How to Lose Your Virginity ...And How Not To (26 page)

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Chapter 16
"I NEVER DID IT!"

Along the same lines as the waited-until-marriage stories, it was similarly difficult to find those who were still waiting. I can recall being a virgin and while I never had a real huge problem with it, it was something I didn't like to admit to friends. As a secret, I could live with it. It was when others found out that I felt ashamed. So I can empathize with Darren, whom I met on his 22nd birthday while he was wrestling with his own choice to abstain.
In one instance I spoke to a college student who, not for a lack of trying, had yet to lose it because of his aversion to physical contact. At the end of the interview when I realized my faulty tape recorder only recorded a small portion of the interview, I asked if he wouldn't mind recording it again and as relief washed over his face, he politely declined and rushed away. I’m sure there were others I asked along the way who also declined to comment out of embarrassment.
Later, while road tripping through Western Texas (perhaps geographic factors were at play or perhaps it was merely coincidence), in one evening I met three gentlemen, all in their 40s who declined doing interviews because they said they were still virgins and were too embarrassed to talk about it. I pressed each one of them, "Really? That’s a story that I'd really be interested in hearing." Each reaffirmed their virgin status but again refused.
Unlike other major life milestones, getting a driver's license, graduation, becoming of legal drinking age, losing your "v-card" can seem beyond your control... at times unattainable. So, for all those virgins out there, you are not alone.

SOMEONE’S WATCHING OVER
Hailey, 24
It was a promise I made to my grandmother. Well it was a combination of things. It was a promise I made to my grandmother when she was dying. And I just kind of said it and didn’t mean to but I never had a boyfriend before my current boyfriend where I really wanted to. Like, with all my other boyfriends, I felt really dirty. Previous boyfriends would touch me and I seriously would be sick for a week. Before Liam nobody even went "south of the border."
My family’s Catholic but it was never like a Catholic guilt thing. It’s just a whole slew of things. I had a hard time when my father died when I was 11. I had a hard time with the "He’s always watching" thoughts that family would feed me to make me feel better. But it probably ended up messing with my head more than it helped. I made the promise to my grandmother when I was 19, only a couple years ago. My grandmother just said, "I want you to stay… until you’re married." It was something I agreed to in passing.
But actually there’s a whole other reason now. Liam and I broke up last October. And before we broke up, I was actually going to do it… because, I loved him. But then we broke up because he cheated on me.
There was an incident, three incidents, one girl. Anyways it’s an even bigger deal for me now. Now it’s… I just want to be sure. So often I’m like, "Uh, I could just do it." But I have such a bad sense of guilt that, once again, not Catholic, it’s just I have a really overdeveloped sense of guilt.
So yeah, that’s it. It’s a combination of things. It’s my father, it was my grandmother, it was my family in general. We never really talked about it, but like… my sisters are all… they’ve all done it. And I’m pretty sure my cousin has too and she’s like 20.
The strange part about it is that nobody believes me. My family all thought I was doing it with Liam the whole time. It’s not that I don’t want to. Liam thinks I have a lot of issues; pregnancy is another issue. I’m terrified of getting pregnant – terrified. I’m kind of on a path with my career now and I don’t want to screw it up by having a baby out of wedlock. I’d be kicked out of my family. So it’s a whole slew of different things, least of which is the fact that I don’t want to do it.
Sometimes I think I’ll regret not doing it. Right after my boyfriend cheated on me I thought if I would’ve just done it he wouldn’t have had to go elsewhere. That’s crossed my mind a couple times. Plus I’ve always wanted to be the good girl.
Sometimes he tries to convince me. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t. He wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t. But it’s not even that I need convincing. I want to do it. And sometimes it’s the hardest thing I do to not have sex with him. There were times like right after we broke up, I was like, "Huh! I should have done it." But in the same vein if I would have done it I would have felt so guilty. There’s times where, I swear to God, I think, "What the fuck am I doing? Why don’t I just do this?" That happens a lot. He’s just a real sport for putting up with it.
TIME TO GRADUATE
Darren, 23
I’m in film school, in my last year. And I’m still a virgin. I’ve had chances. There were a couple of experiences back in high school where I could have gone through with it. But I haven’t. I don’t know if it’s that I haven’t felt ready. I think it was more like I was too scared to actually go through with it. Then in one of the situations we didn’t have any kind of protection so that’s why it didn’t happen that time. But I think the main reason is because I really haven’t found anyone that I really want to take that step with.
Twice I almost had sex with girls who I knew had gotten around and I didn’t want to be just another guy on someone’s list. I wasn’t like setting out to make a statement or anything. Nothing prideful or me being up on my horse saying I’m better than anybody or anything like that. It just never seemed right.
It’s kind of weird being that today is my 23rd birthday, but it’s something I always think about. It makes me feel younger than everyone else in a weird kind of way. I feel more inexperienced to the world.
My older brothers are always telling me that I just need to get it over with and it doesn’t really matter who I have my first time with. But I don’t really feel that it’s something that anyone should just get rid of. I’m aware that by dedicating myself to finding someone special that I’m just pushing it farther and farther away. And I don’t know that I feel bad that I’m pushing it farther away. A part of me can’t help but feel a little frustrated, but I don’t know if that’s my own feelings or if it’s society dictating those feelings on me. I can’t say that yet for sure and I’d like to say it doesn’t really affect me, that I don’t feel different, but of course I do. It just seems that 23 is kind of an old age to be a virgin these days.
I’ve talked about this with only a very few girls. There’s currently this one girl that I’ve some interest in. She’s 18 so she’s feels significantly younger than I am but she’s already been with five guys. I want to feel like I’m more mature and older than her, but in that one regard she’s totally got the upper hand. It’s intimidating, it’s definitely intimidating. Ideally I’d like to find someone who is a virgin too but at this point I’m not about to limit myself.
My brothers think I’m being girl-like for doing it this way, but that’s the way it has to be. I guess I just have to wait it out because I’ve already gotten myself into this trend of not settling for just any girl, so I think I’m going to have to stick with that. I may be 30 when it finally happens. Who knows?
FOR REAL THIS TIME
Marius, 28
My wife, my soul mate, had been with five guys before me. We’ve been together five years and I kid you not, I just popped her cherry three weeks ago. It wasn’t in the normal spot. It was up high on the top wall. I fucking nailed it and it said, "Boom," the hymen split. That hymen is fucking smashed.
DID I OR DIDN’T I
Karen, 18
I’m still a virgin, still flying the ‘V’. I told myself that I wanted to wait for somebody I really cared about or at least liked. Technically I guess I did lose my virginity because, well, I knew this guy named Kai, and he was really cool and I thought he was really hot and he said he wanted to fuck me. I was like, "Oh, whatever." I was 17 at the time and he didn't know it.
Anyway he wanted to fuck me and I got really drunk one night and I was like, "Fine let's do it." I went over to his apartment and the two of us are naked. He did penetrate and then he stopped and was like, "I can’t do it," because I had told him my morals about how I wanted someone I cared about or loved or whatever. Like I don't care about premarital sex; that's not a big deal. I just wanted somebody that I cared about, but I was drunk and I was like, "I need to lose this shit eventually, right? Let’s go for it." So he was in, and he was out, and then, "I can't do it, I can't do it." And I was like, "Fuck you dude, that's fucking lame. Don't tease me!" So I started sucking him off. That got him excited again and he was getting all manly like, "Oh my god, I totally want to fuck you." And I was like, "Then fuck me!" You know, shit dude. Don't fucking play me. He goes in again and then he was like, "I can't do it, I can't do it." And he pulls out again. All because of something I once said about wanting it to be about love and something intimate.
I only knew the guy for a short period and I think he got freaked out because he figured I would get really attached or whatever. And I'm so fucking sick of guys saying they're afraid I'm going to get attached. Get the fuck over it. All right, I do have a tendency to get attached, but once I realize where we are, you know, it's different. As soon as somebody tells me they just want to be my friend and let's just mess around then I'll be like, "OK." So I guess technically I'm not a virgin, but I don't count it and I’m sure sex feels a lot different than some guy just poking his dick inside. I need to stop telling people that I have these fucking morals and just fuck somebody.
I'm not going to just fuck any bum that comes along. But I've been waiting for so long for love and it doesn't even exist anymore. I talk to people who say they don’t date so they can be with whoever they want. Nobody really cares about love anymore. I always had these optimistic ideals about how sex could be about love and intimacy and it just doesn't really exist anymore. Like, barely.

Chapter 17
"THE OTHER SIDE: TAKING VIRGINITY"

After a whole year into the interview collection process I realized I should also be asking people if, subsequent to their own first time, they have taken anyone else's virginity. And the revelation came to me after a man in New York had said his first time was boring but when he "popped some other girl’s cherry," that was all the more memorable.
When I began asking this follow-up question, a common response from both men and women was, "I wish." It's a common human need, wanting to be remembered. And it takes a special person to be remembered as the best but far less effort to be remembered as the first; one that just has to show up, albeit before everyone else, to be that coveted "his first" or "her first."
I don't know what's at the root of this drive to be the person to usher someone into their new sexual life. Some of it is well-intentioned, wanting to provide a good experience. Some of it is out of selfishness, a way to assert dominance or power over another person. And perhaps in some cases, it’s wanting to relive that first experience as a way to erase one’s own lackluster loss of virginity or, as expressed in Madonna's first #1 hit single, "Like a virgin, touched for the very first time," to relive that exciting first moment.