There’s sex going on. I just know it. In houses, in condos, possibly in the communal bathroom at The Firefly.

Yes, sex is happening in Studio City. In fact, there is sex going on wherever you live all the time. Right now, as you’re reading this, people are having sex. Make-up sex, break-up sex, baby-making sex, bad sex and, yes, even first-time sex.

And it made me think about the first time I had sex because it was with a boy I met in none other than Studio City.

I was 18 and leaving for college for the first time and so I took a summer job at a pizza place in the valley. It was me and all boys.

I worked the cash register, the phones, and even learned how to make the pies. But the business made most of it’s money through deliveries so we had a group of really cute delivery boys working with me.

And there was one boy in particular who caught my eye.

Doug.  Doug had brown hair, tan smooth skin, exceptionally good posture and a truly sparkling smile. He was super cute and super sweet and super boring. But super cute and at 18 years old that worked for me.

He would lean over my shoulder to help me toss pepperoni on pies. He would reach around me to grab pizza boxes when I was on the phone taking orders. He would fill my soda up when things were slow and we were just hanging out.

He was the boy from the valley and I was the girl from the “other side of the hill”.  Plus, I was older (only by a month) but back then I might as well have been Mrs. Robinson heading to college and that was really cool to him.

We would flirt constantly and when the end of the night would come and I’d remove my little red apron and hat, he would walk me to my car…

Okay, fine, he was heading out to the parking lot too with a stack of deliveries in his hand, but still…

And it was on one of those walks, watching him climb into his pizza delivery Honda hatchback, the pizza sign on the hood all lit up that I knew… I wanted to lose my virginity to Doug the delivery boy.

All of my girlfriends had already done it and I was determined not to go to college a virgin.

So, Doug, sweet Doug, he didn’t know it then, but he was about to play a pivotal, turning point, leading character role in this “other side of the hill” girl’s life story.

I hoped he had a condom.

It was a strange summer. So many emotions and big changes going on. I would be leaving home for the first time in my life and living 3,000 miles away. I would be leaving all my friends, not a single one of them went to college outside of California. I would be leaving the good memories, the bad memories and, most important of all, the ones I had blocked out.

But, the question was… would I be leaving a virgin?

After a summer of circling, pizza making, listening to Flock of Seagulls in his car and going to dinners at the Red Lobster, two weeks before I left for New York Doug and I shared our Judy Blume Forever moment.

And two days later I was gone. I never saw Doug again.

If I ran into him today I probably wouldn’t even recognize him unless he was carrying a stack of pizza boxes on his shoulder and singing a Thompson Twins tune.

But how he looked at 18, eating lobster and drinking root beer and talking about absolutely nothing of substance while every so often touching my hand is crystal clear.

You never think when you’re young how you’ll be remembered in someone else’s life story… if you’re remembered at all. We all knock into each other like bumper cars at a carnival, not knowing if we made an impact at all during the ride.

I never told Doug that he was my first. And thanks to being an equestrian rider in my youth he had no idea I was. I suppose I was embarrassed to tell him and maybe a little afraid if I did he wouldn’t want to do it.

And he never told me if I was his. I never even thought to ask.

For all I know somewhere in Studio City a now much older man, possibly married with kids or divorced, gay or single, is sitting in his home thinking, There’s sex going on in Studio City.

And maybe, just maybe, that thought will lead him back to the face of a dark-haired 18-year-old girl in a red apron and hat who helped make pies at a pizza place one summer… and then disappeared.