This summer myself and a friend toured some of the United States while on a J1 Visa. We spent a few days just outside of Boston during our travels, courtesy of one of his family friends – a woman who instantly became twice as chatty upon my confirmation that I was gay.

On our last night in Boston, the three of us were up talking, and having a few drinks. At the same time, I was messaging a guy on Grindr. His profile just said “marine” and that he was 27. However, he looked cute, and sent me photos of himself which made me interested enough to keep chatting, despite the military uniform (or perhaps because of it?). It eventually rolled around to two in the morning and he was still messaging me. After enough of his efforts to convince me, and the promise of a free Uber ride over, I agreed to meet up.

I let my friend and the woman we were staying with know I was leaving.

“He’s going to go sleep with a marine,” my friend announced.

To which she quipped, in her incredible New England accent: “well just make sure he knows who’s taking advantage of who, okay?” I have replayed her saying that in my head 100 times over since.

I strutted down to where we had agreed to meet, right outside the walls of Harvard. I was feeling pumped, listening to Ariana Grande’s album Dangerous Woman. When we met, my first reaction was that he was neither as tall or as well muscled as I had expected of a marine. My second was that his voice was incredibly rough, seemingly from having smoked something close to a pack a day. At this point though, I was already in too deep for these factors to make me want to back out.

He ordered an Uber, and we jumped in. Given we were too awkward to just shift in an Uber ride, we decided to chat instead. It turned out he was only a marine reserve at the time, though he had completed 5 years of active duty. Now he worked for the Red Sox in some capacity – I forgot what it was immediately. He also mentioned that he had been with his last boyfriend, also a marine, for two years, and had nearly married the guy. A bit intense for introductions to someone I was about to have sex with, so I just ignored it.

We also discussed my life. I told him I was a student, and that I would be returning home in September. He pressed me as to why I was returning, and I explained that my visa expired come the end of summer. “Would you not just buckle down, work hard, become an American citizen, and stay?” he asked. After some debate over why I preferred to not just abandon my home for America, I eventually shut him down by telling him that I liked living in a country whose health care system didn’t impoverish its most vulnerable citizens, which he begrudgingly agreed was a good thing.

Arriving at his place, I messaged my friend, sending him the marine’s name and address. Before I had left, my friend had repeatedly taunted me, saying that as a marine he had probably killed people, and could kill me too. As a precaution then I made sure that, if nothing else, my murderer would be caught. Unfortunately, I had no data at the time, and for a reason too complicated for him to explain to me, the marine couldn’t let me on his wifi. Unable to contact my friend, I began to work myself into a paranoid frenzy until I was lent a laptop to use Facebook on. Meanwhile, the marine changed into a jock strap.

Things got underway pretty quickly, and, after not much foreplay, we were in flagrante delicto. There were some minor interruptions, such as his realisation that he had left his phone in the Uber. For the most part, however, time passed as it normally does when you’re having sex, with a lot of movement, and some chat. During one of these moments, while I was thrusting, and we were talking, he said something which I can only presume every young man wants to hear at some point in his life:

“You’re the first civilian that’s ever been inside me.”

I wish I could pretend I had some clever response, but in reality, I was too dumbfounded, and distracted by trying not to lose my rhythm to say anything at the time other than “um, thanks.”

We eventually finished up at some point past 5 am, his words still ringing around in my head as we both drifted to sleep. I woke to my alarm at 10, and left without exchanging too many words with him, afraid he would say something else that might traumatise me. It was only after I had left, and I’d discussed it with a friend that I realised what a poor move that had been. If I had stayed to chat just a little more, and played my cards right, maybe I could have gotten a “thank you for your service.”