Any man whose penis is too small to stay in during some carnal doggie style should treasure any girl who comes back for more. I would revise this statement if the guy in question had been an all around good, devoted person. But this is college and this thing started as a one-night, Stockholm syndrome-esque stand.

It had been my goal to lose my virginity in high school, ideally before I turned 18. It sounded reasonable until I started high school and there was, quite literally, not a single male I would have even considered having sex with. I’d gained some formidable makeout experience in high school, but there comes a point in every young woman’s life where she just becomes an animal. An animal with the singular goal of digging her claws into some dude’s back.

The first weekend of college, the tigress was on the loose and she was looking to earn her stripes, so to speak. The night I lost my virginity began with taking shots with my roommate in our dorm, as all good stories begin. We ended up the house of a guy who was the best friend of the guy that my roommate had been hooking up with. It sounds sketchy only because it was.

This stretch of the evening began with beer pong, again, as college stories often do, and some subtle to rather obvious flirting between me and the owner of the apartment. It then progressed to me wandering into the guy’s room and deciding I should examine all of his belongings. My eye caught the weathered spine of Game of Thrones. And then a calculus book. And then the bottle of Jack Daniels in the corner. The tigress had found her prey.

He found me in his room, we talked, we flirted, I asked if he played Risk, we started making out, we turned off the lights. I warned him as he took off my underwear, “I’m just really inexperienced,” which was my way of expressing that my virginity was about to high tail it out of there and not look back on the scene unfolding on the red, satiny, high-thread count sheets.

For the rest of the night we alternated between talking, like really actually talking about our families and ourselves and our plans, having sex, and lightly sleeping. For the first weekend of college, for my first one-night stand, AND for the first time I’d ever had sex, not too shabby Ivy. Not too shabby.

I could chronicle the details of every time we met up, of all the conversations we had, the awful bloody crime-scene of a mess that occurred the night my birth control decided to go haywire and gift me my period all over everything, but I’ll skip to the last night I saw him.

It was Halloween. He was a tennis player and I was a farmer and it was the first time that I’d had him over. When he got to my dorm, he looked at my things: my books, my movies, my neatly organized makeup and hair products. He was seeing another side of me besides my body for the first time.

So we had sex, and if I didn’t give this detail the full amount of attention it deserved before, allow me to address it now: the dude’s penis was NOT big. It was average at best, and but could definitely check the box “small” in an about me survey. Awesome when it comes to giving head, decent when we’re talking missionary, but average to just impossible when we get into anything else. Especially, you guessed it, ass-up, all fours, doggie style. Yes sir I was in my home territory with the fake fur throw on my bed evoking scenes of Winterfell and I was ready to be taken like a Stark. But apparently that’s not in the cards for some guys’ dicks. I digress.

After we were done, we lay next to each other talking, snuggling, being. He apologetically decided to go home, despite it being almost 5am and living across campus. I wasn’t mad, dude can do what he wanted. We kissed goodbye, we said goodbye, we kissed goodbye again, and I went to sleep realizing that this couldn’t continue. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I had allowed myself to become too attached to a guy that I only ever saw once a weekend while we were both significantly intoxicated.

The little, indirect encounters that have happened between that last time I was with him and now don’t matter. I can think about them, obsess over them, wish that I hadn’t seen him while I was wearing a gray shirt to the gym that showcased my charming chest and back sweat stains, wish that I hadn’t proceeded to ask him how his Thanksgiving break was and been so shocked by my decision that my body actually kicked into fight or flight mode. All that really matters is what I’ve taken away from the experience:

1. With time, any circumstance can change. It sounds simplistic, but it’s the truth. You might go into a situation feeling in control and indifferent and you may leave a frazzled, Facebook-stalking mess. Not that I’d know anything about the latter.
2. Always know when you’re going to get your period.
3. You don’t have to have loud, name-shouting, screaming, moaning sex to have good sex. The breathing is what’s the hottest.
4. The worst thing about being the recipient of a long-term hit it and quit it is when the guy began as a bad kisser and ended a pro. The first time he kissed me it was like making out with an especially toothy lizard: an unlikely combination of a lot of teeth and idiopathic tongue flailing. The last time he kissed me was probably an 8 on the 1-10 scale of really good kisses. Damn it.
5. You are worth more than the person you are wasting your time agonizing over. It may take weeks or months or years to realize it, but anyone who is shitty enough to not give you the amount of attention you deserve and not realize they’re doing it isn’t worth a second of your time, even if that time is what you set aside solely for drunken sex.