I Lost My Virginity to a TV Weatherman

What I learned about squall lines, dew points, and falling in love.

The weatherman made the words “squall line” and “dew point” sound sexy.

He’d wave his arms over a map of the town and tell us what to wear.

“It’s gonna be hot, hot, hot.”

He was magnetic. Charming. Handsome.

But I didn’t just watch him on TV.

We worked at the same TV station in a small town—so small we lived next door to each other.

When I moved into my apartment, he helped me carry my sofa up the stairs.

His smell lingered. It was not of cologne or laundry detergent. It was of sweat and sunshine and something alive. A scent you want to roll around in.

Get ready for springtime temperatures. Watch for allergies.

I was new to being a reporter.

I was new to being gay.

I had spent years trying to pray it out of me. Youth group. Confession. Bargaining. I didn’t date. I didn’t touch anyone. I believed what I had been told: that being gay was something rotten inside me, and if I followed it, it would lead to disease, isolation, death.

---

The weatherman was older and wiser. He was comfortable in his skin. He took me to the little local gay bar. He showed me life, not death.

He told me he didn’t want a relationship. I assured him I understood.

One cold Saturday night turned into a warm Sunday morning. My first time. No bolt of lightning from God. We weren’t struck dead. We embraced.

I woke feeling at home in myself, still in his bed, watching him in a way the camera never could.

Those closed eyes. The man from TV, his face soft on the pillow beside me. His smell all over me. His aliveness, too.

My new aliveness.

Bundle up. There’s a cold front on the way.

Working in TV in a small town didn’t pay well. So when a two-bedroom apartment was available and would save us money, I pushed for us to move in together.

The weatherman resisted until I promised again—“I understand. I know we’re just friends.”

I learned the details of his life. His toothpaste next to mine. His razor in the shower. His favorite margarita mix in the freezer. His bedroom on the other side of a thin wall.

---

I worked the 10 p.m. Sunday newscast and came home, excited to watch the latest Six Feet Under.

I opened our apartment door and he was tangled with another guy in our living room, cuddled on the same sofa he’d helped me carry upstairs when I first moved to town.

The two of them were watching the final minutes of Six Feet Under.

My purple Pier One Imports candle was burning. It was an expensive splurge and I had been saving the candle for a special occasion. It was nearly spent. The house smelled of it.

I couldn’t smell him anymore.

It wasn’t the first time he was with someone else. But it was the most painful. It was the first time in our place, and the first time I couldn’t deny it.

He broke my heart. Or, since he was always honest with me, maybe I broke my own heart.

I got a new apartment the next day.

We both cried when I told him.

He understood.

But there was still something I didn’t.

---

I needed emergency therapy. The only appointment I could find was with a therapist who worked with kids.

I was a 22-year-old man, sitting in her office on a little sofa for children, Barbies and Legos scattered at my feet, while the therapist sucked on a lollipop intended for her tiny clients, as I explained, teary-eyed, “I was in love.”

She slurped, pulled the lollipop through her lips with a wet smack, and asked, “How do you know it was love?”

I made a living asking questions. Of politicians. Of celebrities. Of everyday people on the worst days of their lives—their home burned down, their husband was arrested. I’d stab a microphone at them and ask, “How do you feel?”

For the first time, I knew what that felt like.

---

Was it love?

Her question followed me for years. It hovered over new relationships. Is it love?

It hovered over jealousy, anger, longing.

Am I really angry?
Am I really jealous?
Is this really what I want?

I saw other therapists over the years. Different offices. Different couches. Same pattern.

The question was always more powerful than the answer.

---

Was it love?

Yes.

But not the way I thought.

I was in love with life. With taking a risk. With stepping into something I had been taught to fear. With letting my world expand. With giving myself over to something more than someone.

---

I’ve seen the weatherman since.

Still handsome. Still moves the weather in me.

But we’re different now. The forecast has changed.

I’ll always love what we had. Him smiling at me through the TV. His toothpaste beside mine. His face on that pillow. The way he changed me.

I don’t watch weathermen the same way anymore.

I picture him instead—arms sweeping across the map of our story.

“Sunny. Warm. Beautiful.”

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Sometimes life is complicated. I write about tools I use to help me through hardships here.