The Virginity Project:

I remember my first trip to the States like it was yesterday. I was so excited that I spent weeks beforehand having feverish dreams about forgetting the most basic of items. Items, it seemed that were critical components to the enjoyment of my trip – contact lenses, shoes, guide books. It was alarming to find out just how much truck I placed on the most innocent of accoutrements but I was absolutely gagging to go to America and I wanted everything to be perfect.

As a British person, one feels like one has been to America before one has even arrived. Films have taught us all we know and it was gratifying to find a cop, sitting on a stool, eating a doughnut in a diner on my first day. Familiar visual clichés are everywhere you look and pretty much nothing disappointed me on that first heady trip to New York. Except for one thing: the language. Nobody understood me.

Having arrived at JFK and taken a taxi into town with two other tourists, I was distraught to discover that our cab sharers, upon disembarkation, had taken my bag and left me with theirs by mistake. The horror! Lucky for me, my eagle-eyed cabbie – I will never hear a diss against a New York cabbie – knew exactly where to go and we were soon hoofing it back across town to retrieve my belongings. But I was nervous and as I tripped through the front door of the hotel, breathless, sweating and eager to reunite myself with my things, I poured out a torrent of what I took to be English but which the lady behind the counter clearly took to be something else.

‘Itookataxifromtheairportwithamanandwhenhegotoutofthetaxihetookmybagandlefthisbaginthecarandnow

IhavehisbagandweneedtoswapbagsbackandIthinkheisstayinghere’, I said. It made perfect sense to me.

‘I did not understand a word of what you just said’, barked back the reply.

Astonishment! I am talking English. You are talking English. What seems to be the problem here?

And that’s just it. We may speak the same language, we may even share habits, practices, religions, foodstuffs, we may ‘stand side by side in the war against terror’ and share mutual pride in your new president (notice that its not working the other way around right now), but just because we are on a vaguely similar political and cultural page, it does not always mean that we understand each other. And my next correspondent will prove this point even further. What the heck is a frat party? I do not understand this strange cultural practice. This is as bizarre to me as eating fish and chips and a deep fried Mars Bar is to you – which of course I do all the time.

Actually I am being facetious….I do have an idea about fraternity culture - after all, I am the one who has spent years watching cheesy American teen movies….The Breakfast Club, Porky’s, Dazed & Confused, I’ve seen ‘em all – but the idea of ‘fraternity’ culture is still alien to me. It is still a bizarre concept to try and grab hold of for a Brit like me. I mean come on…’the elephant’…what is that all about?

By the by, in case you were wondering, my Spanish speaking taxi driver and the Southern dwelling desk lady had no problems understanding each other. They got along famously. Mario Luna had spoken to said lady and found the man - and my bag - in question in no time. We were soon sitting back in his taxi-cab.

‘Aren’t you going to ask that man for some money?’ he said. ‘You’ve come all the way across town to give him his bag back and I think he should pay you something for your trouble’.

‘No’, I said, ‘I can’t be arsed’. Jetlag was kicking in and I just wanted to go ‘home’ to Prince and Elizabeth Street, my new Stateside abode for the next seven days.

I needn’t have worried. Before you could say, ‘I’m a limey half assed Brit who can’t speak the same language as a regular American’, Mario Luna was stepping back out of the hotel with $80 in his paw. $80!! I wish I could have heard that conversation. He handed it to me. I handed it back to him.

He then gave me a guided tour of New York and his phone number.

‘Call me’ he said, ‘if you ever need anything in New York’.

God bless America.

Stephen. Aged 20. Still a virgin.

‘Hey friend,

I’m a twenty-year-old male virgin in Los Angeles, California, USA. I go to the University of Southern California and its known as a place with a lot of good-looking people - mostly the girls. We have a lot of fraternity and sorority life, which I am not sure exists in other countries.

Fraternities and sororities are all-male and all-female organizations, respectively, which people must ‘qualify’ to become members of. You have to go through the ‘hazing’ process in order to ‘pledge’ successfully. Friends of mine who have gone through the entire process have had their keys, wallets, and cell phones confiscated during the process. Similar to military entrance rituals, the fraternity and sorority practices try to break down each person to develop the group identity over their own personal identity. Since a lot of the things people need to do to join are quite demeaning, like streaking, cross-dressing, cleaning up after other members, and so forth, the process weeds out those who are nonconformists or who are not totally committed to being a member of the group above all else.

There have been some atrocious things done in the hazing process. One fraternity was suspended from the school for several years after they made pledges do ‘the elephant,’ where the guys stand in a single file line, naked, and grab the penis of the person in front of them, and either run or jump up and down. This is done in public view on the side of a street.

The point is that being in a fraternity or sorority is a great way to meet girls (or guys), because the social life is wholly arranged and my not being in a fraternity divorces me from much social life.

I was still a virgin when I left high school, when many of my friends had had sex before my first kiss at age sixteen. During my freshman year, in the fall, I had a fling with someone and she performed oral sex on me. When I decided that I wanted to date her, things soured.

Since November 2006, I haven’t kissed anyone. I’ve been on a couple dates but I find it hard to date people. I could never admit that I am a virgin to most of my male friends. A lot of them really look up to me. I have good social skills and can strike up a conversation with almost anyone. I have been in leadership roles in sports, student government, and so forth. I have been in a rock band that played on Sunset Strip. I was so afraid of telling anyone that I am a virgin because I would just think that they would view me as somehow less than them.

But, in December, I told one of my better male friends that I was a virgin. He said being a virgin was nothing to be ashamed of. It took me a great deal of courage to even say that, but I am glad I did. It means a lot to know that I am not the only one, and that there is nothing wrong with being in my situation. I told a female friend I was a virgin a little after New Year’s. She said that it was pretty good that I was a virgin as well. She said it was desirable in girls’ eyes.

I wrote most of this email back in December, and it has been saved in my draft’s folder since then. I just thought I would let you know about how your website has helped me. Most things are not as big of a deal once one mentions them. I think losing virginity is probably one of those.

But I figure that I can't go out with people if I don't at least ask them. In basketball terms, you can't score if you don't shoot. You're going to miss, but so what. If I at least try to reach them, there is at least a chance that things will work out.

When I think about having sex, at least at times, it seems like such a big deal. But it’s not like I will change drastically once I have sex. I will still look good and have a good personality sex or not. But at least it won’t make me so nervous when approaching women for the first time.’