THE OTHERS

Some people believe them to be mythical creatures of a forgotten era, others dub them an urban myth and many assume that they are all in Swaziland but the fact is; twenty-something virgins walk among us. You’ll find them nodding with the concentration of a matric student during, what the rest of us consider to be, casual sex talks over drinks. Or looking particularly shifty eyed and alarmingly sober as a heavy night at the club leans towards its end. Their crisp voices pierce through a thick alcoholic mist at those decadent pre-orgy boy/girl chill sessions with the four words any man on the cusp of scoring hates to hear “Look at the time”. Yes they walk among us and they all evoke one question: What the hell are they waiting for?



In real life the statement “I’m a virgin” is usually responded to with phrases like “Oh that’s great.” And “You wait as long as you can honey” or “Keep it for somebody special” and “Making love is sacred”. But in this article those responses have a time limit, after which those responses are replaced by words like “What?” and “Why?”. Its all good and well sharing all the warm and fluffy aspects of a woman (or man for that matter) holding onto their virginity well into their twenties, but in the spirit of honesty (and the controversial nature of this article) it is only fair that the more cold and real aspects be brought to the attention of these hoarder s. Have I gone too far? Let’s explore this:



There are generally two types of virgins; those who do it for religious reasons and those who do it for other reasons. The ones who do it for religious reasons usually wait for a higher power to guide them to a partner with whom they will then enter into a nuptial agreement and proceed to pop one another’s cherries. This particular breed of virgin tends to marry young and so do not remain virgins for as long as one would think. These are the regular, run of the mill virgins that we have come to accept/ignore (We get it, there are commandments and if you are right then we, the casual sex community, will accept defeat and form an orderly queue at the gates of hell). However these are not the virgins that intrigue and confuse us. It is THE OTHERS, that have us bothered. E.g. A guy and his friend’s take out a bunch of girls. He picks up during their conversation that the girl he is interested in is a virgin. He also picks up, from the way she is knocking back drinks and punctuating her sentences with the word F**k, that the choice is not religiously propelled. As the night progresses and he gets to know Miss Potty-Mouth he stops believing she is a virgin and eventually forgets about it all together. It is only when he is reclined in the driver’s seat of his car and she is using the steering wheel as a head rest as she prepares to “speak into the mic” that she decides to revisit her decision to remain a virgin: Typical “OTHERS” behaviour.



The timid virgin that we once saw in the late eighties and early nineties has become obsolete. That virgin, that; “mythical creature of a forgotten era”, never confused anyone because that virgin removed herself from all sexual situations. She wore knees length skirts and remained as awkward as possible. The OTHERS are not as considerate. They study and master hand jobs and blow smoke rings (amongst other things). They go out more than the average woman, wear less than the average woman and own things they have no business owning like crotch-less panties. Why? Why do they do it?



Rejection is generally difficult to accept but it has that much more of a sting when it is done in nudity. Now we find men (more than would like to admit), lying naked in dark rooms having to have the awkward: “Oh please just once/ I won’t put it all in/ I’ll take it out if it hurts” conversations. Where as if Ms Virgin Loosey had made her virginity a holistic theme throughout her life, this type of degradation could have been avoided.



When did the game change? At what point did virgins become so incredibly conniving and underhanded? The questions come by the thousands and are enough to make the average man’s head explode but the core theory is quite simple and easy to understand. The OTHERS are a product of circumstance; creatures of evolution if you will. Once upon a time virgins looked and sounded like librarians and their mere presence was enough to make all viable suitors slowly back out of any room in so doing perpetuating their virginity to the point of discomfort. Why did men flee? Because no man, of the casual sex community, wants to bear the monumental responsibility of being “the one”. Being stalked loses its charm after 25 and nailing a virgin who has crossed this threshold heightens ones risk of being stalked. No matter how prepared a female thinks she is for her first time, no matter how few strings she plans to attach to the snatcher of her innocence the fact is she will manage to project all sorts of emotions and expectations onto whoever the sucker is whether she intended to or not. For example: If it was good she will want to call and check if it was as good for him but she will lose her nerve as soon as she hears his voice on the other line, take a few deep breathes and when she realises she doesn’t know what to say to him she will hang up (heavy breathing call number one). If it is bad she will want to make it up to him and she’ll throw on her trench coat and wear nothing underneath, she’ll drive over to his house and then realised as she sits in her parked car that this was probably a bad idea (while he watches from his bedroom window contemplating whether to call the police).



No man (casual sexer or not) wants to be put in that position. In those wonderful teen years when everyone is trying every drug they can find and our threshold for alcohol is so low that ten people can get slaughtered on a single bottle of Jack, everyone is trading virginities like Pokémon talismans. So if it turns out to be the worst sexual experience of one’s life; all is forgiven because no one was expecting much of anyone else. But with age, expectations increase, and expectations mean strings. And this is where the OTHERS have learnt their biggest lesson...they have learnt to exude stringlessness. They put up a facade of callousness and pretend to hold nothing sacred which buys them enough time to suss out who they think “the one” is. So that’s it! The OTHERS are keeping their hymens for that special someone and acting as loose as Tibetan clothing is just a part of a bigger plan.



The fact is; sex is a hard nut to crack (there are no puns in that sentence). It is the only thing on earth that one’s body can desperately crave before ever having had it. Now, no one is saying lock up all old virgins and throw away the key...no that would be cruel. This is simply an appeal to the OTHERS: Your virginity obviously means something to you otherwise you would have lost it with the rest of us in high school, so act like it. Nothing screams