The V-Card

Last night I went through with it --- I lost my V-Card.

It didn't go exactly as planned.

As an adolescent, I never fantasized that my first time would accidentally occur at a Greek restaurant in downtown Chicago.

But that's exactly how it went down.

It was a little awkward, and I certainly made some strange faces.

But last night, I gave up a lifetime of Vegetarianism.

The whole thing was an accident. At a class dinner with friends and teachers, big sweaty Greeks brought out steaming platters of food.

"Have you tried Skordalia before?" a waiter asked, holding a dish before me.

"I don't know," I responded. "It's Greek to me."

The waiter laughed as if it was the first time I had told the joke that night.

I was feeling adventurous, so I dove into each dish.

And then out it came. It looked like pink, sugary frosting. And that’s what I thought it was. For some reason, it made perfect sense to me that they would serve birthday cake frosting among the stuffed grape leaves and flaming cheese.

I spread two heaping spoonfuls of the stuff onto my bread and shoved it into my mouth.

Garlicy, spicy --- pretty damn good, I thought.

“Wow, that is good! It tastes totally unlike how it looks!” I said to my friends.

My tablemates gave me a blank, confused stare. Having grown used to this look, I kept eating the garlic-flavored pink frosting.

Just then Mindy, my instructor, leaned across the table.

“Raam! Don’t eat the CAVIAR!”

I froze. The entire banquet table turned and looked at me, the salmon caviar smeared across my face, with a pink dollop hanging from my nose.

I tried to play it off. “Ah, no big deal,” I said, guzzling water, scarffing down bread and sweating bullets. I negotiated with my stomach --- “Can we at least save the dry heaving until we’re away from the table?”

I wanted my first time to be special. A nice dinner over wine, maybe. I’d ease in with chicken or maybe something more exotic, beef. But this was too much.

As I reflect back on the experience, I’m not sure what’s more gross --- that I ate caviar, or that I kind of liked it.

I will say that I did have one previous experience accidentally trying meat.

I was 10. I walked into the kitchen to find my older brother, Aran, eating something out of a bowl.

“Ooooohhhh! Is that Apple Crisp?!” I asked. Again, like the pink frosting, for some reason it made perfect sense to me that Aran would be eating apple crisp on a weekday afternoon.

“Can I have some?!”

Aran eargerly handed it over. And into my mouth I shoved a big spoonful of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef soup.

I instantly spat it out --- back into Aran’s bowl --- with a loud, “Eeeeewww!”

Aran fell off his stool laughing.

And that day, I became a born-again vegetarian.