To be honest, I
don’t know why I am still a virgin. In every respect that I can fathom and
gather at the moment, I have lived an attractive life. I thought little on the
morrow and I seldom past an opportunity to feed the beggar. I did everything
within my power to be of service to the World. I did not gamble. I first drank
alcohol when I was out of high school. I first got drunk when I was twenty-two
years old. I did not start social drinking until I was twenty-four. By then I’d
made one hundred dollars playing music, and the bar was close. In all matters I
adhered to the principle of harmlessness. I never killed a man, nor have I
slaughtered any animals. I even abstained from eating meat for several months, if
memory serves, and for some short time I was a vegan. I only stopped on what I
took to be the good authority of an experienced Buddhist, and perhaps to spare
my parents the strain. This evades my memory in passing, but only because I
seldom tally my successes when I’m not involved in them. With all my power I
upheld the Common Good, partaking in competition only when it was a guise for
public advocacy or for the consensual construction of community, and never the
other way around. Even when met with deviant behavior I did my part to withhold
judgement, though I was met with judgement even at my moments of optimism and availability.
I never espoused sin by any definition that has been provided by man’s
religions, though I did my part to nurture the suffering of sinners. Though I
failed many classes, it was not for a lack of trying; in fact, I failed them
only in direct proportion to my intellectual ambition. I only lost interest in
a class when I disagreed with the professor, and only when that professor
contradicted or failed to live up to a previous teacher. My interests span the
Humanities and the Sciences, including Music, Literature, Computer Science,
Robotics, Game Design, the Theatre, Film, and Communications. My involvement in
these disciplines was never merely cursory or anecdotal; I all ways weighed one
set of learnings against an other. I am no aggressive man, except when pushed
to an extreme that I’ve never seen my fellows go to. My path has been a
lonesome one fraught with despair, disappointed hopes, and loss. Yet I never
refused a helping hand, often the first to shed his defenses as to give my
fellows an opportunity to help me and thereby to cultivate their own virtue.
This virtue I myself excelled at, and I’ve done my part to remedy the agitation
caused by those well-meaning plans that had, by necessity, to involve not only
my own established skills but that presented a learning curve for my peers. I
am a Communist, through and through, and even as an introspective man I’ve not
allowed my personal appetites to bypass the interests of the Community; if I
ever allowed them expression, it was not only AFTER but in the very MIDST of
constant analysis and reassessment, in total transparency and vulnerability. I have
never seen a thousand dollars in my life. Though prone to spend freely, it has
only ever been in direct proportion to my investments in my friends. Hundreds
of dollars went towards feeding my homeless vagrant friends, as well as those
afflicted by loss. If I ever demanded money it was totally within the scope of
my actual needs, which were all ways an extension of my friends’ needs. This
life has not been at the expense of my passions, for I only ever sought the
close company of those who shared my values, at least in word, though it was
not to the exclusion of those whose interests were alien to mine, from whom I
could learn. In my dealings with women, I’ve shown loyalty spanning years,
even, most recently, till Death did us part, though our parting was a troubled
one. Still: I remain a virgin, and thus faithful. Yet my Light of Love is dead.
And I do not know that her ghost would wish for me to bind myself to her memory
at the expense of my own path of self-discovery. Somehow I did not imagine that
I’d find myself alone at twenty-seven. Patience was all ways a virtue that I
cultivated. But my last crush from high school, two years my junior, is now married.
My most recent love was raped by my best friend and lost her life after a
struggle with depression that I joined her in over the course of two years,
neglecting occupation and health by every definition I can think of, save for
sanctity. I imagined I was not alone. Statistics all ways lie, I’m told. But I
cannot shake the faith that people place in them. Statistically, I belong not
just to the 1.5% of people with my introverted and affective personality type.
I all so belong to the three per cent of Americans who are still virginal in
adult life. Apparently, not only does adult life start at the age of eighteen;
for many people, sex starts then, too, as more than just a fantasy and constant
problem. For the conceptual average, it begins even before the Adult Life!!
In work I was
never lazy, though I remained conscientious and careful where others were
careless, compulsive, competitive or crazy. In school I was never excellent,
though I never confined myself to the arrogance of specialization nor to the
fraud of cheating. Whenever I tried to break bad, I found myself new to a
popular field, and those who feared me then had feared me to begin with, or at
least pretended to, not for my sins but for my austerities. I am no fool. I see
the semblance between religion and ideology, science and theology, as well as
love and condescension. And I could only have learned them through practice,
with devotion and with painstaking, neurotic obsession.
I can’t even say
for a fact that I am unpleasant to the eye, by birth. My choice of style has
all ways been my own in adult years, and it’s been through some incarnations
that endeared me to the Public. All things considered, my body remains fit and
fruitful. My weight is only on the verge of underweight, owing to my
metabolism. By civilized standards, I should be set apart as an ideal mate. I
work hard for little reward; my abilities are great and my needs few, save for
where I require the same professionalism of others as is required of all
beings. My tastes are particular and peculiar, but not without substance or
variety. I can hold my end of all most any conversation, granted that it’s not
marred by private interests. I’ve even set a local record for volunteer hours
as a high school debate judge, if only over the course of one year prior to my
return to the competition. I was seldom if ever miserly with my learning. And
though I could turn a date into a lecture, I have all ways preferred to learn
about the Other and where she and I fit into the Cosmos.
I am not a bad
person. Yet I am alone. I did not become this way because I thought it would
pay off. I only prayed to God (even when I had little faith in Him, I now
confess) that I would not be made to suffer for who I was, for I knew then that
those I loved would suffer too under the burden of my pain. I put them first,
except when a greater sense of human family might motivate me to break rank
with a binding social group. The internal rewards have been great. The price of
the occasional nervous breakdown and long depressive season has been the status
of a genius, though even those who called me that have told me that I was no
saint in fits of self-entitled rage and envy.
Can it be so that
I missed out on something readily available? I know that geniuses and saints
have died virginal, as have martyrs and serial murderers. Still: I want more
than that fate for myself. I want to KNOW what the inside of a woman’s flesh
might feel like after birth. And though I do not doubt that this expression
alienates my audience as much as it embarrasses me, is either the alienation or
the embarrassment, even collectively, of such a threshold that it would
transcend the pain and isolation – even the HUMILIATION, before the
condescension of statistical data – that is the involuntary celibate life? I
was all ways available to be of help to those whose needs were great, and I’ve
seldom refused a helping hand except when I’d discovered foul intent beneath
it. So what am I doing wrong? And if it’s nothing, can this be the price of
excellence? Is it in fact a reward? Is sex so devious a sin that I should be
proud of my virginity? Why does the mind-body rebel against this? And what
would this rebellion, once stifled, say of my fellow sufferers, but those who
suffer not from too much virtue but from too much vice? Why did God, whom I had
promised Her to place my faith in before my own achievements and intellect, put
me in this situation? What am I to teach? Whom am I now to save? And what will
become of my Life if there is nothing and no one? The closer I come to my
personal goals, the more I am disgusted by my own reflection in those who have
prospered. And they don’t want to play music with me, anyway. I guess that
playing a dozen instruments counts for little when you are a virgin.
Why, though?
Dm.A.A.
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