In Cher’s new memoir, “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” she spills the details on the first time she did the deed: she was fourteen years old and did it to get revenge on her boyfriend at the time, and the sexual act per se was underwhelming, to say the least.
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The “Believe” hit-maker shared she was dating in the early 1960s a neighbor of hers, an Italian high school senior. “He spent his weekends working on his hot rod as I handed him tools. Then he’d come to my room, we’d kiss, he’d want me to hold his other tool,” she joked, “and I’d say no. I liked his black roadster better than him.” It wasn’t long until he embarrassed her in public, though. While out with his friends, one of the boys pointed at Cher and asked the boy if he would bring “that kid” with them. The pop star’s boyfriend proceeded to “ditch” her, she recalls, and she was “so hurt when he did that.” That’s when she decided she would “loan out” her virginity to him in a petty way. “I had never wanted to,” she explains. “But I was so angry at being dismissed, I decided to, if not lose, loan out my virginity to him.”
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Did she at least have a good time? Not really. She described it as a “massively overrated experience”. She wrote, “I asked him, ‘Is that it? Are we finished?’ Then I told him to go home and never come back […] I wanted him to feel just as dismissed as he’d made me feel.” The boy tried to get back with her, but Cher admits that they never spoke again.
Life after (her first) love
If anything, Cher’s first experience with love demonstrated her ability to take agency over her life and empower herself at such a young age. She has had more tumultuous relationships later, and she has always known when to pack her bags and leave. When she was eighteen, she married musician Sonny Bono, who was eleven years older than her. Together, they formed the musical duo “Sonny & Cher” for which they became a household name. Bono had full control of her finances and activities, she shared in her book, so the ten-year marriage ended in a messy divorce. She told the Daily Mail that she and Bono “had a weird relationship”. Adding, “I don’t expect anybody to understand it.”
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She married another musician, Gregg Allman, in 1975. Music was also central in their relationship: they released the duet album “Two the Hard Way.” However, their marriage was short-lived as well. Allman dealt with past substance abuse issues and he admitted to Entertainment Weekly that there was “no future” for him and Cher, given that she had a “constant paranoia” of him drinking again.
In Cher’s dating history, we can also find Gene Simmons, Val Kilmer, Tom Cruise, Warren Beatty, and other lesser-known men. However, she didn’t tie the knot with any of them. At the time of writing, she is dating Alexander Edwards, a music executive who is forty years younger than her. “He’s fabulous,” she said on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “And I don’t give men qualities that they don’t deserve.” Despite it all, Cher said on “Watch What Happens Live” she had “the greatest lovers ever”. We can guess, though, that the Italian boy was not included in this statement.
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