1. I am 23 years old, a cisgendered straight woman and also a virgin.

2. About that virginity: I was not raised with any kind of a religious background. What shame I have about sex and my own body was handed down secondhand from my formerly Catholic mother who disliked my proclivity for touching myself when I was a child. Which is a thing I gave up on until fairly recently. I’m mostly just awkward as all hell, and have a regrettable tendency to get hung up on guys who are not interested in the least, while disregarding the affections of the ones who are or might be interested in me. They call it “avoidant attachment.” Ladies and gentlemen: My Life.

3. My family thinks I am a lesbian. If I was gay, I think this would be pretty great, because the way they tell me they think I am a lesbian is by hinting obliquely that they would be very supportive if I “had anything important to share about my life” and sighing when I try and explain that plaid flannel shirts are trendy now. As I am not a lesbian, it gets a little irritating, but I try to remember the closeted gay kids who would kill to have my supportive family.

4. I call myself a “knowledgeable virgin,” because I have done my best to be well researched and informed on sex. This is partly because graphic, clinical, joyfully enthusiastic, nerdy descriptions of sex, gender and evolution turn me on, partly because I have to be informed or I wouldn't be able to follow the conversations my friends have. I also feel that the stereotype of the blushing virgin is just not me, and inappropriate given my age and actual level of background horn-radiation.

5. Oh, the horniness. The problem with having a crush--and I seem to get crushes the way other people get chronic illnesses--is that I’ll have these full-body sensations of longing, like a hot sparkling hunger I can feel wash over me from my cunt to my joints and in my teeth and bones. I can’t control these “attacks” or when they happen, aside from that they seem to be triggered by the scent of the guy I am encrushed upon. But if I happen to get struck with one somewhere where I can get to myself, well...

6. I can have all of the orgasms.

7. I actually figured out how to make myself come last year, which seems super late, because it is. Before that, I guess I could get myself close by clenching my thighs together while sitting or by running (this is why I loved PE despite never, ever, having been in shape), but I don’t think I ever came.

8. I kind of made a project of it, really. I was all “OK, I am too old to not be having orgasms, the Orgasm Fairy is not going to come by with a little basket of them tied up in ribbons, time to give it a shot! Amateurishly lurid erotica? Check! Hand on clit? Check! Let’s do this! Time to figure out what feels good!” And then I checked Wikipedia afterwards to see if what I had just done was an actual orgasm.

9. I was surprised by the pelvic contractions. I do rather enjoy them.

10. My interest in sex has gone through the roof after this “discovery”, and I think so has my general level of background-horniness. The more orgasms I have the more I want to have. This particular feedback loop has lead to some very non-productive Saturdays. (And Tuesdays, and afternoons, nights, mornings--pretty much all of my alone-time, really.)

11. I can get myself over the cliff with just my hands and my imagination, but it’s much faster if I have something to read or with my little black bullet vibrator. I haven’t watched or looked at much porn, because it seems I get turned on by specific words or imagining the sensations being described. This could also be because all the porn I’ve seen so far has been terrible and not worth my time.

12. I will mutter and repeat specific words and phrases to myself when I don’t have any erotica to read. My masturbation is otherwise dead quiet.

13. I know a love spell. It is, in point of fact, the only love spell that works. It’s cross-cultural and will induce infatuation for an indeterminate time span up to four years in the subject to be be-spelled. I even know how and why it works, but I don’t think it stops being magic just because of that.

14. I have gone on one "date" on which I was taken back to a guy's apartment after talking to him for a bit on OKCupid. Color me dangerously naïve, but he said we could play video games and chat. I was not aware that this was code for “I barely know you, but let’s have sex” when I agreed to come over. He was my first kiss, and awful as that evening was, I don’t regret all of it because I learned a very important thing from him: it’s not worth it if a guy is just into me. I have to be into him too. Seems stupid, but there you have it.

15. I left to walk home in the rain before he really got anywhere aside from awkwardly down my shirt.

16. After that disaster, I figured masturbation beats online dating any day of the week.

17. Technical second kiss: I received a very toothy hickey from a classmate for an art project he was doing. It was awkward as hell, and he pretty much gnawed at my neck for an eternity or two. Another thing I would like to try with someone I actually give a crap about

18. I think part of my basic problem is that I come on too strongly towards the men I am interested in. I tend to think of myself when I come on to guys as the comical ugly and large Eastern European lady masseuse character, who takes unwanted liberties with young men that she overpowers. And then I hate myself, because I don’t want to be a rapist because guys don't know how to say no; I want to be wanted back.

19. I pretty much need to stop being a creep. I’ve been creeped at before--it isn’t fun. Nobody likes creepers.

20. The guy I am currently hung up upon has actually been really helpful for this, because he is a gigantic sexy tease and a flirt. I don’t think he honestly has any interest in me outside of the fact that I pay attention to him, and he’s been spooked that if he did get into it with me that I would want to tie him down with obligations and commitments (as opposed to say, rope, which is what I would actually like to tie him down with), but he’s pretty tolerant of my awkward flirtations while half leading me on and half telling me I’m not his type and he’s too broken to be in a relationship. I consider his gentle non-serious on-leading to be the most encouragement I have ever received from anybody I actually liked, and I have been caught puppy-dogging and Facebook-stalking him far too often.

21. I know it’s terrible because everybody I know has told me that it’s terrible, and I can objectively see that it’s terrible, I can listen to myself and the words that come out of my mouth and hear that it’s terrible, I’m reading the above entry and I can see how bad it is, but whenever I’m around him the logical part of my brain gets overridden by the reptile brain that thinks he smells like a sexy pine-tree-man that I would like to be in, on, and around me at all times.

22. And I know it’s the smell because I can snap myself out of it by wearing a dust mask. I smell him in the building where we both go to school (dude is pungent, I have to admit, I can walk in the door and know he’s been there) and imagine the tendrils of scent wrapping me up in an embrace, curling into my nose and lungs like green smoke.

23. Reading sex and gender books and blogs has done weird things to my reactions to people and thus to my reputation. Somebody brings up easily mockable pervs who are turned on by pretending to be babies, for a recent example, and I’ll say “but that’s sweet, they just want somebody to take care of them totally, and it’s not like they are turned on by actual children, just by pretending to be children” and the room will go a little quiet, and then I’ll be mocked a bit for my Rocky Horror-sparked appreciation for guys in black leather corsets.

24. So my reputation is that I am a Virginal Kink, possibly one who has no idea what she is getting into, which is objectively true, but I do resent the patronizing that comes along with it.

25. I just really want to try out and learn pretty much everything, I’m just waiting until it’s mutual before I give up my V-card. I figure that’s how it should be. until that point: practice, practice, practice.