The Accidental Virgin

by Valerie Frankel

  Stacy thought, What of fiber intake?

  The essay continued:

  “Not all women share my philosophy of physical and spiritual well-being. It has come to my attention that there is a new sexual movement afoot: celibacy by choice. At least three friends of mine have purposefully decided to stop doing it. I could understand, a couple years ago, when the new trend was for women to stop having sex with men. But now this? Celibacy is the new lesbianism? And it doesn’t end with simple abstinence. There’s a goal: Go a full year without sex, and you become a (theoretical) virgin again. Your sins are washed away clean. Three hundred and sixty-five days of unswept ashes, and it’ll be like you didn’t screw the entire football team in high school. You’re as fresh and innocent as a week-old kitten. For some reason (the football team happens to be one of my most dearly cherished memories), this is appealing to my wayward friends. One (I wouldn’t dare print her name and humiliate her) said, ‘Sex is a distraction and a nuisance. Without it, I can get my work done, and have energy left over to knit mohair sweaters. I’ve already done five this week.’

  “Another friend said over coffee, ‘Okay, I admit, it seems like an odd way to search for self-awareness. But I want to define myself by other terms. Until now, I’ve defined myself by sex. Most people do. We are who we’re fucking, how we’re fucking, when, where, and with what accessories. We never stop to ask, Why? Why does what we’re doing for an hour a day with someone else weigh more heavily on our personal success or failure than who we are for the other 23? I am taking a year off to return to a freer mental space. My happiness and fulfillment should not be dependent on the ups and downs of my sex life.’

  “I’m glad she didn’t say, ‘the ins and outs’ of her sex life, or I might have gotten excited. This friend, she’s a babe. She’s got legs that go all the way down to the floor and tits like she’s stuck them in a pencil sharpener. My beloved boyfriend has begged me to set up a threesome with her, and lord knows I’ve tried. But now that she’s on this idiotic mission, this dunderheaded pursuit of bullshit, she’s a lot less attractive. So it’s kind of a relief.

  “Sex is defining, for good reason. During sex — by sex, I mean the good kind, which may or may not mean the loving kind — you are your true self. You become a creature of selfish instinct. You allow your animal nature to shine. Sex strips away artifice (intentionally forgoing sex is artifice), and leaves you naked in every metaphorical way. And if you’re looking for self-awareness, there’s nothing like one dick in your mouth and another in your pussy to figure out in a hurry exactly what kind of person you are. Connecting (in a deeper sense than insert tab A into slot B — but that, too) with another person (or persons) is the only way to learn and grow. Otherwise, all you’ll see, hear and think is what you already know (the same crap that’s been fixated on for years), missing out on the fresh insight of someone who might be smarter than you, and denying yourself the chance to share adventures of the body and soul. Attention celibate friends: Call me in a year when you’ve started fucking again. Until then, enjoy yourself. No one else will.”

  At the end of the missive, Stacy spotted a red button that read SEND FEEDBACK TO GIGI. She clicked on it and started typing:

  “Gigi, my name is Stacy Temple. I’m a vice president at thongs.com, the on-line lingerie store. I would like to talk about possible cross-promotion ideas with you, and with swerve.com. I’ve just read your revirginity piece, and think you have the wit and wisdom to write some much-needed content for our site.”

  Stacy had, in the past, tried to convince her bosses that content — some narrative text, perhaps some dirty fiction or even some long captions about the seductive powers of a peekaboo teddy — would improve sales, or at least increase traffic. But she’d been shot down (her CEO believed that paying for content was an unnecessary expense). So Stacy didn’t have much faith that she and Gigi would have a business relationship. But one had to have an ostensible purpose to write such e-mails. Besides which, getting a response from Gigi was more likely if she dangled a potential payday. Underhanded, sneaky — yes, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

  Stacy typed more:

  “Your piece was thought provoking. Being passionate is critical for happiness. Sometimes, though, it can get away from you (well, not you clearly; it can get away from some people). I wonder about women who find themselves hovering on the brink of revirginization, but not by design. I suppose you could call these women accidental celibates. Their revirginization would be an unhappy accident — and therefore invalid. If one had, say, a demanding job, that doesn’t make her a rejecter of adventure. If she’s shy, that doesn’t mean she’s hiding from life. Unintentional revirgins are just distracted by other things, that’s all. They’re still passionate and potent. They’re still vital and relevant. Sex, albeit eye-opening and aerobic, isn’t who you are. Accidental revirgins don’t deserve your scorn. They’re in a special class. They deserve understanding and encouragement.”

  Time to wrap it up, or I’ll sound too defensive, she thought.

  “Anyway, just bouncing some ideas off you,” typed Stacy. “Please write back and let me know about your availability as a freelancer.”

  She clicked the SEND NOW button. Her E-mail flying into cyberspace, Stacy felt relieved, but not completely unburdened. Some things in the article had struck her across the brow, in particular, the notion that isolation leads to regurgitation of the same old thoughts rattling around in one’s brain, spinning rapidly in circles, getting nowhere fast. An intellectual hamster wheel. Stacy pictured herself on it, sweaty and frustrated. Perhaps Gigi was right: The way to get off the hamster wheel was to get one’s rocks off. It seemed convoluted, but there was only one way to find out.

  Now inspired to see Jason, Stacy rushed to spread on some lipstick and go. But a voice intoned from outside Stacy’s cubicle door: “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Without needing to look, Stacy said, “That you’re a pint-sized sadist?”

  Janice Strumph, the other of Stacy’s two bosses, was impossibly petite. In her late 40s, she had narrow shoulders and hips, a soft belly, a curvy décolletage, and the soulful dark eyes of a sea lion. Her sunny yellow curls, like her boobs, were God-given. She had three freckles on her left cheek that formed an isosceles triangle. Sometimes, when having a heart-to-heart with Janice, Stacy couldn’t help connecting the dots.

  A divorcée, Janice had been married for seven years to the father of her three children (two boys and a girl, all in their 20s). He left her the day the youngest son entered kindergarten, announcing that he’d done his service to his children — been a father for the brain-developmentally crucial first five years — and he was now free to move about other women. That was 16 years ago. Janice had never remarried, but not for lack of trying. A point of pride, she’d had a viable date on every Saturday night since her husband left (except for the first six months — which would have been un-seemly for a young mother who was not yet divorced). Stacy respected Janice for her perseverance and the belief that, one weekend, she would meet the man to erase a decade and a half of disappointment. Janice once did the calculations: So far, she’d been on 786 Saturday night dates, estimating that 40 percent of the relationships ended there, 40 percent stretched across a month (four dates), and 20 percent were good for over a month (five or more). Janice hadn’t attempted to calculate how many men she’d put on her pearls for or how many times she’d had to retell her life story (a stat that might be too depressing, even for Janice). Stacy had little faith in the magic of Saturday night. But Janice was devout. Nearly every Monday morning, she would bolster her faith by declaring that if she couldn’t secure a decent date by the weekend, she’d put away her dating shoes forever. Had yet to happen.

  “I have a limo waiting for you downstairs,” said Janice in her small-person voice as she leaned against Stacy’s office doorway. “You can have it for the whole night, anywhere you want to go, with anyone, clean out the bar, use the phone, play the VCR.�
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  Stacy said, “You were merciless in there.”

  “Whalebone corselettes, suggested retail price, one fifty? It’s incredible that you’d even present it.”

  “The lower the stock price, the lower our aspirations.”

  “When you put it like that, our sales philosophy sounds like a compromise,” said Janice. “Think quantity. The more items ordered, the more money we make.”

  Like all mail-order companies, Internet or otherwise, the profits were in shipping and handling charges. When a customer placed an order for 10 items, thongs.com routinely shipped half right away, and then sent the remaining items in three business days, making it possible to double the handling charges on a single order (all the while telling the customer she was getting a discount on shipping). The income of their client base was, on average, $46,000 a year; the median amount spent on a thongs.com order was $58; the inflated S&H charge brought in an additional $8 profit per order. Janice liked to call it “superhighway robbery.”

  Overwhelmingly, customers made multiple orders of low-priced items (five thongs plus a few bras, for example). High-priced garments were one-shot orders, limiting S&H charges and stretching the customer’s lingerie budget. But Stacy stubbornly clung to the notion of aspirational (life-changing) underthings. The product profit margins were higher, and if a woman fell in love with a corselette, she’d come back to the site for all her panty needs (repeat business was the lifeblood of any retail operation). Janice’s business plan — quantity over quality — might work for McDonald’s, but thongs.com was selling intimacy, not chicken nuggets. Stacy had never presented the notion that Janice’s dating life — a reflection of her retail philosophy — could explain why she had never remarried.

  Stacy said, “For use of the limo, I’m to forgive your cruelty and come up with new and inventive cheap garter belts tomorrow.”

  Janice said, “Garter belts pay your salary.”

  “I would like you to admit that, in part, you took out your bad-date frustration on me.”

  Janice shrugged. “I hate the one-hour dates. It takes me longer than that to get dressed. There should be a rule that the date itself has to last as long as it takes to prepare for it.”

  “You’ll find someone,” Stacy said.

  “Always do.” The older woman didn’t seem as sure of herself this Monday. Stacy feared that Janice might be near the end of her long dating streak. “Take the limo and have a good time tonight,” said Janice. “We’ll start over in the morning.”

  Stacy thanked her boss, put on some pink lipstick and left. On the elevator ride down the 40 stories to the street, Stacy grappled with a decision. She could take a quiet ride around Manhattan and then go home and sleep off the tinny taste of the public scolding OR go to the movie screening and snare an attractive man. She struggled with the habitual leaning toward the comforts of home. But she knew that the lure of her featherbed was why she hovered on the verge of revirginization. Janice might careen from disappointment to disappointment, but at least she got some action. Stacy tried to remember the sights and sensations of sex.

  The limo waited at the curb. Stacy greeted the uniformed driver and slid into the back seat. After mixing herself a White Russian, Stacy gave the address of the Silverbowl Screening Room on West 46th Street. The drive would be short, just enough time to finish her beverage and practice her winning smile. By the time the limo rolled to a stop at her destination, Stacy was renewed and ready to climb a mountain, if need be. She hoped Jason would be an anthill.

  Three hours later, as Stacy and Jason walked down the hallway to her one-bedroom apartment in SoHo, the Manhattan neighborhood once famous for artists and now renowned for its shoe stores, she made her move.

  Before she even had a chance, the handsome, hairy man said, “It’s getting late.”

  It was 10 P.M.

  The night hadn’t been working out as planned. When Stacy arrived at the screening room — much smaller than a normal movie theater, with about four dozen leather seats and a canteen of free food and beverages in the back — the movie had already started. She easily spotted Charlie’s blond head (so tall, he always sat in the back out of politeness) and made her way over to him, disturbing several important-looking studio executives along the way.

  She slid into the vacant seat next to Charlie. Without looking at her, he pointed toward the screen and said, “The year is three thousand. Due to World War III, massive widespread famine, and epidemic skin cancer, the population of the Earth is now only half a billion people. One quarter are men; women rule the world. That’s Glenn Close as the U.S. president. Her team of mad female scientists has figured out a way to produce human sperm in a test tube, and she’s just confessed to her vice president — the plucky and likable Renee Zellwegger — that she sees no reason why men need to exist at all. She plans to initiate the extermination ASAP.”

  “Where’s Jason?” Stacy asked.

  “Can,” said Charlie.

  Stacy leaned back and fluffed her hair prettily against the leather seat. The spot next to her was vacant. She moved her coat and put it in the empty chair on the other side of Charlie, just to be sure Jason would have to sit next to her. Once she’d accomplished this, she sat back and watched a bit of Chemical Attraction. There was Tony McGuinty! Her favorite actor.

  “You didn’t tell me Tony McGuinty is in this,” she whispered to Charlie.

  “He plays a conflicted breeder male, forced to leave hourly sperm deposits in the reproduction lab run by chief mad scientist Kathy Bates,” he said.

  On screen, Ms. Bates clicked together a set of pointy calipers while ordering Tony to increase his yield — or face extermination. Tony, depleted, pleading for his life, was a vision. Stacy was a huge fan. What scant fantasy life she’d had in the past year centered on Tony McGuinty, his puppyish brown eyes, his lanky body. Stacy never felt anything for movie stars, but something about Tony filled her with adolescent longing. She’d once seen a nude photo of him on the Internet. The image brought the words “fire hose” to mind. And there he was, all 12 feet of him, shirtless, jugular throbbing, being led back to his cell by Kathy Bates, all the while delivering a fine speech about freedom, liberty and his lean protein allotments. “You think jerking off ten times a day is easy? I need meat!” he demanded on-screen.

  So distracted by Tony, Stacy nearly forgot about Jason. But then the setting changed to a close-up of Renee Zellwegger (who had the best pores Stacy had ever seen). And Jason returned. Stacy smiled brightly at him. He returned the smile, although the wattage wouldn’t have made a light bulb flicker. He saw the coats in the spot next to Charlie and looked confused.

  “This seat is free,” said Stacy, patting the chair to her left. Charlie groaned. Stacy stepped on his foot.

  Jason slid into the chair and crossed his legs. Hisknee was an inch from Stacy’s thigh. Tony was back on-screen now, plotting to liberate the male breeders by seducing a slutty prison warden, as played by Jennifer Tilly. Tony put his hands on Tilly’s thigh. Stacy leaned toward Jason — her shoulder pressing against his arm — and whispered, “I’m predicting that Renee Zellwegger will fall in love with Tony McGuinty and together they’ll foil Glenn Close’s plans for mass extermination. When she discovers the betrayal, power-crazed Glenn will try to kill them both with the help of evil Kathy Bates.”

  The handsome, hairy man — who, Stacy noticed, was looking especially tigerlike and attractive in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved plaid shirt — put his hirsute finger to his soft lips and made a shush sound.

  Stacy leaned away. Shushing was not the behavioral hallmark of a man’s passionate attraction to a woman. A casual observer might assume that Jason was uninterested and that Stacy was throwing herself at him. Fortunately, she knew that, despite appearances, the situation was in her control and that Jason was well within her feminine power. He’d paid for lunch. He’d called her three times.

  Regrouping, Stacy helped herself to a kernel from his popcorn box. He didn’t
register distaste at her invasion. She took a handful, several pieces falling out of her hand and into Jason’s lap. Stacy brushed the errant corn away, keeping one piece to pop into Jason’s mouth. He smiled nervously at her after she fed him, and then put the box on the floor.

  Again, she thought, the casual observer would be squirming with embarrassment at Stacy’s seemingly desperate attempts to charm an unresponsive man. She smiled to herself: How little people really knew about strangers. How unlikely to make an accurate judgement about the interactions of shadows in a dark movie theater. These casual observers, they didn’t have the back-story. They couldn’t know that Jason had paid for lunch. He’d called her. She’d just have to keep reminding herself of her female wiles, especially now that he was rearranging himself into a pretzeline posture to avoid the press of her leg against his. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Stacy. But she remained undaunted.

  The movie progressed as Stacy predicted. Tony heroically saves Renee Zellwegger from being sexually reassigned by Kathy Bates, while leading the embattled men of Earth in triumphant rebellion. Renee and Tony are appointed copresidents to ensure liberty and justice for all genders. Glenn Close isn’t killed in the bloody coup d’etat, but is condemned to serve men as a laundress for the remainder of her days.

  The lights came up.

  Hushed chatter filled the small space. In this room, one could truthfully say, Everyone’s a critic. Charlie observed, “Even in a movie about female domination, the men win in the end. I liked the futuristic sex scenes — using tasers as sex aids, pretty inventive — but the philosophical man-versus-woman theme bored me, even with the gender role reversal. Glenn Close — can she do anything but Cruella De Vil at this point?”

  Stacy was about to say, Save it for your review. But Jason added, “I find it ironic that the bastion of male virility was represented by Tony McGuinty. He is the girliest man in Hollywood. Put him in a dress and a wig and he’d look as much like a woman as Stacy.”