My friend said I would have to write a blog to go along with Virgins!

“But I can’t write about sex now!” I told her. “I’m not the same person!  I can’t write about it because I haven’t had any sex in the past 10, no 11 years.”

Unbelievable, eh? This drought fulfills my “Sexual Manifesto” – when a person is old, that is the time for abstinence and meditation. Nowadays, I console myself that I had had enough sex in my youth to last a lifetime. Or a few lifetimes.

But I lied. Actually, I’ve been to bed with two men in the past 11 years. The experiences were so awful that I ‘don’t count’ them. If I had those experiences when young, it would have put me off sex for years. One was ‘suicide sex’. I’ll write about that next week. The other one was….well, it explained why my mother and father fought. As Mary Kay in the novel says, “If you don’t f*&%$, you fight.” C’est vrai.

For years, I badgered my mother, “What was Father like in bed?” When she finally told me, I was horrified. Then saddened. “He’s okay. But he always finished too early.”

Part of me did not comprehend how a man could ‘finish too early’ while another part of me translated that my mother had seven children, six miscarriages and no orgasms!  And I complain about no sex in the past 11 years! Amazing what the women of the world have endured.

Men have had their problems too. Not all women enjoy sex, etc.

Back to my ‘forgotten’ experience. So this inappropriate guy flirts with me. He’s nearly 20 years younger. He keeps flirting with me. This is fun. I keep delaying saying, “Yes.” I even quiz him on his behavior in bed, checking if he talks while making love. He seems pretty good. The flirting finally is consummated. He finishes too early. Less than ten minutes.

He actually gets up from the bed, happily, and starts to get dressed. I’m laying there in shock and complain. Thus commences the silly fights. He refuses to wear condoms, says he will, then in the act in bed, when it’s time to put one on, and I’m as hot as possible, he refuses.

But his neglect of my physical needs finally make me vicious. And his lies. I told him I need sex at least two times a week. (Actually, it’s three, but I was trying to be realistic.) He doesn’t supply.

With lots of goading, he finally manages to give me an orgasm here and there, but nothing earth-moving. The affair is a waste of time. I end it. The flirting was much more satisfying. After that fling, I knew I wasn’t missing much not having sex.

The real problem is that once my neurosis lessened, sex was no longer a home run, fireworks, God in Heaven Above experience. Thank God it took quite a few years to reach that point. Once I was there, I finally understood all the logic for women to say, “No.”

No longer plagued with the awesome ability to fling my soul into the galaxies of love, time, and wonderful rainbow-extremes which made saying ‘no’ a horrendous denial of life…well, with all that gone, having sex was pretty boring.

That’s another topic. I’m aiming for writing shorter entries…

PS -  One of the good things about the sexual revolution – women talked, and compared experiences. Finally men realized they had to perform – and provide women with orgasms. This did revolutionalize sex for women! The selfishness of men – in bed and out – is disgusting. Thankfully, some parts of the sexual revolution did benefit women, and not just men.

                                   Peace & Love,
                                          Zola

Forty years ago today! I was a virgin during the “Summer of Love.”

Being a virgin was a great time. Pregnancy, marriage, and diseases were completely foreign. Flirting and passion, and making out were a great adventure. Because I wanted to go to college, I always managed to say, “No” early enough to stop myself and the guy from going beyond third base.

During the Summer of Love when I was 17, the “Hut” in Des Plaines offered coke a cola, a coat check, and upstairs, local live bands with pulsating music. Weekends, and Wednesday nights. The “Hut” was a large house turned into a teenage dance and meeting place. After working up a sweat dancing, we kids could go outside and stare into the night sky and chat about who was better: the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.   

Peer pressure? For me, thankfully, not much. Maybe it was there, but I was out of the loop. Angst? Yes! Confusion, upset, worry, waiting for the guy to call, waiting for him to call after the first date, wondering why the guy didn’t call after a heavy make-out session…. 

Once virginity was gone, everything changed. Making love ignited primal forces which were like a mental mushroom cloud, and its nuclear fallout lasted for decades.

As an intact virgin, I was ignorant of lovemaking’s delights so saying “No” was easy. With an intact hymen, I also had an intact mind. During the Summer of Love, alcohol, drugs or actually having sex were not realities for me. I didn’t even smoke cigarettes. When I tried as a kid, a sister laughed and said I looked stupid. That ended my cigarette use. Maybe other girls had those kinds of problems, but I was a good Catholic girl who attended an all-girls’ Catholic high school, and was busy working part-time jobs, and was a member of YCS, Young Christian Students. Free time to get into trouble was not abundant. Rather, I had ‘family problems’ to survive. 

When I was eight and my mother was hospitalized for being crazy, I read the newspapers. I pretended I was a child of a ‘working mother’ since my mother was absent. Same when she was put away when I was 11 and 15. When I was a teenager and wanted to run away from home, I read the newspapers. I sensed terrible things happened to girls who ran away. (Nowadays, graphic details are in the papers, but back in the early 60s, vagueness was common.) When I was in therapy at 15, and dumped all my father’s beer down the kitchen sink, I learned of Al-Anon. Problem was, living far from the city, there were no groups in my neighborhood.

For these reasons, I learned survival techniques. I didn’t learn social etiquette - the rules for boys and girls together. At home, with seven girls in the family and no boys, there were no sexual expectations or required girl/feminine/female behavior. Nor did Dr. Phil or Super Nanny provide parenting skills. No way for me to learn how other, normal people lived, acted, and responded to life.   

With an overview that comes with age, I’ve come to think that staying a virgin for as long as possible – well, maybe not much longer than 25 – protects a woman from the evils and pollution of the world. Maybe a first defense.

With all the problems in today’s world, it would be nice that teenagers could at least have that innocence protected, no matter how hard the media sexualizes children, no matter how often adults exploit children, and no matter what other great sorrows children suffer. If they can hang onto their virginity as long as possible, they just might be able to see life and sex and love for what it is really all about. Rather than goof up like I did and allow those primal forces out way too early, and not know how to handle the fallout. 

So, IMHO, virginity is a good word and a better thing to have! Hang onto it as long as you can….. Hang on, Snoopy hang on  and If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair.