When I was thirteen a sex ed troupe visited my middle school. A hundred pre-teens filed into the gymnasium and sat down in rows, our awkward skinny bodies uncomfortable again the cold hard floor. The innocent, sterile scene of our childhood games seemed inappropriate for a discussion of such an adult topic. This was the place we played dodge-ball and floor hockey, where school plays were performed, and where one of the cool girls had once spotted me picking my nose. I sat between the fat girl and the weird girl who lived on a farm, de facto friends during my years as the smart girl with big glasses and braces. I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet – even the weird girl had kissed two.
We had already taken sex ed before, so we already knew the drill. Two years ago, our teacher had split up the boys and girls, and caused fits of giggles when she showed us a condom and made a tampon expand in a jar of water. Only two months ago, boys and girls together, our hip young teacher had told us that if we wanted to “get into someone’s pants” we had to be comfortable enough to talk with them about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases. At the time, we never heard about any of our peers having sex, except the girl in another class who was dating a sixteen year old.
Three young adults climbed on stage, all good-looking and wearing trendy clothes. The brown-haired woman – tall, beautiful and modelesque – started the tirade. True love waits. Sex has too many consequences. It’s irresponsible. It’s for making babies. We’re too young. We don’t know any better. It won’t be special until later.
“I’m a virgin, but I’ve had boyfriends before,” the young woman told us. “A year ago, my boyfriend at the time invited me over to watch a movie. We didn’t have sex, but it definitely got hot and heavy and I even took my pants off. After the movie, I slept over in his bed. The next morning, I felt awful about myself. I didn’t have sex but I knew I had gone too far and that made me uncomfortable. I know that if I had actually had sex, I would have felt a thousand times worse.”
The one guy came forward then, grabbing his microphone confidently. He had spiky blond hair and wore baggy jeans with Airwalk shoes. Probably hand picked for his ability to look cool and relatable to teenage boys, he fit the part perfectly.
“I have something to tell you guys,” he said. “I am a virgin, and I’m proud of it. You might think it’s really weird for a guy my age to be a virgin, but it’s not. I know that when I meet the right girl that I waited to share sex only with her.” He jumped off the stage suddenly, ran through the aisle, heads turning as he went. A the back of the gym at the emergency exit, he swung the metal door open and the bright outside light flooded the room. “Hello world,” he yelled out the door. “I am twenty-one, and I am a virgin!”
I don’t remember whether people laughed or cheered, but I do remember what came next. The third performer, a curvy Southeast Asian girl in a low-cut top, finally took her microphone. “I’ve had sex before, but I wish I hadn’t,” she started softly. “But I decided a couple years ago that abstinence was still important to me and I would wait until marriage to have sex again.
“Think of it like this. If you were dating someone, and they gave you a beautiful necklace, that would be pretty special, right? But what if you found out that your boyfriend or girlfriend had given the same necklace to lots of other people? Wouldn’t that make the necklace less special? Sex is like that too. If you have it with lots of people, it becomes less valuable, less special for when you want to share it with someone you love.”
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