From: joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: What is virginity?
Date: 3 Sep 92 12:34:19 GMT

harris@currituck.cs.unc.edu (Trey Harris) writes:

>But I would consider myself no longer virgin when I first have sex
>with a man.  Finished. Done.  No second time about it.

Deciding ``when I ceased being a virgin'' was an important question for me --
nothing to do with other people, but how I felt inside of myself.

The first time I was ever in bed with a man there was intimate sexual contact,
but no display of emotion on his part, no tenderness.  There was no
``penetration'' of any kind (it was mainly frottage, him on me), so probably I
used that as part of my justification for still thinking myself a virgin. More
importantly, though, was the lack of pleasure I derived from it.  It was
something dark and furtive that Dave did under the sheets; and then afterward,
when I tried to express some *feelings*, he joked about passing me on to his
friends.

The second time I was too *scared* to do anything.  (When he said I didn't
have to go home, that he had a contact lens case I could use, that I was
welcome to share the bed....  Aargh!) Peter (damn! not sure of his first name;
his surname as Macfarland) wanted to, probably; but he didn't press anything.
So we bundled instead; and sleeping with someone remains among my fondest
activities.  ``Sex is sex; but bundling is heaven.''

The experience that, for me, was the first time, came while I was living in
Germany, the year after I (was ?) graduated from Northwestern, undergraduate.
I was studying, or half-studying, on an intensive German course at the
Universataet Hamburg, while doing odd jobs through the university's Job
Vermittlung (temporary-work clearing point, basically).  I felt extremely
alone and out of synch with the culture.

One Saturday in January I invited someone from the course back to my flat at
the Franziskus Kolleg (a student hall run by the Franciscans).  His name was
Nilo; he was over from the Philippines, intending to study social welfare. I'd
had him over once previously, I think:  I remember racing after the bus after
he got on, probably waving....

This particular Saturday we were going to continue from my flat to a party
given by some other folk on the course.  I had put a tape of Simon and
Garfunkel's Greatest Hits on my roommate's stereo; Nilo and I were sitting on
my bed, eating pretzels left over from when I'd been really sick in the
autumn.

I don't remember who started it:  one of us put a pretzel in the other's
mouth.  (To this point he'd not given any indication of sexual orientation,
let alone physical attraction to me.)  The other reciprocated.  We continued
feeding each other for a bit, and then his lips came to mine, and he showed me
something I'd never imagined doing before....

Then he unzipped my trousers and took me in his mouth. The memories are vague
now, I think because they were so intense I've shut them out from my conscious
mind.  I wanted to linger afterward, and *talk*, but Nilo insisted on getting
to the party on time.  I remember riding the U-Bahn with him, sitting next to
him at the party, my mind in a buzz:  not *doing* anything, but probably
radiating like crazy.  Pearl, who'd had a crush on Nilo, noticed something was
up and called him into another room....

With Nilo I lost my virginity, in the inside places that matter to me.  Never
mind the weeks afterward of having sex every afternoon, on return from our
classes, when I wasn't working any jobs and the sex was sort of something to
fill the time.  Never mind my worries that my roommate would walk in at an
inappropriate moment.  (He was an Iranian refugee, very cool about things --
he must have realized what was going on; I think we arranged a
sign-on-the-door thing eventually -- and sad to see me leave). Never mind
Nilo's comment in a letter, months later, that I had used him as his ``sexual
plaything''.

One other sexual memory stands out strongly with him, toward the end of those
two months:  we were in the library at the Franziskus Kolleg (hardly the most
private of places) when he dropped my pants and took me into him, almost
reverently, as I stood there.  A couple weeks later I was saying good-bye to
him in Bremen, and riding off on my bicycle toward Holland....  I've seen him
a couple of times since, but not met him either time.

>Trey Harris

Joel,
        finally catching up on soc.motss again

>--Stranger in a Strange Thread!

BTW, I understood Trey's definition the first time the way he intended it;
that's the definition of virginity I usually assume other people are using.
(Though I remember a college acquaintance, Joern, who called himself a virgin;
when someone else loudly protested, Joern explained, ``well, I'm still a
virgin with men.'')
Newsgroups: soc.motss