Okay, I am probably not the worlds oldest virgin, but I might as well be. I am 26 years old and I have never "done it". I’ve been with a girl, and there are those (my mostly-lesbian roommate included) that would argue that that totally counts – and if I was a lesbian it totally would.
But, my sexual interest in girls is only peripheral. My primary interest is in the cock — of which I am getting none. My continuing state of virginity has nothing to do with any religious convictions or fears of intimacy — it just seems to be the way my particular cookie has crumbled (or, rather, stayed depressingly intact).
Losing it in high school was never an option I considered. I’d been watching Real Sex and cheesy Skinemax flicks since middle school and I couldn’t imagine doing any of those delightfully naughty things with a high-school boy who probably had just as little experience as I did. Even if I’d had a boyfriend (which I wanted desperately but never did have) the awkward fumbling of two inexperienced virgins had no appeal for me. Any boy seeing my gelatinous, acne-covered body without clothes on was even less appealing. My voracious appetite for romance novels had me yearning for a “real man”. It would happen in college, I told myself, where I would be thinner and prettier and have lots of sex with my hot, experienced older boyfriend.
But then I got to college where I was no thinner or more secure with myself and the boys were no more eager to pay me any attention than in high school. By the time I was 19 something had broken loose and I was like a cat in heat. Whereas before I always imagined my first time would be with someone I was dating, I didn’t give a shit anymore. It could just be some dude in a bar for all I cared. I just. Wanted. To fuck.
Never really one for the bars and parties scene, I still occasionally let friends drag me out in the hopes that maybe if I could find some guy drunk enough I could finally get laid. But when it came right down to it I wasn’t that girl. I wasn’t the kind of girl who could just put herself out there. I was still the shy fat girl with no self esteem who didn’t really know how to talk to guys much less let them know how incredibly easy I was.
As much as I wanted to, I didn’t have it in me to look a guy in the face and say, “Hey, you wanna get laid? You don’t even have to call me or anything.” And guys never seemed to want to have anything to do with me of their own volition. Instead I’d come home depressed, lonely and horny, wondering what was wrong with me. At one point I briefly considered just wearing a shirt that said “Sure Thing” in big bold letters with an arrow pointing towards myself or one that said “I’m easy. Easy like Sunday morning.”
It helped a little that none of my close friends were having sex either, but not really. The three closest of us formed a Virgins Only club, of which I am the only surviving member. The other two are both getting married within the next year.
Through all this I’d become somewhat of a masturbation expert and discovered the joys of writing erotica and watching porn. Around the time of my first sexual encounter with a girl I graduated to vibrators and dildos, which presented me with a new and horrifying dilemma — I was pretty sure my ‘gina was too small for sex. My slimmest vibrator was the only one I could even get in, even after multiple “sessions”. I knew virgins were supposed to be tight, but this was ridiculous.
Of course I would be physically incapable of sex, I thought. If I’d had no desire to have sex I bet my vagina would have been cavernous enough to go spelunking in. It didn’t help my fears at all that upon investigation I discovered that there have been actual cases of women being physically too small for sex. The thought of having to have my beloved vagina surgically widened just so I could finally get a dick up in there made me want to weep (still does, actually).
Time (and my virginity) marched slowly on, and by the time I was in my late early 20s I no longer had the driving need to have sex with anyone who would have me just for the sake of getting it over with. Sure, I was still horny as hell a lot of the time, but I was now well-versed in a variety of ways I could fix that all on my own. I figured that I’d already waited this long, I might as well hold out for someone I at least know and actually like. Drunken sex with some random stranger who didn’t give two shits about me, while making the stigma of my virginity go away, was not likely to be any shade of fulfilling. Besides, when it happens, even if my wee little mini-‘gina doesn’t rat me out, my lack of experience is going to make my virginity obvious.
I’ve had a lot of years to fantasize and I’ve seen a lot of porn, read a lot of erotica—not knowing what to do or how to do it isn’t really the problem. But I’m under no illusions that any of that is a substitute for actual experience. My point is that whoever I end up giving my V-card to is bound to know he’s the first. And, for me anyway, that’s going to be awkward. And embarrassing. I couldn’t make myself that vulnerable to a total stranger. So I found myself back at square one—still a virgin, still waiting for someone that I was interested in to be interested in me so I could throw off the shackles of virginity and become the insatiable sex freak I knew I was meant to be.
Over the years I’ve wondered what was wrong with me. Why didn’t anyone want me, and if they did why were they keeping quiet about it? In high school I knew it was the weight, the bad acne, the facial hair, the fact that I felt ugly and awkward with everyone but my friends, never sure of myself. But I knew of girls bigger than me, just as awkward as me, who were getting laid so, surely, I thought, there was something fundamentally wrong with me. In college I had a theory that my body produced some kind of chemical that repelled all males. However, my lack of scientific aptitude kept me from pursuing this theory in depth.
It took a long time to realize that there is nothing wrong with me. In fact, I am pretty fucking awesome. Sure, I have my flaws and I am definitely far from being perfect, but I am certainly not unworthy of love or a little (or a lot of)sex. The fact that I am still a virgin does not mean that I am repulsive or lame or lacking in some way. It just means that that’s the hand I was dealt. I’ve spent most of my life letting my insecurities and lack of self-esteem make me feel insignificant and unworthy, and I’m sure I’ve projected that, which probably hasn’t helped.
But over the past few years I’ve changed. I’ve become someone I like, someone I would be friends with, someone I would totally fuck. I still have my insecurities and doubts, but they no longer dictate who I am. I don’t obsess about my virginity anymore. It just lingers there, quietly, in the background—a part of me that I won’t miss when it’s gone but that I no longer loathe and resent.
My inner kinky nympho is still just barely under the surface, but when she gets to clawing and howling so I can’t ignore her I just lace up my favorite corset, polish up my favorite vibrator and ride it out. The sex will happen when it happens. And if (god forbid) I hit 36 with my virginity intact, there’s always gigolos.