The First Time

A documentary in which subjects speak about their earliest sexual experiences.

00:46Copy video clip URL Title card: The First Time. A videotape by Pat Lehman. 1985. 

00:52Copy video clip URL A man with a ponytail leans back in his chair and reminisces about “the first time.” His first sexual encounter, at age 17 with a girl he’d met in church. “There’s chills up and down my spine just thinking about it now.” 

02:48Copy video clip URL Another man tells his story: “I was a late starter. I didn’t have sex with a girl until I was 25. Ridiculous. I was a social reject in high school so I didn’t have any girlfriends at the time.” He talks about trying to imply that he was more experienced than he was when he first had sex, feeling “proud” that she believed him afterward. 

05:07Copy video clip URL A woman with glasses talks about growing up in a “small-ish Midwestern town” where her first experience with full intercourse came with her first husband. “What passed for birth control in the 50s was either celibacy, which is absolutely ridiculous when you’re 15, or make love around the edges a lot…. So I was 20 years old and was still what they call a ‘technical virgin.’ Which means that it only went halfway in sometimes or I made love with all my clothes on or something like that.” Difficulties “making the two-backed beast” while living with her parents. 

09:22Copy video clip URL A mustachioed man wearing a trucker hat talks about his first sexual experience with the girl he’d been dating since 7th grade.

11:00Copy video clip URL A man with unruly long hair has difficulties speaking about his first time but eventually talks about his first sexual experience, heavy petting with a girl on the bus for ski trip. 

13:26Copy video clip URL A man with a mustache jokes about his sexual experiences going back a long time, and about trying to decide which one to start with. His first sexual experience of any kind was with a male, but as an adult his first sexual experience was with a female when he was 21. He couldn’t get aroused the first time they tried. When it did happen, he was focused intently on getting and staying erect and it “wasn’t enjoyable in the least.” 

18:32Copy video clip URL A curly-haired woman talks about her first time, which came after she was married at 19. It wasn’t romantic, she said, but “just like the next thing that was supposed to happen.” It “hurt like mad,” she says. 

21:48Copy video clip URL The man with unruly hair talks about making love with a girl in the back of a pickup truck and discovering afterwards that they had been parked about 25 feet away from a parking lot with state police cars in it. 

23:53Copy video clip URL The man with a ponytail talks about a time in which he let a woman take advantage of him. 

25:54Copy video clip URL The man who was a “late starter” talks about an “unusual” experience with his wife in which they made love on the floor of an unheated, grimy studio apartment.

26:57Copy video clip URL The woman with glasses talks about engaging in “group sex with other couples, and that was very fun.” She talks about her most disappointing sexual experience in which her partner “set the land speed record” in finishing. 

29:10Copy video clip URL The man in the trucker hat grows bashful trying to speak about his most unusual encounter, which happened recently with a man he met in a bar who wanted to be tied up. “I’m sure that’s just about as unusual as you can get!” 

31:13Copy video clip URL End credits: With many thanks to my friends: John & Jane Fudge, Lowell Stephens, David Tate, Michael Lyster, Mark Pietrafeso, and Lonore.

32:13Copy video clip URL End of tape.