t was middle school of 2016 and there I was, a 15-year-old Maggie, a proud bisexual plebe in my first heterosexual relationship with my childhood best friend — we’ll call him Sam.

I had already lost my virginity to Sam at 14 and decided I largely hated penises and the way they ripped open my fragile, white, porcelain area down there, so we stuck to what we knew best — hand jobs, fingering, and a lot of oral. (And honestly, even in adulthood, I find oral is so much better than a long, hard, cylinder occasionally ramming into my cervix — it’s a sensation I can do without.)

So one evening Sam and I begin fooling around under the covers of the lower portion of his bunk bed — which is to say aggressively attacking each other faces with mouths, lips and tongues and grabbing at each other’s genitalia (over the clothes). After so boldly removing said clothes, Sam oh so graciously goes down on me, occasionally tapping my asshole with his tongue because we are blossoming sexual fiends.

When it is finally my turn, I offer up a hand job to his very average, uncircumcised, middle-school penis, the first penis I had ever seen, other than the traumatizing glimpse in my peripheral when passing my father’s open bedroom door, something we’ve all been through.

Anyway. I begin slow, without lube, building the intensity, faster and faster, rough and rougher and he’s moaning and clenching his face — when I hear a loud pop.

If you have seen the late ’70s classic, Carrie, one of my childhood favorites, you will be familiar with the famous pig’s blood scene — a truly terrifying, evil cinematic moment. For those of you who haven’t: Carrie is a high school pariah and upon winning prom queen — a cruel joke orchestrated by the popular clique — they dump a bucket of pig’s blood over her head as she is crowned. Carrie is so mortified, her pyrotechnic powers take over and she burns down the entire gymnasium with everyone inside it.

Now, upon hearing the pop that my boyfriend’s penis had made, I was reminded of this very particular cinematic moment as I found myself covered face to vagina in what I could only identify as spurting blood.

I was shocked. Frozen in fear and slick with his obvious death.

I had obviously broken my boyfriend’s penis off and the bloody massacre was there for everyone to see. I was a murderer. Of penises? Of my boyfriend?

Sam leaps out of bed and starts the shower where I am directed to hobble over to—bloody, naked, and shambling. Sam curls his head down to inspect the area in the mirror, “Do I have cancer?” he asks me, an expert of penis cancer. He trembles at this for a moment — still inspecting and I, ashamed and terrified, gird my own loins and take a furtive glance down to where his bloody stump hangs limp on his gorgeous middle school body but, to my surprise, discover a fully-attached penis.

“What the fuck happened?” I hiss, almost accusatory.

“You just ripped my foreskin a little!” the now calm, giggling Sam responds.

I swear I could hear the mean girls from my middle school cackling as they hurried away, swinging their empty bucket of pig’s blood outside the bedroom window.