Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (28 page)

Tom’s mother hadn’t practiced what they’d preached. Tom said:

I was clueless, completely clueless that . . . my parents had slept together before they were married. . . . My mom was 16, and he was 18. You know, they were still in high school! And I just thought, “Oh my God, what am
I
waiting for?” I was 22 years old, 23 years old, I’m like, “What a fool I am!” Because I had held their model as sort of like, “Okay, that seemed to work for them, so.” . . . Not that I regret any- thing . . . and not afterwards did I think, “Oh, now I’d better go lose my virginity now because I’ve wasted all this time.” But I think I was more open to it after that.

Gradually, Tom’s conviction that virginity should be a special gift ex- changed between spouses gave way to a new perspective, centered on learning and personal change:

I didn’t hold it against people if they had [lost their virginity], but I was sort of a little frightened, because I hadn’t. . . . Because I felt like I was in a different, like, class of knowledge. That was sort of scary because they were so much further ahead than I was. So I was—I guess intimidated is a good word—by it. But I think my view was [not] that I had to wait, I just chose to. Just because I thought it was a good idea. Not religiously

. . . I wasn’t afraid of, you know, doing something wrong religiously. I wasn’t ready and I didn’t really find anyone that I wanted to sleep with.

He made a point of distinguishing himself from people who saw virginity as a stigma: “I don’t think it’s something that you want to do just, you know . . . to prove to yourself that you can do it, or prove to your friends that you’ve done it.” In short, while he was still a virgin, Tom reinter- preted virginity loss, coming to see it as a step in a process. His recogni- tion that he was gay, accompanied by his church’s disapproval of homo- sexuality, his exposure to dissenting opinions and hypocrisy at school, and his parents’ failings as role models all motivated this shift in beliefs. Ever practical, Tom resolved “that I would have to lose my virginity.

. . . I’m not going to go until I’m, like, 50 years old and decide, ‘Oh, I’m going to have sex,’ and then no one wants you,” he said. Furthermore, before he met someone who might become a life partner, “I wanted to know what I was doing; I wanted to have a little bit of experience at least.” Like Meghan, Tom worried that a nonvirgin partner might try to take advantage of his novice status: “Of course there’s the fear of the other person, who’s had a ton of sexual experience, and you’re like, ‘I’m a blithering idiot, I don’t know what I’m doing.’” Such caution, despite the desire to make the transition, is typical of irrevocable transitions.
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In high school, Tom had dated a number of women, but—fortunately, he said—he “wasn’t in that group where you had to be sleeping together to be considered to be dating.” He’d had lots of women friends in college, some of whom he had kissed, but never a girlfriend. Those friendships had, he believed, helped him pass as straight. Six months after college graduation, at which point he “had kissed . . . maybe 20 girls probably total in my life,” Tom’s friend Amy tried to seduce him. Despite knowing that he was gay, he felt he should give sex with women one last chance: “I thought, all right, this is a shot. . . . So I tried. And nothing happened. The equipment did not function. . . . [We were] like, buck naked, fooling around and—nothing.” With Tom unable to sustain an erection, they for- went vaginal intercourse.

Then, a week later, Amy confessed that she was now sure that she was a lesbian. She told Tom, “I just never felt it was right, but you were the closest thing I could think of as right. And it was better, but it wasn’t what I wanted.” When Amy asked if he thought
he
might be gay, Tom an- swered, “Yes.” Their mutual relief was palpable. “The next week, she went out and found a girlfriend. . . . And,” he added ruefully, “I waited until September [i.e., several months], because I was foolish.” In ap- proaching sexual encounters with girls as a way of “testing” his sexual identity, Tom resembled many of the gay and bisexual boys anthropolo- gist Gilbert Herdt and psychologist Andrew Boxer observed in their ethnography of a Chicago center for lesbigay youth.
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Also consistent with Herdt and Boxer’s findings, the younger generation of gay men and lesbians in my study (born 1973–1980) came out at younger ages on av- erage and were more likely to lose their virginity with same-sex partners than their slightly older counterparts (regardless of how they interpreted virginity).

Tom had come out to a few friends before Amy, but after talking with her, he accelerated the process.
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He hoped that doing so would pave the way to virginity loss with another man. Once his closest friends knew about his sexual identity, Tom felt he could safely come out to Kent, “the only other gay [man] I had ever met and been friends with.” The specter of sexual contact hovered in his mind when he told Kent that he, too, was gay:

Because he was the one I was attracted to. And as my first opportunity, after all these years of being completely, you know, away from every- body else and safe. . . . And I was old enough and responsible enough, I figured I would, you know, take a chance. So that was the first time I ever said anything [to Kent], and then. Losing my virginity was much later. I said [that I was gay], and nothing happened between us until a good while later.

Tom was not alone in choosing a same-sex friend as a first sexual part- ner; the two lesbians in this group who had come out while they were vir- gins did likewise. In contrast, all but one of the heterosexual and bisex- ual processers lost their virginity with girlfriends or boyfriends. This is not to suggest that gay men and lesbians are less selective than their het- erosexual counterparts; plenty of heterosexuals in the gift and stigma groups lost their virginity with friends or casual partners, after all. Rather,

given the lack of openly gay people, especially at younger ages, some may opt to expand their sexual opportunities by including platonic friends among their prospective partners.
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The ability to meet same-sex roman- tic partners also depends on where people live and the social circles in which they move. As a gay man living in a suburb well outside of Pitts- burgh, with mostly conservative Christian acquaintances, Tom found meeting potential partners more difficult than did someone like Kendall James, who spent his adolescence just minutes from Philadelphia, a huge city with a thriving and highly visible lesbigay community.

After coming out to Kent, Tom tried several times to orchestrate a sit- uation in which they would be alone. But “every time I made plans, it did- n’t work.” Finally, more than a year after graduating from college, Tom invited Kent to join him and some college friends on a road trip to a con- cert in Cleveland. When they arrived,

there were enough tickets for everybody but two people. So I of course volunteered not to go. . . . We went to see a movie, had dinner, whatever, and just went back to the house [of their former-classmate host]. . . . And she had a hot tub outside. So . . . I had just gotten into the hot tub, and he’s like, “Can I kiss you?” And I said, “Sure.” And that was it. He whipped off his clothes so quickly [laughs]! I was like, “Oh my God” [laughs]. I had no. I mean, I had
zero
experience at that point. I

mean, I never had any sexual experience whatsoever with another guy.

Nor had Kent, as Tom knew. When Tom had come out to his friend, they’d talked about being virgins—with men as well as women—and agreed that virginity loss between men meant giving or receiving anal sex. Tom’s sexual identity and interpretation of virginity intertwined to in- fluence his early sexual career. Suppressing his attraction to men, passing as straight, and trying to convince himself that he was had given Tom plenty of reasons and opportunities to experiment sexually with women, albeit not sufficient motivation to lose his virginity with one. In fact, the gay men and lesbians who told me they saw virginity loss as a process— and who were openly gay as virgins—typically had as much experience with other-sex partners as their heterosexual counterparts, even though they’d had little if any intimate contact with same-sex partners prior to

virginity loss.

After exchanging fellatio and attempting anal penetration—“which doesn’t work in the hot tub, ever,” Tom quipped, not to mention (he

rolled his eyes) that “we were both new at this whole thing”—they made their way to the guest bedroom they’d been assigned.

That pretty much ended the whole virginity thing. But I had conve- niently packed condoms and lubricant and anything else that I could possibly think of that I’d need. . . . I always plan. . . . So I just. Yeah, I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know what was going to happen. So I just, I bought them maybe a month beforehand. . . . I just bought them hoping that I’d use them some day.

Tom’s concern with safer sex was typical of people who saw virginity as a rite of passage. Two-thirds of them practiced safer sex during virgin- ity loss, a rate comparable to that of gifters. Viewing virginity loss as a step in a process had encouraged these women and men to lose their vir- ginity in ongoing romantic relationships or friendships, in which they were comfortable talking about condoms and/or contraception. Further- more, perceiving sexual inexperience as a natural stage in life, rather than as a stigma, they felt no need to try to conceal their virginity by rejecting protective measures. (Lesbians who lost their virginity with other women were an exception, as I discuss below.)

Virginity loss was everything Tom had hoped for—and yet at the same time it wasn’t.

I expected more out of it. . . . I didn’t regret it. At the same time I didn’t think it was something super incredible. I mean, I was nervous [laughs]. I was very nervous. . . . First of all, I was fooling around in somebody else’s hot tub not knowing when they would be home. . . . I think, given a little bit more freedom at the time . . . I would have been happier I

mean . . . since then I’ve kissed . . . a couple other [men] who are much better kissers. . . . And at the same time, thinking, “Wow!” I mean, we were just fumbling around like idiots. But I knew I was old enough and, you know, I was ready.

In all, he said, “I think awkward’s a good word to describe it.” Though this awkwardness came as something of a surprise, Tom easily accepted it—not least because he thought it might have been inevitable given the physiology of receptive anal sex. Having a clumsy first time also con- firmed his impression that virginity loss was a step in a longer process. As

he put it, “I don’t think my viewpoint has changed any, except for ‘prac- tice makes perfect’—maybe there’s that adage added to it.” Men and women who favored the process metaphor were far better prepared for “imperfect” or physically unremarkable encounters, and reacted to them with much greater aplomb, than people who saw virginity as a gift or stigma. They believed they still had a lot to learn about sex, and they had more reasonable expectations about physical sexual pleasure; few ex- pected first sex to be intensely enjoyable. In contrast, gifters felt deeply let down by less-than-perfect partners and encounters, while the stigmatized typically worried that clumsiness betrayed their inexperience and/or that they’d missed out on the immense physical joy they’d expected.

Tom also found sex with Kent enlightening because it confirmed, in a very tangible way, his perception of himself as gay.

For the first time I just felt right. . . . It was the first time that I actually kissed somebody and actually didn’t think it was, you know, boring. It was like, “Wow!” This is what I’m supposed to be doing . . . this is actu- ally going through with things I feel, rather than what I’m supposed to do. So I didn’t feel obligated or, you know, that this was the right thing to do or this was what my parents would have me do.

Tom didn’t feel transformed overnight. Rather, losing his virginity had been the final step in a decade-long process changing him from an inex- perienced boy unsure of his sexual identity into an openly and actively gay man. In most respects, however, processers’ expectations and experi- ences of virginity loss differed very little by sexual identity.

Although Tom was happy not to be a virgin, he remained circumspect about revealing his new status. One disincentive was the fact that he and Kent moved in the same social circle, and it seemed inappropriate for two of the group to be sexually involved. Moreover, he feared that his more conservative (or less intimate) friends would be offended to learn he was gay. With them, as with his parents, with whom he was still closeted when I met him, Tom took the path of least resistance:

I would have to tell them lies, so I just avoid the question. My dad asked if I was a virgin. I said, “I’m 24 years old, what do you think?” And that gave him an answer and it didn’t give him a necessarily truthful answer, or an untruthful [one] . . . and he didn’t have to ask anymore.

Like Meghan and others who shared their view of virginity, Tom wanted to be frank with his friends, and even his parents, but felt it prudent to tailor his disclosures according to social context.

Status passages often occur simultaneously, and almost all of the gay and bisexual male and female processers spoke of virginity loss as inextricably intertwined with the process of coming out. This sense of undergoing two linked processes at once was, I believe, the chief rea- son that the lesbigay individuals I interviewed subscribed to the process metaphor in greater proportions than did their heterosexual counterparts.
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Tom’s story shows how concurrent rites of passage may complicate one another.
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On the one hand, he felt that if he had been able to come out earlier, it would have been easier to lose his virgin- ity:

I would’ve dated girls, I would have dated guys, and started a lot earlier.

. . . I probably wouldn’t have had sex at the young age, still. I think that’s something I was really way into being ready for. But if I had been more aware of what I was doing and dating and, like, hanging out with guys and, you know, fooling around, just getting more experience. Then I would have progressed faster.