Girls' Lena Dunham Opens Up About Losing Her Virginity

USMagazine, Friday, April 20, 2012, 5:19am (PDT)

Lena Dunham's "first time" wasn't exactly the most romantic story ever told.

The 26-year-old creator, writer, director and star of HBO's Girls recently penned an essay about losing her virginity for Rookie Magazine; Liz Phair, Sarah Silverman and Shannon Woodward shared similar stories.

"When I was about 9 I wrote a vow of celibacy on a piece of paper and ate it. I promised myself, in orange magic marker, that I would remain a virgin until I graduated from high school," Dunham writes. "If my relationship to liver pate was any indication, and I had recently eaten so much that I barfed, then my willpower was very bad, and I needed something stronger than resolve to prevent me from having intercourse too early in life."

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"Turns out, this was an unnecessary precaution," she explains. "The opportunity never arose in high school, nor even during the first year of college, save for a near-miss with a stocky kid I knew who was home visiting New York City from the Air Force Academy."

Dunham transferred to Oberlin, a small liberal arts school in Ohio, during her sophomore year. "I really felt like the oldest virgin in town, save for a busty riot girl from Olympia, Washington, who was equally frustrated; she and I would often meet up in our nightgowns to discuss."

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The TV star -- who changed the name of her first sexual partner to Jonah ("to protect the truly innocent") -- invited her crush to her 8 x 10 dorm room for a wine and cheese party. After everyone else left, "I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and just went for it. I removed my shirt almost immediately, and he seemed fairly impressed. Wearing just a too-tight slip-skirt from the local Goodwill, I hopped up to get the condom from the  freshman survival pack' we had been given (even though I was a sophomore)."

Shortly after, Dunham's friend Audrey walked in and "found Jonah on top of me doing what grownups do."

"I didn't tell him I was a virgin, just that I hadn't done it 'that much,'" Dunham writes in her Rookie Magazine essay. "It hurt a little more than I’d expected but in a different way, and he was nervous, too. . . Afterwards we lay there and talked, and I could tell he was a really nice person. I commended myself for making a healthy, albeit hasty, partner choice. I really couldn’t wait to tell my mom."

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She added: "Jonah wanted to date, and I figured out pretty quickly that I did not. I went over to his dorm and broke up with him in the laundry room, sitting on top of a running washer. He seemed genuinely hurt and perplexed, and I told him I'd been a virgin because I thought it made me seem like less of a she-devil. . .It's amazing how permanent virginity feels, and then how suddenly inconsequential. I barely remembered the sensation, the embarrassment and the urgency."

Girls airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. EST on HBO.

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Girls' Lena Dunham Opens Up About Losing Her Virginity