Hot Fun (or Not Fun) In the Summertime

Sometimes the memory comes out of nowhere. Maybe you're sitting on your deck on a summer night after the kids have gone to bed. Or stuck in traffic after work, thinking about the 800 things you have to pack for vacation. A certain song comes on the radio, and all of a sudden it's summer, years ago. You're 16 or 17, and there's a boy, and you're looking at him and thinking, "It's going to happen. Not now, but soon."

And it did. He's the one you lost your virginity to. Remembering, you may feel a small smile tug at your face. Or a touch of sadness.

More girls lose their virginity in the summer than at any other time of year, according to researchers at Mississippi State University. There are all kinds of reasons. You remember. You had more free time and less supervision. You met a new guy at church camp whom you'd never see again, or were about to say goodbye to an old friend before you both went away to college. Maybe you were in love or maybe you weren't, but those sticky summer nights almost demanded surrender.

Margo DeSantis was 16 when that moment came. Born Margo Walczak, she was a Polish girl living in a small town outside Detroit who spent hours every morning making her straight blond hair look like Farrah Fawcett's. Her boyfriend was a tall Italian with thick brown hair and, according to DeSantis, a "white Trans Am and killer body." They had been dating for almost a year, traveling to rock concerts and hanging out at her house to watch "The Love Boat" and "Charlie's Angels." Every once in a while he would ask her whether she wanted to have sex, and she'd say no. But one night in August, right before senior year, in her house with her parents out to dinner, she looked into his green eyes and said yes. He had a condom and "I was ready," she says. "We had done everything else." They made love on the living room floor. "It was carpeted, thank goodness," she recalls.

She's now 45, selling real estate in Pelham, N.Y., happily married to someone else and the mother of two teenagers. She thinks of that night not as a loss but as a gift to her first love. "It rocked," she says. "I remember thinking this is what our bodies were made for."

Not everyone's memory is sweet. Losing your virginity, for girls, is not like losing your cellphone or your car keys. You can't pick up another "V-card" in a kiosk at the mall. Boys may be eager to shed the label but girls are less so, even girls who head out for a party at night wearing what would pass, in a previous decade, for underwear. They talk endlessly about doing it and they set deadlines: prom night, by high school graduation, the night of their wedding. They also ponder the implications. If they don't do it, does that mean they don't like sex? Will their classmates call them a prude? If they do it and their parents find out, will Mom or Dad ground them for life? (For the record, most "first times" take place in the boy's or girl's house, not in a car, as many people believe. Perhaps the possibility of being discovered adds to the thrill.)

As Judy Blume portrayed it so well in her 1975 classic "Forever," losing your virginity is closing the door on childhood and stepping into adulthood. If you're not ready for it and do it anyway, it can feel "like death," as one young woman put it. You just want to put it behind you, except that you can't.

Laurie Cooper, now 40, knows that feeling. Like DeSantis, she was going to be a senior in high school. The year loomed ahead with a bunch of unknowns -- what colleges she'd apply to and how well she'd do on her SATs, for starters. Then there'd be the transition to college. It was too much to think about alone.

Problem was, she didn't have a boyfriend. She had everything else: loving, if strict, parents; good, if somewhat geeky, friends; and bright, if not always exciting, teachers at a private school in St. Louis. Everything, she says, except: "I was afraid I'd go off to college and be the only person who never seriously dated anybody." Early that summer she called a boy she had known since childhood. He was a minister's son and a popular guy, someone other girls would flirt with on the street. She felt pretty special riding around with him, going to movies and parties. They'd make out and she told herself she wasn't going all the way.

But she began to feel that maybe she should, and he was putting pressure on her. She wasn't in love with him, but who knew? Maybe he'd wow her, maybe she'd amaze him.

On Labor Day, the two of them were lying on his bed. His parents were away. He was a tennis player, watching the U.S. Open on television until suddenly, he wasn't. One thing led to another while she carried on an internal debate many women would recognize.

"You're not supposed to be doing this yet," her good-girl side warned. "You're not ready and, by the way, he isn't either."