The first woman I ever had sex with was named Sierra. Her birthday was the day after mine, to the year. She had long hair that hung to her waist and was built in a way that I would come to associate with sexual beauty – hips, tits, curves. I saw a French version of Madame Bovary and the woman playing the title character looked like Sierra – uncannily so. She had the same mixture of trust, naiveté and cunning in her face.

Sierra was also a flake, but I realize as I make that statement that I really do not understand the word I am using to describe her. I can only say that she was, in her way, unfathomable. She did what she did for her own reasons, without pausing to consider how those actions might appear to the people around her and without bothering to let others know the thought processes that led to those decisions.

(As I describe her, though, I cannot help but notice how much her actions resemble my own and, as I do, I am struck by the fact that we often despise those traits in others that we do not like about ourselves.)

She was profoundly spiritual, which was interesting and more than a little frustrating. I remember having a conversation with her about colonizing the moon and being surprised by her reaction: “I would protest,” she said, “if anyone seriously suggested that we pollute the surface of the moon. It is a spiritual place and should not be disturbed, for any reason.”

I, myself, am pointedly aspiritual, although agnostic is a more apt description of my stance on the nature of spirituality in general. Just as the prefix a- is used in front of sexuality to produce asexual attitudes, a- is used in front of the Greek word for knowledge to produce agnostic persons like myself. I have no knowledge of a spirituality beyond myself and this neither upsets nor concerns me. I am fairly sure that this lack of concern on my part disturbed Sierra to the point where she wanted to have nothing to do with me.

It seems strange to say so, but when it was all said and done, there was nothing to my interaction with Sierra beyond the sex. She was only ever my friend in passing and we were not emotionally involved. It is terrible to contemplate how that first sexual experience has flavored the subsequent sexual encounters of my life, but, at the same time, it would be amiss of me not to give at least a passing thought to the foundations of my sexuality.

On the one hand, it is probably healthy to be able to consider sex alone, on it’s own. At the same time, an emotional disconnect with respect to sex can be seen as callous, even if the result is better in the long run. The truth is, though, was that I was a horny teenager, not yet eighteen and only a few days into my (first, doomed) college career. Whatever meaning and comprehension I choose to glean from the sanitized memories of those early autumn days are merely abstracted platitudes. The do not speak to the situation because the situation is gone and has been for over ten years.

There may be safety in the distance of time, but that safety reveals an uneven texture of memory that speaks to the heart of every failed, doomed or aborted sexual encounter that we choose to embark upon. The seed of hormonal lust and attraction is compounded and amplified by the meanings and context through which it is filtered until it becomes something larger than itself. The situation with Sierra, though, serves to remind me that sex is an event in and of itself and can be separated from the situation that it arises within.

There is nothing inherently wrong with lust. There is, however, danger associated with the forms that lust takes and the actions that are undertaken because of it. It is important to acknowledge the dangers of our existence and tread carefully when navigating them, but that should not exclude them from the realms that can and should be explored. I think.

One final thought occurs to me, as I consider my varied audiences. How you choose to view this memory that has no inherent meaning speaks volumes about how you choose to view the act of sex itself. Perhaps.