My Friends Joke That I’m Still a Virgin at 25… But None of Them Know What Happened to Me When I Was 18 ․․․
Last night, one of my friends had a little too much to drink and jokingly said that I was probably going to remain a virgin for the rest of my life. Everyone else laughed. It was the kind of harmless joke we often make with each other, and I knew no one was trying to hurt me. I laughed with them too, but this time those words hit me differently. For a moment, I wanted to put my glass down and say, “If only you knew what happened to me when I was eighteen.” But I didn’t.
I’m 25 years old now. I have a normal job, I’m focused on building my career, I go out with friends, and I love reading science-fiction novels. From the outside, I live the kind of ordinary life that would never make anyone suspect there is a dark part of my past that I almost never talk about. Sometimes I feel as though those years are the reason I can look completely normal on the outside while never quite feeling normal inside.
I was raised by my mother. My father was never really part of our lives, and my mother’s family had almost completely rejected her when she became pregnant with me. For years, she worked as much as she could to support us. I still remember her constantly telling me that it was the two of us against the world. As a child, I believed her. She was the only family I had, and I was convinced that no matter what happened, my mother would always protect me.
When I was around seven, we lost our home. For a while, we slept in our car, then in cheap motels, and sometimes my mother didn’t even know where we would spend the following night. One place I remember particularly well from those years was Waffle House. My mother would often sit me at a table, order me something inexpensive, and say, “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t go anywhere.”
Then she would walk outside, a car would arrive, and some man would drive away with her. At that age, I didn’t understand how my mother was making money. It wasn’t until years later that I understood she had been selling herself to survive.
There is one particular evening I still remember clearly. A man arrived to pick my mother up, but when he looked through the window and noticed me sitting inside, he said something to her. My mother’s expression immediately changed. She answered him sharply and seemed ready to walk away. Then she stepped outside to smoke a cigarette while I watched them through the window.
The man approached her again, and they began talking. At first, my mother kept shaking her head as though she were refusing something, but the conversation went on for a long time. Then, suddenly, she turned and looked directly at me. Almost immediately, the man followed her gaze and looked through the window at me too.
I had no idea what they were discussing. I only remember my mother’s face. There was something in her expression that I couldn’t understand for years.
That evening, she eventually came back inside alone and took me with her. For a long time, I held on to that memory as proof that no matter how desperate our situation became, my mother had a line she would never cross. I assumed the man had made some kind of offer and she had refused because I was her son.
Eleven years later, I learned how wrong I had been.
I was eighteen when we found ourselves in almost the same situation again. My mother had lost her job, we owed two nights’ rent at the motel, and I had only recently finished high school. I worked wherever I could, but what I earned wasn’t enough.
One evening, my mother sat on the edge of my bed and told me there was a man willing to pay $500 if I spent a few hours with him. At first, I actually laughed and asked who would pay that much money just to talk to someone. My mother wouldn’t look me in the eyes. She said only that he was wealthy, wanted company, and that we desperately needed the money that night.
I asked whether there was any other option.
She told me that if we didn’t find the money, we would be thrown out of the motel the next morning.
So I went.
Until the very last moment, I kept convincing myself that my mother was telling the truth. Maybe all I had to do was sit with this man, talk for a couple of hours, and come back.
He was around fifty years old. When we reached his house, the first thing I noticed was the family photographs on the coffee table. In one picture, he was standing beside his wife and two daughters. Everyone was smiling. There were children’s things around the living room, drawings attached to the refrigerator, and family photographs hanging on the walls.
Strangely, seeing all of that made me feel safer. I thought he was a family man. Maybe my mother really had told me the truth.
He sat beside me on the couch and started asking ordinary questions. How old was I? What did I want to study? Did I have a job? Did I have a girlfriend?
Then, without warning, he placed his hand on my knee.
I immediately moved away.
He smiled.
“Don’t be nervous.”
Then he put his hand on my shoulder, and…
That was the moment I realized my mother had not told me everything.
I tried to leave, but what happened after that was not something I had agreed to.
And when I finally walked out of that house, I still didn’t know the most devastating part of the truth.
I still had no idea how much my mother had known from the beginning.
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PART 2
The man drove me back to the motel. I didn’t say a single word during the entire ride. I just stared through the car window and tried not to think about what had happened. There was $500 in my pocket.
My mother was waiting outside the motel room.
I stepped out of the car, and the man drove away. My mother stared at my face for several seconds. I was certain she would realize something was wrong. I thought maybe she would hug me, ask what had happened, or at least apologize for sending me there.
Instead, the first thing she asked was:
“Did he give you the money?”
I just stared at her.
That was the moment I understood.
She knew.
If she had looked shocked or asked what he had done to me, maybe I could have convinced myself that she had been deceived too. But the only thing she wanted to know was whether I had been paid.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the money, and handed it to her.
She counted it right in front of me.
I thought that, at the very least, it would end there.
It didn’t.
A few days later, my mother gave me another name and another address. I immediately told her I wasn’t going. She started crying. She said we had no money left for food, that we still owed money at the motel, and that she had no other option.
Then she said something I can still remember word for word:
“You’re eighteen. I’m not forcing you to do anything.”
But both of us knew it wasn’t that simple. When someone tells you that saying no means sleeping on the street the following night, saying yes is no longer an ordinary choice.
I went again.
Then another time.
And then again.
The men were different, but what disturbed me most was how ordinary their lives looked. I entered homes filled with wedding photographs, children’s school pictures on refrigerators, and family belongings scattered around the rooms.
One man made me a grilled cheese sandwich and spent half an hour telling me about his son’s university. Another gave me a jacket and said his own son didn’t wear it anymore.
Sometimes they spoke to me as though I were simply a guest visiting their family home.
That normality somehow made everything worse.
There was always money at the end. Two hundred dollars. Three hundred. Sometimes more.
My mother took it and repeatedly promised that this was temporary. She told me we only had to survive a little longer and soon we would have our own apartment. Sometimes she even told me that she always warned the men not to hurt me.
I never knew how she could say those words and then calmly take the money.
After almost a year, I estimated that she had received several thousand dollars through me. During the final months, things became even worse. My mother was making the calls herself, arranging addresses, and negotiating how much people would pay.
One evening, she told me that several men were willing to pay considerably more if I went to meet them together.
For the first time, I looked directly at my mother and asked, “What happens if I don’t go?”
She remained silent for a long time before answering very calmly.
“We go back to the street.”
That was when I finally understood that it wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even really a choice.
It was a threat disguised as survival.
A few months later, we finally managed to rent a small apartment. And just as suddenly as everything had started, my mother stopped sending me anywhere. There were no more names, no addresses, no phone calls.
She started behaving as though the previous year had never happened.
At night, I would lie in the bed in my new room and stare at the walls, thinking the same thing over and over again:
“I paid for this apartment.”
Except no one had ever asked what it cost me.
About a year later, my mother remarried. I was nineteen by then. Her new husband, Robert, knew almost nothing about our past. My mother had only told him that we had gone through some difficult years and had once been homeless. She never told him where the money that had eventually helped us get back on our feet had actually come from.
I stayed silent too. I was so exhausted by everything that I simply wanted to leave that life behind.
Eventually, their marriage fell apart. By then, I was studying and working. Even though Robert was no longer with my mother, he was the only person who asked whether I wanted to stay with him for a while.
I said yes and finally left my mother’s home for good.
I almost completely cut contact with her. At first she called, then she started sending messages. She said I had misunderstood her and that everything she had done was simply an attempt to save us.
One message has stayed with me more than any other:
“One day you’ll understand that I did it for both of us.”
I never answered.
Years later, at my college graduation, I saw her again.
She had arrived with her new family. A new husband, young children, a completely new life. Looking at her from the outside, no one would ever have guessed what had happened between us.
She spotted me in the crowd, smiled, and approached as though we had only had some minor family disagreement.
She tried to hug me.
I stepped away.
“Daniel, please. I’m your mother,” she said.
For the first time in years, I looked directly into her eyes.
“Go to hell,” I said.
Then I turned around and walked away.
I haven’t forgiven her. I don’t know if I ever will.
But there is something else that is sometimes even harder for me to think about. During those final months, when my mother had started arranging meetings involving several men, I sometimes saw other young men there too. They were adults, but some looked barely older than I was—eighteen, nineteen, maybe twenty.
There is one I remember particularly well.
He sat in the corner of a room staring at the floor. At one point, our eyes met.
Neither of us said anything.
I don’t think we needed to.
I understood him.
And I think he understood me.
Even now, I sometimes wonder what happened to those guys. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know whether they managed to get out, go to school, find work, fall in love, start families, or simply build whatever kind of lives they wanted.
I hope at least some of them were able to leave all of it behind.
As for me, I’m 25 now. My friends see me as a slightly shy, career-focused guy who just hasn’t had much luck with relationships.
Sometimes they joke that I’m still a virgin.
And I tell them I am.
Because to me, virginity has never been only about what happened to my body.
My first real time will be when I choose the person myself. When no one is paying for it. When no one tells me it is necessary for survival. When I can say no without wondering where I will sleep that night.
And when I say yes only because I truly want to.
That is why, when my friends laughed last night, I laughed with them.
None of them know the truth.
Maybe I’m still not ready to say it out loud. But I wanted to tell it somewhere, because for years I have felt used—as though other people took part of my energy from me and never gave it back.
The years pass. Faces slowly fade. There are names I can no longer remember and addresses that have blurred together.
But I don’t necessarily feel lighter.
Sometimes it is the opposite. The farther I get from those years, the more clearly I understand what actually happened to me.
And maybe by telling this story, I’m finally taking back one thing that felt like it belonged to other people for far too long.
My story.
