perpetual virgin syndrome

I have a friend who has been with her boyfriend for about two years. The relationship is kind of a big deal in that she liked him an awful lot for quite a while before they were together. Their union was delayed by shyness, maybe some social awkwardness, anxiety, I don’t know, some sort of cocktail of those ingredients.

But they had a big romance-movie moment one night on a porch when, while soft music played, the two found themselves slow dancing with quiet giddiness, and he said something like, “I’ve liked you for a really long time.” And she gushed and said the same thing back to him, and, though not currently a fan of the idea of raising a child, she eventually developed a desire even potentially to have his baby. So it’s serious love.

But, like so many stories of relationship problems go, sex is an issue. Or, rather, how sex is thought of and initiated. He seems to avoid the topic in conversation and his modus operandi for getting things going is to retardedly grab one of her boobs and make a sort of boyish “huh-huh” laugh. Apparently, as if a freshly pubescent boy were saying, “huh-huh, boobs, huh-huh.” Like Butthead.

Like a virgin.

And I realized this is a perfect example of Perpetual Virgin Syndrome. It’s true he had limited sex experience before this relationship, and it’s true he has confidence issues that could explain some instances of shying away from sex. But that doesn’t keep everyone from acting so virginy.

There are scores symptoms, many of which seem like those tip-of-the-tongue descriptions you try to share in discourse where the person you’re talking to gets it and says, “yes, exactly!” Not knowing how to go about having sex, never-ending callow awe with genitalia, watching porn like there’s going to be a Q and A after, acting as though the opposite sex is altogether some unapproachable Pandora’s Box, asking a few too many “is it true that...” questions, not giving a very learned response to all those stupid sex-themed jokes that get tossed around, coming off as too much of a nice guy, possessing more memories of video games than of sex, talking about love like your only basis for philosophy is a Whitney Houston lyric, being generally emo, and acting, you know, just... like a virgin, in general. Like sex has that pre-sexual-experience mystique.

I’ll admit that I was one of the most virgny virgins when I was one. I did play a lot of video games, I did dissect diagrams and videos, and I did give off an almost pathetic hopeless-romantic vibe. It was so obvious that once in a writing class in school, I’d done a piece that was part of a larger story where a sheltered teenage kid falls in love with sort of a “bad girl” at first sight, and one of the pieces of feedback I got was “don’t take this the wrong way, but you have got to get laid.”

To still be so inexperienced even with experience just seems odd, like someone is constantly stuck in so many coming-of-age movies from the 1980s. My friend admits that it’s frustrating, incredibly frustrating, even. Dennis Miller, not that I like the motherfucker, once commented on all the virgins promised to those Islamic terrorists when they die. He said, “after a few, wouldn’t you want a pro?”

It’s not just guys, for sure, although we’re all conditioned to expect certain manly sexual attributes from guys, but girls get it, too. My ex told me about the sex ed she got in junior high. Her teacher did some metaphor job with the female body and said girls have a limited number of petals on their flower, and if you give those petals away before you find the right guy, you won’t have any left.

The sex ed I got, by the way, was an abstinence-only program called Project Self-Respect. The guy who taught it made me think of the phrase “castrated reformed sex offender.” He had a perverted smile but wouldn’t look at or go near any of the girls. The culture I was surrounded in was a major launching point for perpetual virgin syndrome. “This is your penis, don’t feel bad at all about the nature of your penis.” What were we supposed to do? Say, “woooow, I have a penis, and it deserves respect”?

Some fuzzy science about STDs was used. Okay, actually, some flat-out fucking lies about STDs were used. Like how AIDS could be transmitted almost telepathically. And lots of “hey, it could happen” scenarios that physical science demands I not consider seriously. We were supposed to fear sex, I gathered. Which, if population control were the intention, I might forgive in the slightest way, but, trying to turn a bunch of teenagers into perpetual virgins for the sake of, what, making sex a religious experience?, kind of irks me.

And it irks my friend, who has a repressed sexual appetite due to her PVS boyfriend. His sex ed, amazingly, was incredibly liberal and "sex is natural and homosexual couples have sex, also, and this is how sex happens." I don't know, maybe I’d be more entertained by the sex ed offered in Mean Girls, where the P.E. coach says, “if you have sex... you will get AIDS... and you will die.” Even with that education, guys might stare at girls like horny, repressed, confused scientists. Who write adolescent poetry. And long to squeeze boobs.