What’s the Opposite of Taking Someone’s Virginity?
I finally slept with my best friend, just before he died—and I started to fall apart after he was gone. Then a conversation with his ghost—and a perilous trek through the woods—changed everything.
When I read Elizabeth Laura Nelson’s Modern Love essay, “Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night,” last fall about realizing her best friend, Jeff, was the love of her life a little too late, I knew I had to reach out. I suspected she might have a lot more to say about her relationship with Jeff, and lucky for me, for all of us, I was right. After brainstorming countless story ideas over the phone, we landed on one that turned into what you’re about to read: a vulnerable and moving piece — the first in our series collab with Creative Nonfiction, Heart of the Matter — about the struggle to move on. To celebrate the series, we’re making this piece paywall-free from the start so everyone can feel the love. We’ll let Elizabeth take it from here…
—Jesse Sposato, executive editor
“A hike isn’t a hike unless you fear for your life somewhere along the way,” I once told someone. “There has to be a moment when you think, If I step the wrong way here, I’ll die.” I’d lived in New York City for almost 20 years and wasn’t particularly outdoorsy, but I was from Colorado and felt that my Rocky Mountain roots made me an authority.
This little speech came back to me at the top of Crag Crest, on Grand Mesa in western Colorado, as I wondered how to navigate the narrow ridge ahead of me, acutely aware that if I didn’t pay close attention and wasn’t careful, I could tumble to a swift, sharp death. I was alone, and I was tired. I’d already lost a couple of hours on the way up, after missing a turn on a section of trail I should have known like the back of my hand.
If I made it past this ridge, with its steep drop-offs on either side, I’d still have several miles to hike before I got back to my car. I dropped to all fours and crawled toward the ridge, summoning that steadfast “I’m from Colorado” resolve to keep myself going.
This was last October. My longtime friend Jessica had convinced me to come to Colorado with her and volunteer at a bioenergetics conference she was helping to organize. The tagline was, “Putting Physics into the Heart of Healing” — perhaps just what I needed. She knew I’d been struggling since my best friend, Jeff, had died of cancer that June. I’d spent the summer on the road, trying to avoid our Brooklyn neighborhood, which felt haunted, a memory of him ready to ambush me on every block.
In the last days of his life, Jeff and I had finally confronted what he called “the elephant in the room”: the fact that we’d never had sex. We’d both been single for many of the years we were friends, and the chemistry between us had caused more than a few people to assume we must have been hooking up — but we never were. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to see Jeff in anything other than a platonic light, until I thought I might lose him. When we slept together, I still believed he’d get better — but he didn’t. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about his warm, smooth skin pressed against my own, our hands searching out places we’d never explored before, the foreign-yet-familiar feeling of his lips on mine.
I’d left town only two days after Jeff died, traveling to Maine, Maryland, Detroit, Chicago and elsewhere, weeping everywhere I went: on beaches, next to bonfires, on sun porches and at dinner tables. In New Jersey, I stopped to see my friend Seth, who gave up his bed for me.
“I cried in every position last night,” I announced over breakfast. “Curled up like a ball, on my knees next to the bed, face down in your pillows — it was the Kama Sutra of crying. You’re gonna have to change the sheets.”
“Oh, honey,” he said, dumping ketchup on his eggs. “Don’t worry. You’re not the first. That bed has seen it all.”
Back in Brooklyn and unable to sleep, I went for a walk one night and spotted the twin beams of light that shoot into the sky from the World Trade Center site to commemorate 9/11 each year. I thought of Jeff, now gone to wherever the people in those towers and on the planes had gone, and started sobbing so hard I had to sit down on a playground bench across the street from my apartment to brace myself.
The next morning, I booked a ticket to Denver. I’d volunteer at the conference, then drive to western Colorado and hike Crag Crest. I’d hiked across the ridge many times with family members — and cars on either side — but hadn’t ever gone alone and done the whole loop. It’s a little more than 10 miles, but I wasn’t worried. I’ve run the New York City Marathon four times and birthed two babies (both adults now) at home with no drugs: I’m tough.
When I arrived at the conference, I found Jessica in consultation with a beautiful, bearded man. “Who was that?” I asked, when she came over to greet me.
“Who — him?” She nodded at his retreating back and laughed. “That’s the AV guy. Cute, right? You want me to introduce you?”
I smiled. “Maybe!” It was the first time since Jeff’s death that I’d found anyone attractive. It felt like my heart was waking up, that strange pins-and-needles feeling you get as blood rushes back into a part of your body that’s fallen asleep. Or maybe it wasn’t my heart, exactly.
The morning Jeff died, I awoke entwined in his arms. I pressed my ear to his chest and heard his heart, beating faintly, but still beating. I studied his face — jaw slack, cheeks drained of color, eyes closed. A little while later, when our death doula told me he was gone, I didn’t believe her.
“I can still hear his heart,” I said, refusing to lift my head from his chest.
“That’s your own heart you’re hearing,” she responded.
I clutched one of Jeff’s hands in both of mine, closed my eyes, and saw his face floating before me. “Stay with me,” I begged, silently. “Don’t leave yet.”
In the weeks that followed, sometimes I swore I felt Jeff spooned behind me in bed, holding my hand. Other times he simply appeared, standing in a doorway as I talked to friends, or sitting beside me while I folded laundry.
Was Ghost Jeff real? I wanted to believe he was.
At dinner the first night of the Zenergy conference, I sat next to an energy healer who told me her son had recently died. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be!” she chirped. “He’s much happier now. He tells me so all the time.”
“My best friend died a few months ago,” I said. “I think he’s still with me, too. It seems so real.”
She nodded. “It is real. He’s with you.”
Were this lady and I both delusional with grief? Or were we just more attuned to the metaphysical realm than other people? I decided to lean into the woo-woo and enjoy Ghost Jeff’s visits, real or imagined.
Back on Crag Crest, Ghost Jeff appeared a couple of miles into the hike, long before I defied death by crawling across the ridge, as I squatted to pee in a clearing. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said. “This is so typical. Turn around.”
As I wrestled my thin leggings back up, I realized: I didn’t recognize this field. “Am I going the right way?” I asked Ghost Jeff, frowning. I didn’t know why I was asking a ghost — and one with a terrible sense of direction at that. Jeff was always getting lost. But since I hadn’t seen any place to take a different route, I kept going in the same direction. As we walked, I brought up something that had been on my mind since I’d asked Jessica about the hot AV guy at the conference.
“Whatever the opposite of taking someone’s virginity is, that’s what I did with you,” I said to Ghost Jeff. “But I don’t want you to be the last person I ever have sex with. I’m not even 50 yet. I don’t want that part of my life to be over.”
“I know,” he said. At last! Ghost Jeff hadn’t spoken to me before. “I want you to have sex again.” A familiar lascivious grin lit up his face. “And I want to watch.”
“Jeff! Now I know it’s really you. You perv.” I laughed. “Fine. You can watch. Are you going to send me someone?”
Just then, a lake came into view — a lake I knew should not be there. Where am I? Turning around, I saw the ridge rising in the distance, exactly opposite of the way I’d been going. Shit. I’d been so busy talking to a ghost that I’d been oblivious to the fact that I was walking downhill, not up. This wasn’t even the part of the hike that was new to me! And now Ghost Jeff was gone too. I began heading back uphill.
Once I found the right path, I tried not to think about how much time I’d wasted. How I’d lingered over breakfast at the hotel, where the young man behind the front desk had flirted with me when I checked in, and how I’d started the hike an hour or two later than I’d intended. I’d also neglected to bring basic hiking essentials: a map, a flashlight, a portable phone charger. I did have dental floss in my pocket though. I’d used it after I ate my only snacks: a clementine and a Luna Bar. When they find my decomposing body, I hope someone tells my dentist I’d recently flossed, I thought.
It was getting late, and I was exhausted. I tried to pick up my pace, but Crag Crest, true to its name, is craggy. Whenever I sped up, I’d trip on a sharp rock or skid on a patch of loose gravel. Quickly-carefully, quickly-carefully, quickly-carefully, I singsonged to myself. The sun was getting lower on the horizon; in my gazillionth selfie of the day, the sun’s rays burst from behind my head. Before I could snap another one, my phone died. I still had over four miles to go — the leg of the hike I’d never done before.
As I trudged on, the woods came alive. A crash just to the right of me was so startling that I screamed. A stag bounded away from the trail, antlers glinting in the fading light. You’re fine, I told myself. He was running away because he was scared of you. A few yards later, an antelope dashed off into the trees.
Suddenly, a grove of aspens blazed before me, brilliant gold glimmering against a pink-purple sunset. My uncle had told me that most of the aspens had dropped their leaves already, and he’d been right, but this hillside was somehow lagging behind the rest. It was glorious.
The aspens had caught the last fingers of daylight. I said a quick prayer of thanks that the moon was full and the skies were clear. Still, it was dark. I pictured bears and bobcats — which were undoubtedly all over the mesa — lurking behind the trees. I wondered if there were any forks on this section of trail that I could potentially misjudge. If I don’t make it, those aspens will have been worth it, I thought.
“Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?” I sang through the entire soundtrack of The Muppet Movie at the top of my lungs, hoping to ward off any animals lurking nearby. I was shivering now that the sun had gone down, my throat ached, and I was sick of singing, but I was terrified that if I fell silent, a predator would pounce. After what seemed like 1,000 hours but was probably closer to two, I emerged from the woods and saw my lone car gleaming under a lamppost in the parking lot. The relief that flooded my body was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Hallelujah.
Driving down the mesa to the hotel, the tears I’d been holding back on the hike finally flowed. I decided that if the flirty clerk was working when I got back, I’d ask him for a hug. I ached for a human touch, a beating heart, a warm breath.
Two people sat by the hotel fire pit when I pulled in; as I hobbled toward them, sore muscles already stiffening, I saw that it was the desk clerk and an older man, a fellow guest I’d seen the night before. They took one look at me and both spoke at once. “What happened? Are you OK?”
“I was hiking, and I got lost, and I didn’t have a flashlight, and my phone died, and I thought I was going to die!” The words tumbled out through my tears.
The desk clerk was already on his feet. “Do you want a hug?” I hadn’t even had to ask.
He wrapped his arms around me, and my body relaxed against his.
“You’re safe now. It’s OK.” This young man — who was at least 20 years my junior and probably hadn’t expected a stranger to have a breakdown in his arms while he was enjoying a peaceful night by the fire — didn’t let go until I took a long, shaky breath and lifted my head from his shoulder.
Calmer after sitting by the fire for a few minutes, I started inside, desperate for a hot shower. “I’ll be here a while,” the desk clerk called out to me. “In case you want to come down later.”
Upstairs, I cranked the faucet as hot as I could stand. By the time I got out, I felt ready to melt into a puddle — but not yet ready for bed. I headed back to the fire pit. The older man was gone, and the desk clerk and I shared a joint, inching closer together as we chatted and laughed. I felt giddy after my brush with death, or maybe it was the weed. “Can I sit in the hot tub?” I asked. “I know it’s past closing time.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m the manager.”
The pool area was dark, and as I looked for the light switch, the desk clerk — no, hotel manager — came in behind me. “Do you want the lights?” he asked. I shook my head; maybe it was nicer without them. He leaned in and kissed me, then pulled back, studying my face. “Is this OK?”
“You know I’m old enough to be your mother, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s cool. Shall I come up to your room later?”
I grinned.
Ghost Jeff flashed through my mind. Did you do this? Then this cute boy was kissing me again, and I didn’t think about Jeff anymore.
After leaving me alone for a quick dip, the manager, whose name I’d asked but instantly forgotten, met me in my room. I practically tackled him as he walked in. “So eager,” he said, laughing.
I didn’t care. I could have been shivering high up on the mesa right now, about to become a bear’s last meal before hibernation. Instead, I was safe and warm, high only on marijuana, kissing a man with a face like the moon that lit my way out of the woods. He whispered in my ear as our bodies moved together, as if they’d been made for nothing else but this. “I’ve got you. You’re OK now.” I wanted him again and again, and he never got tired. Youth! It’s not always wasted on the young.
As I drifted off, blissfully exhausted, he pulled the covers over me and dropped a kiss on my shoulder blade.
“What time is breakfast?” I asked, drowsily.
“Seven,” he said. “Shall I come back then?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” I mumbled into my pillow. I was asleep before the door latched behind him.
I woke a little after 6, feeling refreshed even though I’d only slept a few hours. I brushed my teeth and hopped into the shower so I’d be ready for my young lover’s return. Ghost Jeff peeked around the curtain, smirking.
“Hey, you,” I said. “You didn’t waste any time sending me someone, did you?”
He vanished as I heard the doorknob to my room turn. I pulled the very much alive, flesh-and-blood hotel manager back into my bed, tugging his clothes off as he kissed me. “When’s checkout, again?” I asked, guiding him inside me.
“You can have a late checkout,” he said, his tongue on my nipple.
A couple of hours and a few orgasms later, I rolled my suitcase out the hotel’s side door and hoisted it into the trunk of my car before heading into the lobby.
“Checking out?” the manager asked, his face betraying nothing.
“Yes,” I smiled. “Thank you.” I pulled a folded-up piece of paper from the pocket of my jeans and pressed it into his hand, holding on just a second longer than necessary. Then I walked out without looking back.
That night, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. “Thank you for the note, and thank you for sharing a moment in time with me. You were lovely.”
A moment in time. The nudge I needed to move forward. A stranger, sent to me by some force beyond my understanding — Ghost Jeff, the universe, God. Whatever anyone wanted to call it, I knew it had all unfolded exactly as it was meant to, from my wrong turn on Crag Crest to the sun setting over a grove of aspen trees to a moon-faced young man smiling at me across the firelight.
Missing Jeff was an ache in my heart that would never go away. Who could say what might have happened had he lived? But now I saw that, even without him, life still had adventures in store: laughter, pleasure, joy. Other people to hold me, other people to love me. I didn’t know how the next chapter of my life would unfold, but I was ready to find out.
This piece is the first in our series, Heart of the Matter, a special collaboration from Narratively and Creative Nonfiction that explores love and matters of the heart. You can learn more about this special series and check out the rest of the stories as we publish them here over the next few months.
Elizabeth Laura Nelson is a writer based in Brooklyn. She co-founded Jenny, a website for women over 40, and is currently at work on a memoir about her friendship with Jeff.
Jesse Sposato is Narratively’s executive editor. She also writes about social issues, feminism, health, friendship and culture for a variety of outlets. She is currently working on a collection of essays about coming of age in the suburbs.
Yunuen Bonaparte is a photo editor based in Brooklyn. She’s been part of the Narratively family since 2017.
Major same!!
Wow, what a story! I was riveted from start to finish. Poor Jeff, I'm so sorry. You are magnificent! This story will stay with me for days. Thanks, Elizabeth 🤍