"Celibacy is the most unusual of all the perversions."
-- Oscar Wilde
Wilde is provocative but he raised an interesting question and as a psychology major, I'm wondering if he's right. As I got ready for my last semester in college, I anxiously waited for the course schedule to be posted. For my major, I was required to take a capstone seminar and these varied each time. Different professors would teach the class, usually based on something they were researching. Since the class was required, how interesting it was going to be was a question of who was teaching it and what they decided to teach.
When the schedule was finally released, I saw that there would be two sections of the class and they were really different. Section 1 was being taught by Dr. Halliday and was called "Dogs, Cats, and People: Symbiosis in the Human-Animal Relationship." Even if I wanted another class with Halliday (I didn't like the only one I'd had with him), learning why people liked their pets and animals liked their humans didn't sound like a real fun way to spend a semester.
Dr. Browne was teaching Section 2 and she was one of my favorite teachers so I'd probably want her section regardless of the topic. The title though made me wonder about whether I might prefer to hear about dogs and cats instead. The class was called "Virginity and the Decision-Making Process" which didn't give a lot of information. Well, Browne instead of Halliday made my decision and I just hoped she'd make it an interesting way to finish up before I started in my master's program.
The first class meeting was the normal going over the syllabus, the readings, and the assignments but she also gave an overview lecture that cued us in on what we'd be doing. Dr. Browne was working on a book about the psychology of virginity--why different societies placed so much stress on the v-card, why losing it was such a big deal, and then, what was our thought process in making the decision. Psych of Sex was a pre-requisite but unlike the sexuality instructors, her research was focused more on the before and after, not the during. Things like what led people to the decision to give up their virginity and how they felt about it the next day.
We'd looked at decision-making and how our psychological make-up, among other things, led us to how comfortable we were taking risks in our decisions. Dr. Browne pointed out that giving up one's virginity could be seen as risky for a lot of practical reasons, such as pregnancy. But, unlike a lot of decisions, it was a bell that couldn't be unrung.
I could see how this might be interesting research and how she'd make it an interesting class, but I had a problem. I don't have the slightest idea how someone makes this decision or how someone might feel afterwards. Yup. I'm a twenty-two-year-old virgin and it doesn't look like that's likely to change soon.
The last time I had given any serious thought to what virginity meant was the week before high school graduation. Listening to the chatter around school--and it was impossible to ignore it--there was a lot of sex happening that week. People would be leaving to attend colleges elsewhere so couples were breaking up but wanted to have lots of sex first. Other people were breaking up just because it seemed like a good time to do it. Some people who had been teasing each other decided that it was now or never. A couple of people seemed to be in competition to run up their body count before the big day.
I admit that I felt left out and wondered if I should be doing something different (or just doing something) but, when I listened to all the buzz, I didn't do more than wonder. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I really wondered if there was as much sex happening as there was talk about sex.
I did neither--I didn't brag about having sex and I didn't have sex. Neither of those were different during graduation week than from previous weeks. I assume that to have sex, it's probably important to actually go out on dates and I hadn't done that a lot either. I hung out with friends, some of whom were guys, but I never got to the point of thinking of any particular guy as a boyfriend. Eighteen and only kissed a couple of times. Eighteen and never even been felt up.
It wasn't that I was ugly. At least objectively speaking, I don't think I was. It wasn't that I couldn't be a fun person to hang out with although that depended a lot on what you thought of as fun.
After four years of studying psychology, I now understand personality types and I know how much of an introvert I've always been. I see how this impacted my dating history and what dating might have led to. Even when I did go to parties, I tended to stay in the corner and observe other people interacting. I'd stay long enough to be polite and then look for a way to bail. The idea of just jumping into a random conversation with a guy I don't know is just not appealing to me and neither is jumping into bed with him. Instead, I have a few close friends and I prefer to hang out with them or to just stay home and read.
It's not like I didn't have fun--I had fun with my friends who generally had the same idea of fun as I did. We went to movies, played trivia and logic games, and a few times got dressed up to go to comic-cons.
I liked my classes. I liked taking extra, advanced classes. I liked to read. I liked to talk to teachers and learn more than what we got in classes. I had no complaints since my fun activities paid off for me. I graduated tied for valedictorian (but lost the drawing for who got to make the speech). I got into my first choice for college and received enough merit-based scholarships that most of my costs were covered.
So yes, I was (and am) the stereotypical nerd and so were my friends. And I'm okay with that. My idea of fun didn't include the type of active social life a lot of others described. I hung out with the school's other nerds. We understood each other and liked hanging out. We didn't party like others did, or at least it sounded like they did. We also didn't have sex or most of us didn't. We certainly didn't spend a lot of time bragging about it or even talking about it.
Carrying my v-card through the graduation ceremony didn't bother me. I knew that I had other priorities and that there would be plenty of time for things to happen. I didn't have a moral or religious objection to sex although I had the same pregnancy and STD fears that others had.
I don't know why I thought I would do things differently but I did assume that when I got to college, I'd probably have more of a social life. But, if I didn't, I didn't care that much. It would happen, if it happened, when it happened.
Not caring was a good thing since not much changed in college. Living in the dorms my first year, I was invited to some parties and had my first drink. But I usually started looking for a way to escape a party as soon as I got there and I rarely stuck around for long. I had studying to do, prizes to win, and grad school to qualify for.
By the end of my first year, like in high school, I did find some friends whose priorities matched mine. We'd go out to get pizza or go to movies as a group, but we spent most of our time more productively. Four of us found an apartment together for our sophomore year and when someone referred to it as Nerd Hall, none of us took offense.
