Learning the Difference Between Lust and Love

MY FIRST CRUSH was Bel Biv DeVoe. Not one in particular, but all of them. One of my mom's friends had given me a BBD tape as a present at my fifth-birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. It was in no way an appropriate gift for a kindergartner, but I was instantly obsessed. I watched their videos and fell in l-o-v-e. I had an inkling that this was possibly inappropriate, so I'd only listen to their songs in my room and imitate the grinding dance moves by myself in front of the mirror.

Once, my parents and I ran into DeVoe in the mall. My dad, knowing I was a fan, picked me up and took me over to say hi. I was too embarrassed to even make eye contact, though, and as they chatted it up, I buried my head in my dad's shoulder and snuck secret glances at DeVoe, all the while thinking, "I have sexy dreams about you, and in them we're living together!"

I also definitely remember refusing to nap at preschool, preferring to stay wide awake and chase boys around the playroom. I don't think I was particularly boy crazy—I think I just wanted what a lot of girls want, which is a boyfriend, but I guess maybe I've just wanted one since I was a toddler.

Since things never worked out with me and DeVoe, my next crush was more attainable, and age appropriate: Tahj Mowry, Tia and Tamera's little brother. Tahj and I did a print shoot together when we were four. Our moms became friends on set, and, soon after, my family started attending the same church as them. After a few years of seeing each other every Sunday morning, Tahj was my number one crush, and I suspect that I was his.

Tahj had made several appearances on Sister, Sister, but when we were preteens, he was cast to star in his own WB show, Smart Guy, playing a child genius who skips ahead six grades and into high school. When my thirteenth-birthday party rolled around, I told all the girls at school that Tahj was going to be there, and the reaction was akin to what you would expect if Channing Tatum made a surprise appearance at a bachelorette party. Tahj showed up a little bit late, at which point his arrival had been thoroughly hyped, and every female at the party, sans me, freaked out. Bitches were thirsty, immediately decamping to corners and whispering and giggling at one another. We had a basketball hoop in the backyard, and when Tahj said he wanted to play, all the girls did too.

There wasn't a one of them who could throw a ball even anywhere near the basket, but this didn't stop them all from thronging the court. It was nonstop double dribbles and air balls until one of them would "accidentally" brush up against Tahj and then run off the court screaming, "I touched him, I touched him!" Some hair was going to get pulled if they didn't stop rushing up on my man, but a disaster was averted when we slow danced in front of everyone, including our moms—er, when our moms made us slow dance, if I'm being totally honest here . . .

We had our first kiss not too long after that, when we were on a chaperoned date with—who else but—our moms. We'd gone to see a Denzel Washington movie, and our moms had made the mistake (or maybe it was deliberate?) of sitting in the row in front of us. This left me and Tahj free to hold hands behind their backs, and even, gasp, make out! I'd never kissed anybody before, and I'm pretty sure he hadn't either, because our teeth kept knocking together so frequently, and so loudly, that I thought one of our moms would turn around and go, "What the hell is that noise?!" Finally, we stopped attempting to kiss and just sat and quietly held hands in the dark.

After that, I considered Tahj to be my almost boyfriend, as he was certainly the closest I'd ever come to having a real boyfriend as a teenager, though we were really more like best friends. We had the same sense of humor and shared that actor's tendency to always be on, entertaining each other by dramatically resinging every song we heard on the radio and adding tons of runs. I liked that he was a nice, Christian boy, and we genuinely had fun whenever we were together, even though we rarely did more than awkwardly slobber on each other's faces and hold hands.

I was his date for his winter formal at a private school that was way fancier than Valencia High, and also even his date on the night when he was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. It was my first red carpet. I wore a white two-piece number, a matching shirt and skirt that almost could have been sexy, or at least cute, if my mom hadn't made me wear a long slip underneath it like I was a freaking Mormon.

Like something straight out of the embarrassing stories in Seventeen magazine, that also happened to be the day I got my period for the first time—the same day as the biggest date of my life, when I'd been planning for weeks to wear all white. My mother, bless her heart, had always explained menstruation to me as an afterthought, saying things like, "Oh well, when you get your period . . . ," as if I was somehow just supposed to know what getting my period was all about.

So that day, when I went to the bathroom and found blood in my underwear, I immediately told my mom, who just screeched, "Naya, oh my God, you're a woman now!" then handed me a pad to stick in my panties and pretty much pushed me out the door and into the limo where Tahj and his mom were waiting.

Pads are not the most technologically advanced period protection. They feel like you're wearing an XXL diaper all bunched up between your legs, especially when you've never worn one before. As I walked down the sidewalk to get into the car, I was terrified that I was waddling, and that Tahj would take one look at me and be able to immediately tell what was happening, and that, worse, he'd be totally grossed out by it. I felt like I had a secret but wasn't sure if it was a good or bad secret. "Oh my God," I wondered, as I took my seat next to him, "can he smell the blood?" But he didn't seem to notice anything, and barely even noticed me, as he spent the entire ride there practicing his acceptance speech for an award he did not win.

Tahj and I continued to "date" off and on for the entirety of our teenage years. During one of our off periods, I lost my virginity to someone else. Tahj later ended things once and for all by telling me he thought he needed to date someone more on his financial level. Dick. We're still friends.

LOSING IT

One day, toward the end of high school, it seemed like I just woke up and none of my friends were virgins anymore. Tahj and my whatever it was, was pretty much a sexless union, and there had never been anyone else who seemed worth having sex with. The senior who'd taken me to prom when I was a sophomore had tried to have sex with me that night after the dance, but I rightly turned him down. After all, he had a nose ring and was rumored to have once gotten a blow job while sitting on the toilet, taking a shit. What a prince.

Some of my friends had been doing it for a long time; others professed to like having sex but love giving BJs. They'd just be like, "What? I like it!" Whatever. I was sick of not being able to participate in these girl-talk sessions and figured it was high time to hand over my V card. But who was going to be the lucky guy? There was one thing that I did know, though—this guy was not going to be special.

As much as my friends claimed to just love having sex, I'd seen the same thing happen to all of them: they'd give it up to a guy they really liked, get dumped, and then spend the next two months blubbering and crying, "But he took my vir-gin-i-tyyyyyy! Wahhhhhhhh . . ." I was damn certain that was not going to be me.

One day not long after high school graduation I was working an afternoon shift at Abercrombie when my target came in, just shopping for sweat shirts. It was a guy I'd gone to junior high with and hadn't seen in years. He was half-white, half-black, somehow Mormon, and had morphed into a pretty hot dude since the last time I saw him, in eighth grade. "That's it," I thought. "Good enough." We exchanged numbers, and I hit him up a few days later. I don't think he had any idea what was coming (pun intended).

Mixed Mormon and I went on a few dates that weren't too bad but weren't too good either. I told my best friend, Madison, that I was going to lose my virginity.

She was shocked. "What?! Do you like him? Do you love him?"

No and no, I told her, and that was the whole point.

One night, MM was at a friend's house, playing video games, and I texted him that I was coming over. It was getting late, like nine at night, and I drove myself and parked outside. I took a deep breath before I walked in, and if I could have high-fived myself, I would have.

We hung out for a few minutes, me watching him play Grand Theft Auto, when I suggested that we go into his friend's bedroom. Maybe he was starting to catch on at this point, because he readily agreed. We made out for a few minutes, and then I pushed him down, stared him in the eyes, and said, "Okay, let's get this over with, because I don't want to bleed on someone I actually like." For a teenage boy, sweeter words of seduction have never been spoken, I guess, and then I climbed on top and proceeded to get it over with.

As soon as I was back outside and a safe distance from the house, I called Madison.

"I did it!"

"That's it?!"

"That's it!" I never talked to him again, and to this day I'm pretty proud to say that I lost my virginity on top.

THE WHORE YEARS—AND WHY EVERY GIRL NEEDS THEM

After that, Tahj and I got back together for a bit, but I still wasn't getting much action. When he dumped me, I took it as my cue, and was like, "Okay, well, I guess I'll start fucking now," and commenced what I now refer to with nothing but fond memories and affection as the "whore years." Abercrombie was a great place for hookups, because the guys all had great bodies and, well, you didn't have to go very far. You'd basically bump into someone running clothes from the fitting room and think, "Okay, you!"

After that, I set my sights on my longtime high school crush, who was a super hot, six-foot-one white boy with long hair and muscles. I'd had my eye on this guy—we'll call him A—since freshman year, but he was popular and only went out with the prettiest girls in school. He never looked at me, but now that we were out of high school (and, I'm sure, because I now had C-cups), when we ran into each other, it seemed like we were finally on the same level.

I started my long and complicated plot to get to him by dating his best friend (if you haven't picked up on it yet, this is where I started getting real whorish). His best friend was a similarly hot black dude who looked like Michael Jackson pre–plastic surgery and skin bleach. This guy—we'll call him B—and I dated for a while and would hook up at my best friend's house because I was still living at home with my dad. Madison still lived with her mom, but she was never home, so B and I would sneak away every chance we got and do it in Madison's bed. She was less than pleased about this, understandably.

"Naya," she'd say. "This is not cool. I sleep here!" She had a point.

Then all of a sudden, out of what seemed like nowhere, B dumped me, with little emotion or explanation. Well, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so I decided to get B back by hooking up with his other best friend, C.

Somehow none of these guys seemed to know who their best friends were banging (which I'm not sure I really believe), and the next time I saw A he asked for my number. Of course I gave it to him. This long and convoluted plan seemed to be working after all. A and I texted back and forth for a while, and by that time I was living in my own ill-fated apartment, so when he texted one night asking if he could come over, I said yes immediately. He came over, we watched TV for a little bit—as you do—and then did it, as you do. He left a short time later, and for some reason, as soon as he left, I couldn't find my keys.

That asshole was trying to steal my car!

Or so I thought. When I called him screaming about it, he had no idea what I was talking about. Who knows what A's and my future held, because after that, he totally thought I was nuts—and he had a point. I later found the keys between the cushions of the couch, and my car was still parked right where I'd left it.

I thought this was the end of my ABC adventure, and lost contact with all of them for a few weeks, until one day my cell phone started to ring when my mom was over at my apartment making lunch with me. I didn't recognize the number, so I just hit "answer" and put it on speaker phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi," said a male voice. "Can I speak to the coach of the all-star team?"

"What?"

"Can I speak to the coach of the all-star team? I heard you're holding tryouts for new members."

It began to dawn on me who was on the other end of the line and what was happening, and I hung up as quickly as I could. My mom was sitting there, just looking at me like, what the fuck just happened?

I had no choice but to tell her. This was right after she'd divorced my dad and was dating for the first time in almost twenty years, and we were really close. When I finished my story with "I'm really sorry I'm such a slut," she started cracking up.

Before I could stop her, she grabbed the phone from me and hit the callback button. "Hello?" she said, in her most sassy voice, as soon as the same guy who had just called me picked up. "No, this is the coach of the all-star team! And we are not accepting new members!" Then she hung up. By this point, she was laughing so hard that she had tears in her eyes, and I had crumpled over on the couch, unable to breathe.

My mom has had my back from day one, and nothing's going to change that, certainly not a little sleeping around.

Now I look back on my whore years and think everyone should have them. I don't think you can be successfully married until you've had at least three good years of playing the field. I'm not kidding! It teaches you what's out there (even if it's not all that great) so you'll know good sex when you find it later. You'll learn how to get yourself off, get other people off, and how to get other people to get you off. You'll learn to not shed tears for the d-bags; sleep with a few people who you might really care about, even if you don't want them to be your boyfriend (or girlfriend); and learn that being a woman and having sex isn't about just "giving it up" but getting yours too.

And, fuck, it's fun. You get some great stories in the process. Years from now, when I'm still married and Ryan and I have all these kids and grandkids running around, I can sit back and think, "Yeah, I lived. I really lived."

RELATIONSHIP TERRITORY—IT'S COMPLICATED

After Tahj and my sexless teenage union was officially donezo—and you're definitely over-over when someone breaks up with you because your family's poor—I went on dates and had hookups, but there was nothing really memorable or remarkable about any of the guys I hung out with. Or wait, let me rephrase that: memorable in a good way.

I dated this one guy for a while, an actor who'd shown some career promise after a small role in a movie, and he was a couple of years younger than me. He was legal but still didn't have a car or even a driver's license. His mom drove him everywhere. We'd hang out, hook up, and then when it was time for him to go, I'd drive him to some halfway point, like a McDonald's parking lot, where his mom would be waiting. He'd give me a kiss, get out of my car, walk across the parking lot, and get in her car; then she'd wave and they'd drive off. It was like two divorced parents with joint custody, and it only took me a couple of times meeting his mom at the drop-off point before I was like, yeah, this is probably not going to work.

My string of randoms came to an end when I met Mark Salling at the Glee pilot. He played guitar and I thought he was so cute. This was Mark Salling circa 2009, when he was still a major looker, and I tried so hard to get him to like me. At the time, I still wasn't sure how long my role on Glee would last, so I was still working as a nanny on the side in order to make some extra money. My phone rang one day while I was working. I was standing there, surrounded by all these kids, when I answered this unknown number (probably assuming that it was yet another credit agency). But it was Mark, wanting to know if I wanted to go out. On a date. With him.

Of course I did.

It was October, right before Halloween, and we made plans to go to Fright Fest at Magic Mountain, even though I normally hate that kind of stuff and don't like to be scared at all. Like I said, I was trying so hard to get him to like me. I still had my bad hair extensions at this point, but I spent extra time straightening them and putting on makeup, and I wore a white American Apparel V-neck tee and a plaid flannel shirt tied around my waist—a casual autumnal Fright Fest outfit, I thought. Mark came to pick me up, and he was driving a complete piece-of-shit car with trash just rolling around in the backseat. Okay, I could forgive him that—we were all still struggling at that point. I don't even remember what kind of car it was, so I think I must have blocked it out.

It's harder to block the fact that he then proceeded to smoke weed in front of me, even when I declined his offer to get high, but, like I said, he was smoking hot at that point, so I just focused on his biceps and tried to ignore the cloud of marijuana smoke billowing around my head. As soon as he was done, he asked if I was hungry. I said yes, thinking, "Oh my God, we're going to dinner! This is so cute!"

Then he pulled into the In-N-Out drive-through, the one nearest my house, still in Valencia. As we ordered, I kept telling myself that this date was going well. "I'm a down chick," I thought. "I can eat a cheeseburger." Which I did, sitting in the car in the parking lot. When we'd finished our meal, it took a few tries before we got the car to start, but at least the smell of weed had been replaced by the smell of fries.

At Fright Fest, Mark was very high and very excited. He loved all the ghouls and monsters, and had even brought a camera—not to take pictures of me, or the two of us, but to get pics of himself with all the different people in costume. It was pretty weird, and I wish I had those photos, because if I did, they would definitely be in this book. All in all, though, the date was not a total disaster, and we ended it with nothing more than a friendly hug.

A few weeks later, we kissed for the first time on the night that Obama was elected. I was watching the election results at home in Valencia with my dad, and when it looked like Obama really was going to win, I was totally overcome with patriotism and excitement and called Mark. "What are you doing right now?"

He was celebrating at a bar in Santa Monica and was as enthusiastic as I was. "Come and meet me!" he yelled into the phone. "I'm coming!" I yelled back.

Once we met up, we got drunk and made out, periodically taking breaks to yell, "Can you believe this?" or "Yes, we can!" and wipe tears of joy from our eyes. Then I spent the night at his house. After that, we somehow became boyfriend and girlfriend, and he told me he loved me just four weeks into us hanging out. This time he wasn't high on weed or political progress, but ecstasy.

We were about to go out, when he pulled out this pill and