too late,” Annie said with resignation. “We did it.”

“Yes, we did. So what do we do now?”

“I guess you’re my boyfriend now until you go home and then we’ll have to figure out what happens after that.”

Boyfriend? Oh holy shit! I had now stepped into a minefield! And I had missed the clues. After our kiss at the party, even though I was drunk, she started treating me like a boyfriend. It was far worse than I thought.

“Boyfriend? Like going steady? Exclusive?”

“Of course! We had sex! I can’t just do that with someone who isn’t my boyfriend!”

I realized that the conversation was going to get ugly fast. I could feel it in my bones. And if we continued talking now, we’d miss the day of school. I didn’t want to do that.

“What about class? Can we maybe talk after school? We’re going to be fifteen minutes late as it is.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “OK. We can talk after school.”

She put her arm around me to walk back to school. I didn’t see any choice but to do the same, because I didn’t want to make the problem worse. Well, not now. It was going to get worse. It was going to get extremely ugly. But now I had some time to think as well. Concentrating on school work was going to be tough, but there were no tests or quizzes scheduled, so I’d be able to muddle through just by keeping my mouth shut.

That worked because in Swedish classrooms, unlike American ones, students actively sought out the teacher’s attention by calling out when they raised their hands and none of my teachers had ever called on anyone who hadn’t raised their hand. That was the opposite of my experience back home, where teachers called on people randomly even without their hands raised.

We walked back to school, and I discovered that Govert didn’t care that we were late. We walked in and took our seats and he didn’t say a word, didn’t even stop or slow down his teaching. At Milford High, I would have needed to visit the office to get a tardy slip. Nothing was said at the end of class, either.

Suzanne Fjällman stopped me in the hall between periods and asked if everything was OK because she thought Annie was quite upset. I agreed that Annie was upset, but that I needed to speak to Annie after school to resolve the problem. Suzanne let it drop, thankfully.

After my Swedish class, I returned to Schillerska and instead of using my free time in the computer lab, I went to sit in the student lounge to think. Fortunately, nobody bothered me while I drank my tea and considered my options.

One thing was certain; I was not interested in a permanent relationship with Annie. First of all, I had Pia. Second, I was going home and wasn’t interested in an intercontinental long-distance relationship. Third, sex didn’t mean the same thing to me that it appeared to mean to Annie, and I didn’t have any specific feelings for her.

Thinking about what had happened, I realized that my entire approach to sex had shifted, and I was wondering if it had been a mistake to listen to Jennifer on that. Jennifer’s advice had always turned out to be sound in the end, with the glaring exception of Becky. Jennifer had told me not to overthink things, to just go for it. She had used the ultimate stick to beat me with on that one — that I would overthink things and totally screw-up Stephanie’s first time.

But overthinking and just going for it were two ends of a spectrum — the true answer was somewhere in-between. Maybe that’s what Jennifer was trying to show me, possibly the hard way. In fact, I only seemed to learn things the hard way, so that might have been her intent. If I had even once asked Annie about sex beforehand, had even asked her during the initial make-out session, even right before I pushed my dick into her, we might have walked back from the edge of the cliff that we had thrown ourselves over.

Finding that right point on the spectrum wasn’t going to be easy, and I realized that it would move around based on circumstances and people. I remembered with Kim that I had encouragement from her. I hadn’t needed to ask because she had told me to show her how good it could be and then, frankly, demanded that I screw her. Annie had done none of those things, and I had totally misread the situation.

Or had I? Had she given me a single clue before I shredded her hymen once and for all that she didn’t want to do it? No. I was sure she had not. In fact, the way she had started to be physical with me by taking my arm, kissing me and hugging me had told me the opposite. I had made so many mistakes because of my guilt over taking Becky’s virginity that I resolved right then and there to not be guilty. If Annie hadn’t had the willpower to stop and hadn’t told me about her wishes, then I wasn’t going to hold myself responsible for her actions.

I realized that sounded cold, but what was the alternative? To beat myself up? To get into a serious relationship I knew was doomed from the beginning? To start planning long term with someone I didn’t see myself being with long term? I had done that once before and it had ended in disaster — broken relationships, unintended pregnancy, and a forced abortion. There was no way I was going to go through something like that again. Shame or not, I wasn’t going to do it.

At lunch, Annie sat next to me but didn’t say much and only picked at her food. I ate my lunch because I had more or less come to terms with the situation and I was not going to let it bother me. Annie was just going to have to deal with the situation and deal with me not being her boyfriend. I’d let her talk first to get it all out, but I knew exactly where this was going to end. There was no way out of this that wasn’t going to end with her badly hurt. I had hurt her and was going to hurt her even more. There was no way out without doing that. And I was determined to get out.

After school, instead of going to the computer lab, Annie and I went for a walk on a quiet street near the Library. I decided to wait for her to speak, and if she didn’t, then I’d try to draw her out. I knew I was going to have to tell her things that would hurt her, but I didn’t have a choice.

“We made a terrible mistake and now we have to do the right thing,” she said.

“What’s the right thing?”

“First, we don’t do that again for a long time. I feel dirty and ashamed for doing it.”

Worse than I even thought!

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I don’t think it’s supposed to be like most Swedish kids do. It’s not just something to do for fun, it’s something you do with someone you love and only them.”

“Then why did you do it with me?”

“Because I love you! Didn’t you know that?”

Just when I thought the swamp couldn’t get any deeper.

“No,” I said gently. “I didn’t.”

“Why do you think I kissed you the way I did? And danced as close to you as I did? I would never do that with someone I didn’t love! Could you?”

We had such wildly differing world views that I couldn’t believe it. And her world view was similar to my mom’s! How the hell had I stumbled into this? God damn it! I really had made a huge mess!

“Yes, I could,” I said, “and I have. I’ve danced like that with lots of girls I didn’t love. I’ve kissed like that with girls I didn’t love. I’ve had lots of sex with girls I didn’t love.”

“What?! How could you do that? And what do you mean by lots?”

I decided to simply tell her the truth and get it out in the open. It would hurt her, but what was the alternative?

“I’ve had sex with more than twenty-five girls, more than half of them virgins when we first did it.”

“What?!” Annie gasped. “How could you?! I understand having sex with someone you are going out with, even though it’s not something I would do. Some of my friends do that. That’s what they want, so it’s up to them. But to have sex with that many girls? To just do it to do it? Am I just another conquest for you?”

No, she wasn’t. Not the way she meant it. But it was going to look like that to her no matter what I said.

“I don’t agree with you about sex; not at all. We should have talked about it first. That was the only mistake I feel I made. But you never once told me how you felt about sex. You never once told me that sex was out of the question until you were in a permanent relationship of some kind. How could I know?”

“You could have asked, instead of doing things to make me so excited that I broke all my own rules.”

Jesus. Now it was my fault that she had such easy orgasms?

“You had orgasms when I barely touched you,” I said. “You were that excited! What did you expect me to think? How could I possibly know you didn’t want to do it when your body was telling me that you wanted me in the worst possible way? When we did it, you were so excited you were dripping wet!”

“You talk about it like it was nothing!” Annie protested, sounding outraged. “It’s everything! Didn’t it mean anything to you?”

If I tried to be nice, I’d end up the same I had with Becky before I finally broke it off with her.

“No. It didn’t,” I replied. “It was sex with someone I liked and it was fun and it felt good and we both enjoyed it. But it meant nothing to me beyond that.”

Annie broke down in tears. I had known that was coming eventually and had realized that it couldn’t be avoided. But I would be dammed if I was going to sugarcoat things or even tell her white lies. That screamed ‘Becky’ at me so loudly I actually heard it, not just thought it.

“But I love you, Steve!” Annie sobbed. “And we have to be together now.”

“No, Annie, we don’t have to be together,” I replied. “I can’t. One of those many girls lives in Helsingborg. She’s the one I went to the ABBA concert with.”

“You had sex with her!”

“Yes, Annie, many times. And another girl in Hovås, though we decided to just be friends.”

“How can you do that? Decide to just be friends after having sex with someone?”

“Annie, of those twenty-five girls I’ve had sex with? I’m friends with each and every one of them except one, and when I left to come here, she made it clear she wanted to be friends again. I have sex with my friends and I’m friends with the ones I have sex with. That’s who I am.”

“That’s horrible! I can’t believe you did it with me like some toy to play with!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “There’s no way to undo it. You can’t have your virginity back. It’s gone. You have to deal with that fact. And you have to deal with the fact that I can’t be your boyfriend. Even if we were boyfriend and girlfriend until July, I would be going home. And when I get home, I’m most likely going to basically get engaged to my friend Jennifer.”

“What?! And you have sex with girls here? You had sex with me?!” she shrieked. “How could you do that to her?”

“She’s OK with it. In fact, she encouraged it. She encouraged me to have fun this year in Sweden. In fact, she was OK with me having sex with her friend; in fact, in having sex with both of them together!”

I was baiting her now. I felt that was the only way to get through to her.

“That’s just perverted!” Annie declared.

She had no idea.

“No, Annie, it’s not. It was fun. We all had fun, and we all enjoyed it. And if the circumstances were right, we’d do it again. In fact, Jennifer has said that if we get married, from time to time she’ll bring another girl to bed with us for fun.”

“Oh my God! How could someone do that?”

“That’s just who we are. I won’t apologize for being who I am.”

“Walk me back to the tram, please,” she said dully.

I walked with her to the tram stop at Vasaplatsen and waited for her tram to arrive, not getting on the #2 going my direction that had arrived first. When her tram arrived, she boarded and didn’t look back. She sat on the opposite side from the door so I couldn’t see her as the tram pulled away. A few minutes later, I got on my tram and headed home.

The day had certainly not gone anything like normal. And I expected there to be more fallout.

When Sofia arrived after dinner, I related everything that had happened. She said she knew a couple of girls like that, but they were very religious. She asked if Annie was religious and I said that I had no idea, actually. Religion was just one of those things I never discussed with anyone. According to Sofia, almost nobody was religious in Sweden and few people went to church except for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. She said it was possible that Annie wasn’t Lutheran and was part of one of the ‘free’ churches that were a lot more conservative.

I said that sounded like the Baptist church back home, and Sofia said there were some similarities and that could explain Annie’s views and reactions. We talked about that and other possible reasons, including family pressure. Sofia said she knew about that because her dad was Greek Orthodox and was more conservative than her mom, who was technically state Lutheran. When I asked what that meant, Sofia said her mom was baptized Lutheran but never, ever went to church. Her parents had been married by the equivalent of what we called a justice of the peace, not in church.