Hot Fun (or Not Fun) In the Summertime

Howell is now 25 and a conference manager for a national organization of sex educators and counselors. She shrugs off the ending to her saga -- "Some guys just get all dorky and freak out" -- and says she doesn't regret her decision. It was deliberate: She had heard about drunken fraternity bashes and didn't want her first time to be some random hookup at college in a couple of months with a near-stranger. She wanted to lose her virginity to someone she liked and trusted, and she did.

There is a certain wisdom, here, as Danielle Dunbar discovered.

Dunbar lived in a trailer park. Her boyfriend lived on a farm. She was 5 feet 4 inches and a little pudgy. He was 5 feet 4 with crooked teeth. She was the breadstick girl at Fazoli's, a fast-food Italian place in Wooster, Ohio. He made pizzas there. He asked her to go out one night while they were washing pots and pans.

It was her senior year in high school, his junior year. They went on dates to the drive-in in his red Camaro and to a couple of Tori Amos concerts. Around Thanksgiving, she decided she wanted to have sex with him, so she and her best friend went to Planned Parenthood, where she picked up birth control pills. They dated through the winter and spring and then, in late May, as school came to an end, she decided to go for it. She would be leaving for college in the fall, he'd be staying behind. On a Saturday when his parents were out of town, they began their long goodbye.

She drove to his family's big white farmhouse to pick him up. They had plans to join some friends who were fishing at a nearby pond. A gentle rain was falling, she loved him and she knew he was "very much in love with me." She told him: "Let's go for it."

Afterward, they headed over to the fishing pond and as soon as they got out of the car, took some ribbing from their pals. "You guys did it, didn't you!" yelled one guy.

"We fished for a while, went back to the house and did it again," she recalls. "His parents got home and we ate dinner. I had to be home by 10. So we got back in my car to go home and did it in the car." That whole day, she said, was "picture-book adorable."

Two weeks later, Dunbar's best friend had sex for the first time with a boy she barely knew. They ended up dating, getting married and living in the area.

Not Dunbar. The fall after she graduated from high school, she moved to Springfield, Ohio, to go to Wittenberg University. She now works in Washington at National Public Radio.

He's managing a sports bar in Columbus, Ohio.