On Virginity

Virginity.

What's all the fuss about?

It's impossible for me to tell the story of losing my own virginity without railing against our obsession with it for a wee bit.

Virginity.

Girls are told to wait and wait. Guarding it like some precious gift. For girls, sex is bad.

Sex is for marriage. Sacred. Divine. Pure.

Sterile.

Boys are told to give it up as fast as possible. Prove their virility. Become a man. Sex is good. And you must have lots and lots of it.

But with whom? Isn't that the dilemma? (Gay is the way, friends!)

Virginity is a commodity. Traded to the most worthy candidate for their love. 

Except, usually, it's given away in the back of a car on prom night and last 5.3 seconds with a sweaty boy who smells like weed and cheap beer and who has begged and begged and pressured and cajoled and convinced and maybe even threatened. 

Because its value is overrated. 

We're obsessed with the female virgin. A virgin is holy (virgin birth). A virgin has special powers (virgin sacrifice). A virgin is worthy of love and your money (virgin bride).

But a virgin who is too old is a spinster. An old maid.

Basically, women are screwed if they do (literally) and screwed if they don't (figuratively).

So it's with great reticence that I talk about virginity thus giving the topic more value than I think it deserves.

I was raised...wait for it...Mormon. It goes without saying that sex before marriage is not an option for Mormon teens (I say teens because once you leave your teens, you pretty much enter wedded bliss and pop out 10 babies).

But I was never a typical teen. I was always the rebellious kid. Always pushing the limits. Testing the waters. Blazing a trail of shenanigans and regaling my more religious peers my scandalous tales much to their shock and horror. I may have liked the attention just a bit.

It wasn't all in rebellion, however. I was a curious personality. I didn't see why I would go to hell for making out with a boy in his car or petting or wait is that his hand up my shirt? now down my pants? oh that's nice. I did what I felt like and stopped when I felt I wanted to.

I never felt too attached the idea of my own virginity. I didn't want to screw every boy I dated. I was patient, all in good time. But I just didn't get what all the fuss was about.

I remember my first pap smear. The nurse inserted the speculum and asked me if it hurt and I said, no, I barely felt anything. She laughed. Said, "don't tell your future husband that!" As if a metal speculum was anything like a penis. I'd had fingers inside me before that and that felt muuuuuch differently.

It still pisses me off, that nurse's joke. Assuming that she was in on something I couldn't possibly understand. When it seemed to me, at the time, she didn't even understand herself.

You think you know where this story is going, but, I assure you, you don't.

I didn't have sex in high school. The reason is sad and kind of scary and something I'm not really ready to share on the blog. But I didn't. I was certainly ready by 16. But I had a setback and I avoided boys for about a year.

Then came Ty. We met when I was 18. My Mormon friends would shit a whole city worth of bricks if they knew how we met. They would GASP! in horror. Surely I was lighting the last match of total defilement and corruption.

Eh.

Anyway, we kept our on again off again romance a secret (it was all very Romeo and Juliet) until I was 19. Ty lived in Arizona going to college and I lived in California. Mostly, during our on again periods, he'd come to visit me and we'd get up to no good. But we hadn't slept together yet.

Not because of him. Even though he was a Mormon boy, he was just as rebellious as I was and was much more focused on his penis than on his soul. And I was in the early stages of leaving the church for a myriad of heartfelt reasons. But after what had happened to me in high school, I just wasn't ready yet. I was still a little scared. 

I hooked up with several guys during our off again periods and experimented sexually without having sex. I gave my first hand job to a minor league baseball pitcher (oooooh!) and learned about oral sex from a young Marine named Mike who then asked me if I would mind if he slept with my friend Gina. Classy, that one.

My best friend Lynnette was also living in Phoenix during this time, going to school. When I flew out to visit her, Ty drove to Phoenix to see me. I'd decided before I got there that I was ready to just have sex already. So when we were alone and making out, I told him that if he could find a condom, I'd have sex with him. Not my smoothest moment, but I've never seen a guy move so fast. He found one and sex we had.

I remember thinking, well, it was okaaaay, but really? It didn't hurt, but he didn't exactly try his best either. It was short and kind of, well, boring.

Needless to say, I've had great sex since that more than made up for it. Sex with fire and passion and heat and chemistry. And sometimes lube and toys. Definitely a little dirty talk.

Yeah, the first time is supposed to kind of suck. Nobody knows what they're doing and they're worrying too much about mechanics to be in the moment. But I think if we didn't make such a big deal out of "The First Time" (dun dun duuuuun), maybe it wouldn't be such a let down.

Like an over hyped movie. It wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't expected it to be so good. Am I right?

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