Why I'm Still a Virgin

As part of my efforts to become part of the local BDSM community, I attended an event called “KinkFest” in Portland earlier this year (March 28 - 30). Informative workshops during the day. And at night . . . they set up a dungeon in the conference center, and hosted a play party. This went on both Friday and Saturday nights. I wandered around the dungeon Friday night, watching people play. And for most of that night, I was wearing a sign around my neck which read, “37 Year Old Virgin (Please Help)”.

Saturday night at the play party, someone who’d noticed me the night before came up to me and asked, “You’re not really still a virgin, are you?” I told her that, sadly, I was indeed still a virgin. Her follow-up question was a very shocked, “Why?”

Her presentation of that question amused me. Just the one single word, but when spoken with particular tone and inflection, backed by body language and facial expression, it seemed to be both accusation and interrogation. Why was I still a virgin? Why on earth would I be this old, and not have had sex yet? What was wrong with me? And what was I doing at a BDSM play party if I wasn’t already sexually active? Three letters and a verbal punctuation mark, and it asked all of that. And more.

Why am I still a virgin?

My response to her was fairly short, by my usual long-winded standard. I simply explained to her that I’ve been chronically ill since the age of 17. Chronically ill, and pretty much a shut-in. I told her that I’ve spent the last 20 years waiting for my life to resume. I keep thinking that just as soon as I’m well again, I’m going to go meet a woman, and shortly thereafter start having sex. (And not just sex – “As soon as I’m well again” I plan to start a lot of things I haven’t been doing.) But after 20 years of chronic illness with no end in sight, I’m finally being forced to acknowledge the fairly obvious realization that I can’t simply put these things off until I’m well again. Because I probably won’t ever be well again.

When I told her that, she looked at me kind of sadly, and said, “Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

Since that much of my explanation made sense to her, I stopped there. I could have gone on. I could have given her additional reasons for my virgin status.

Growing up, I was a good Catholic boy. Which explains why I was still a virgin when I got sick in the first place. I had friends who had started having sex in the fifth grade. Not me. I was still an altar boy at that point. So pure and innocent I hadn’t even been molested. (C’mon, you can’t mention being an altar boy and not go for the obvious molestation joke. I think there’s a law!)

There were girls in my class who suddenly disappeared, with it being common knowledge that they were pregnant and going to school in another town. For those of us who were still young and innocent, our reaction wasn’t, “Oh my God, she got pregnant,” but rather “Oh, my God – she’s been having sex!” The girl I had a crush on in the sixth grade started having sex with the class scumbag. She moved to California to live with her father between the 8th grade and our Freshman year, and while there weren’t rampant rumors, I sometimes wonder if this was a pregnancy-related relocation.

I discovered masturbation in the seventh grade. And quickly took it up as a hobby. (I think that my masturbation habit might have been a contributing factor in just how short my brief interest in becoming a priest was.) I knew that I wanted to have sex. I thought that once I found the right girl and got married, (okay, probably engaged to be married) I’d start having sex, and it would be the greatest thing ever.

In high school, I passed up several opportunities to have sex. Girls were by no means throwing themselves at me, but a couple of my female friends hinted that they wouldn’t mind being pursued. If I knew then what I know now, believe me, I’d’ve pursued.

My senior year of high school was when I got sick. Started with what I thought was the flu, then pink eye. The pink eye took a long time to clear up, and the flu-like symptoms just never went away. I got a really bad headache that’s now 20 years old. Started putting on a ridiculous amount of weight for no discernable reason. All sorts of fun ailments.

A couple of years later my mom introduced me to a woman she worked with. This woman was only a year older than me, shared a lot of my interests, and – while not a classic media-defined beauty – turned me on something fierce. So, I abandoned my chaste way of thinking and decided to finally pursue. I wanted sex.

She, however, didn’t want sex with me. And over the course of a month or so of sporadic hanging out together, she let me clumsily fumble my way almost (but not quite) to ‘third base’ before she informed me of that. I tried to ignore all of the now retroactively mixed messages, and took the ‘no’ for a ‘no’. She quit coming over shortly thereafter. [This is actually a longer story than can be contained in a paragraph, and might become a future blog entry.]

But the damage had been done. I was horny and wanted to do something about it. The problem was that in addition to being horny and eager for sex, I was also obese. Chronically ill. And poor.

“Hello. I’m a big fat guy. Do you want to go out sometime? Any plans we make are subject to change at any time because I might be having a bad health day. If we go anywhere, you’ll have to pay. Oh, and the state of Oregon won’t issue me a driver’s license because of my health problems, so you’ll have to come get me, and then take me home when we’re done. But other than that, I’m quite the catch. Really. Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?”

Yeah, I was just rolling in chicks. In my imagination. (Not really. Not even my imagination would let me be rolling in chicks. My sex dreams didn’t even rise above an R-rating. Lots of scene shifts and jump cuts where the sex should have been.)

About the time that I was squeezing the bare breasts and fingering the toe cleavage of mom’s work friend, I finally found a doctor who gave me a diagnosis. Chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome. No real treatment. Certainly no cure. The words of hope I clung to were the first half of the following sentence: “Sometimes it just goes away, sometimes it doesn’t.”

With an actual diagnosis in hand, I was able to apply for SSI – Supplemental Security Income, courtesy of the disability arm of the Social Security department. So I did. And was rejected. Then I reapplied. And was rejected again (re-rejected?) Re-reapplied. Re-re-rejected. (Anybody else suddenly want to watch Max Headroom?) Eventually I was given SSI benefits, and started getting somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 a month from them.

[I consider that the financial ‘good old days’. A bunch of stuff has happened since then, and I’m now currently getting a reduced amount of SSI, coupled with a portion of my deceased mother’s Social Security. Both checks add up to just over $300 a month. Can anybody spare a buck or two (or ten, fifty, a hundred, etc.)?]

Needing a creative outlet, I started doing a zine (this, back in the ink-on-paper days of self-publishing, before the internet had become what it is now). It was either find a creative outlet, or blow my brains out. I zined (hey, if blog is a verb – “I blogged last night” – then so is zine) for a little over four years.

My odd little publication was listed in a magazine called “Factsheet 5”, which was a zine review publication and the hub of the zine industry. I never made money on the thing, but it wasn’t the most expensive hobby you can imagine, so it gave me something to do with my time.

The zine is how I met C.J. (Not her real name. Not even her real initials.) She lived in Oregon, read a review of my zine in “Factsheet 5”, and send off for an issue. Then another (and so on). She was my geographically closest reader who didn’t already know me from before I started zine-ing. She wrote me a letter, and we started corresponding. I used my clever words – both in the zines and in the letters – to make her like me before she actually saw me, and when we met in person, it was too late. Heh heh heh.

The correspondence turned . . . erotic, and we met a second time, this time with dirty intentions. Foreplay-only intentions, and after a few similar encounters, she gave me condoms and told me that she wanted me to fuck her.

You can sense disaster approaching, can’t you? I mean, we’re at the point in the story where I have sex, but you already know that long after this event, I’m still a virgin. So what, you ask, could possibly have gone wrong?

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that C.J. is what is referred to as a BBW. Big Beautiful Woman. The politically correct euphemism for ‘a fat chick’. Which I liked. A lot. I’ve got a thing for BBWs. They’re hot. But while they’re great to look at, when it comes to sex, they’re built for skinny guys with big dicks. And I’m the opposite of that.

My attempts to violate C.J. led me to discover the following equation: “Fat woman” + “Obese man” + “Small penis” = “Abstinence”. No matter what we tried, we simply couldn’t find a position in which we could, uh . . . interlock. No sex. No anal sex, either (we tried). She had jaw issues, so the most I ever got was half a blowjob. (And always the first half, which is the half that doesn’t include an orgasm for me.)

I was able to go down on her. And I could get my fingers everywhere that my penis wouldn’t reach. So it wasn’t like we didn’t have any fun. Plus, she was kinky. She had toys, she let me secure her to my bed with handcuffs, chains, duct tape, etc.

But she didn’t live close enough for her to make frequent trips out to see me. And after another long story which I might also elaborate on in a future installment (or installments) of the blog, we were through.

Is this getting too long? I’m writing this post prior to actually posting the previous one, and I have no idea how long this is going to look when formatted on the screen. The word count function puts me closing in on the 2000 word mark.

Fortunately, I think I’ve already covered most of the whole ‘why I’m still a virgin’ thing. Everything I can think of at the moment, anyway. I’m sure that there are other contributing factors, but what I’ve written here is a decent synopsis of my sexless sexlife.

Hopefully, the entirety of my sexless sexlife. I’m at the point where I now need to find a sexual outlet, or blow my brains out. (Just kidding. Sort of.)