by Lucas_Bantner.

I am not particularly religious. But don’t worry; I am not here to write about religion itself, nor to make general claims about the attitude of the religious towards sex. I only state this as a fairly important point of contrast between myself and the woman of the title. Let’s call her Patsy. That’s not actually her name, of course, it’s the name of a good friend of mine’s cat. It will do for now, however.

Patsy comes from a particularly devout sect, we won’t go into names or details, let’s just say that her flavor of religiosity resulted in the decision to abstain from sex until marriage. That’s cool, I actually admire someone with that kind of, what do you call it, stick-to-it-ness. It’s not something I could ever pull off so more power to ya, Pat. It creates an interesting tension, though, which I suppose is at the core of this story. Most of the members of her church end up doing one of two things: 1) getting married at age 17 for the sole purpose of boning down; or 2) just getting dirty in secret. Patsy, however, I can irrefutably verify to be a legitimate virgin; she is far too sexually neurotic to be otherwise.

She is a virgin; but she is not one of those virgins simply out of naivete. Thanks to an adolescence spent rereading the tawdry scenes from raunchy novels, she had stuck a nervous toe into the shallow end of the sexpool a leper’s handful of times before, simultaneously intrigued and scared by what she discovered. This is where I come in.

Initially, we were just friends, but we later shacked up under strange circumstances; she came to me in tears because she just got in a big fight with her parents and was told she wasn’t welcome at their place anymore. I was the sympathetic shoulder to cry on, a role I had played many times in the past with many different women and with moderate success. Okay, zero success. My role of the shoulder later changed to the role of the bartender, providing rum and cokes that were maaaaybe just a tad strong. We spooned on the couch while watching a DVD, I forget which one. The movie ends, my house mates go to bed. Patsy grabs my hand, says, “C’mon, let’s go to to your room.”

For normal humans, what happens next is obvious. Barry White, candles, rose petals, every other cliche you can think of, but make sure you don’t forget pre-lubricated condoms and maybe a box of Kleenex. No sir! Not tonight. Tonight I enter the infinite awkwardness of a twenty-five year old virgin’s embrace. “C’mon, let’s go to to your room,” she says.

“Are you sure?” I respond, already walking to the bedroom. I knew what I was doing, I also knew that she didn’t. I’m not one of high morals, but I do want to refrain from breaking whatever standards my friends have established. Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut.

“Well,” she responds, with a mildly annoyed tone, “that’s where this is going, isn’t it?”

My brewing erection instantly deflated and I looked my soul directly in the eye. How much, Lucas, how much do you care about potential sexual contact? Are you so obsessed with whatever meager stimuli that you can overlook the most unromantic, mood-killing statement one has ever made towards you? Or is it something worse… Could you actually have feelings for this girl? Answer me!

I take a deep breath, will some life back into my wilted genitalia, and open the door for her. We enter, shut the door behind us and kill the lights.

I’ll spare you most of the details, they are most certainly not flattering or even remotely erotic. Mostly it was her not knowing what the hell to do and me doing things that weirded her out. Yeah, I like to bite. Yeah, I like to spank. These things are fun. If you don’t want me to do them, fine, but don’t get angry at me for trying things that are outside of your admittedly very small bubble. There are a few gems that I must share with you all, however:

1) My hand had made it’s way down to her crotch. She let me for a minute, then pulled my hand away. “Sorry,” I said, thinking I had crossed a line. “No, that’s okay. It just doesn’t do anything for me. Like, nothing. I can’t even do that to myself.” 2) Shortly after she says, “You know I’m not going to have sex with you, right?” Sigh. Just shut up. Please. Yes, I know, and I am willing to work within your boundaries, but you’re really making me not want to be here.

3) And the creme de la creme… While giving (or should I say, attempting to give) me a handjob: “Jesus, how long does this take?” She’d actually given one handy before, to another virgin, and was somewhat surprised when I didn’t splatter the sheets in less than twenty seconds. I think she picked up on her faux pas; the fact that I went dead limp may have tipped her off.

But I’d had enough. I didn’t care any more. Never before have I had such trouble sustaining an erection. I just wanted to wash my hands, brush my teeth and go to sleep. Searching for a way out that didn’t involve telling her she was terrible in bed, I found a ticklish spot on her ass and just went to town until she got annoyed enough to realize whatever meager eroticism the moment had was over. “I probably shouldn’t spend the night here. I don’t want anyone to find out about this,” she said, kissed me one last time and went to sleep on the couch.

I thought long and hard about wrapping this story up with some kind of clever moral, or with some bit of my finite and rapidly diminishing wisdom. Unfortunately, there isn’t. I got myself into a situation I probably shouldn’t have and resorted to annoying, childish means to get out of it. Really, the proper thing would have been to not do anything at all and avoid this whole scenario. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to have affected my friendship with this girl. She seems content to pretend nothing ever happened, and I suppose that suits me just as well. Of course, everyone else we know found out shortly afterwards. You just can’t keep these things secret.

About the author: Lucas spends his spare time dating strange people. He finds crazy people fascinating, which is why he also spends so much time thinking about himself. He hardly ever becomes emotionally attached to people he dates, allowing for a purely objective documentation of the experience. In stark contrast, he falls head over heels for people he’s hardly spent time with, such as this fantastic chick in Oregon who’s currently got him head over heels stupefied despite the hundreds of miles between them. By day, Lucas studies classical piano and composition at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and would make sweet love to Alexander Scriabin if that didn’t require becoming a necrophiliac.