v-cards: part two, the higher education edition.

This was sort of what I was like, except I didn't have any friends.

God, I hated college.

College is really weird because essentially you're just throwing horny, inexperienced children into a building where they can sleep together and throw up from drinking too much Bacardi 151. You don't know ANYBODY and you're desperate to make friends, so you hang out with people who have absolutely nothing in common with you and would otherwise make your skin crawl. You'll try anything, you'll talk to anyone, you'll wear whatever. You'll encounter many people that are nothing like you.

So anyway, I met a guy. Actually, I met a lot of guys. A lot of virgin guys.

My whorish self was quite unaccustomed to having someone stop me when I reached for their pants.

"Wait, Chelsea, I have something to tell you... I'm a virgin."

"Are you fucking serious? AGAIN?"

But, I fell for one of the never-been-touched crowd. I have no idea what it was I liked about this guy. Really. I couldn't articulate it if I wanted to. He was unambitious, pretentiously into literature, and ridiculously jealous of my success in school. He was one of those guys that sits in basements and plays World of Warcraft. His mother still did his laundry. He wasn't very good at oral sex. I had to pressure him after three months to actually become my boyfriend. Yes. I had to talk him into it. I'm not going to go into how wrong that is - you should already know.

But you know how these things go. You love people, for reasons that no one, especially not you, understands. You pretend to like metal and get taped for the Killswitch Engage tour DVD. You pretend to enjoy playing MMORPGs and hanging out in his crappy small town in central Massachusetts. You pretend to like his mother. You pretend to understand the big words he drops to make himself feel intelligent. You pretend to like his poetry. You pretend, and pretend, and fake everything because you're so desperate to keep this person near you.

And so I pretended to treat taking his virginity like a BFD (big fucking deal, for those of you not versed in hip acronyms). 

It was an afternoon, just like any other afternoon. The door to my single bedroom was closed. I don't think any of my other roommates were home. The shades were drawn on the windows, which overlooked a 6' by 6' concrete courtyard with dead pigeons in it, and the light was soft. I don't remember the exact logistics - a problem to be blamed on my overzealous alcohol consumption and the fact that I try to block out any and all memories of my mouse-infested shithole of a freshman dorm room. His apprehension was boring, as all perceived apprehension about something is when you're the one who's done it a million times. I believe it was missionary. I don't believe it took very long. I believe he made some statement post-coitus about his feelings, which I'm sure I dismissed with some kind of assuaging statement. And all I remember thinking was: I shaved my pubes for this?

 What a waste. Razors are so expensive.

Every first time, for the most part, sucks. It has to suck. It's a sport - some would say, even a game - and everybody sucks when they start playing. This is why I don't understand why virginity is valued so highly. It just means that when you finally have sex with that person, it's guaranteed to be awful.

I like to think of my v-card takings as an act of valiance, freeing these men from the inevitability of terrible intercourse with hopes to set them on a path toward a more fulfilling sex life. It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it. I've gone into retirement, but I'll never forget the acts I did in the name of mankind.

I can't stop reading Mormon lady blogs.

I can't help myself. I feel like I'm on a different planet than these people. They're all shiny, attractive, wrinkle-free and wholesome. They've never smoked a cigarette in their lives and they don't watch cable television because it's too crass. They got married at 19 and knocked up at 20 because they're all dying to address their sexualities but aren't allowed to do so outside the contract of matrimony. They think coffee is the work of the devil and they all end up with men that are pre-med but somehow have the money to buy new houses and cars. These people live in an alternate universe where no one is black, gay, fat, poor, or cynical. They put on a happy face and pretend that life is beautiful while they suffocate under the burden of being perfect. They chastize the drunks and addicts but make sure to take their Prozac and Xanax every day, claiming the hand of a doctor somehow divine. They redress doubt not through exploration or rejection, but reaffirmation.

Now, don't consider me an expert. I've only met three actual church-going Mormons in my life. The first two were missionaries brought into my Comparative Religions class in high school. The only things I remember about them were their strange, stilted way of speaking about their church, and the long dowdy skirts they wore. The only other Mormon? A closeted beefcake of a man who slept with Joel. My interest in the culture of LDS and Utah grew, naturally, through the depiction of a polygamous fundamental LDS family on a critically-acclaimed cable television show. Yes, I'm talking about Big Love.

 

I don't know what I find more fascinating - their complete naivete or their thinly-veiled pretentiousness. They're so excited about "helping" people, but their version of helping is bothering people at home and telling them their religion is unsatisfactory and that they need to join the "one true church." They post RENT lyrics and videos of Kristin Chenowith on Broadway, yet pay their tithes to an organized religion that works to ban gay marriage and the ERA.

I guess what intrigues me most is that elements of my life that are SO mundane and banal - getting an iced coffee, dropping an F bomb, wearing a short skirt, buying condoms, having a beer after work, criticizing authority, giving homeless people change - all these things that create the backdrop of my life are not even present in their sheltered little world. Experiences that I find fundamentally American in nature are never experienced by these people. It continues to astound me how multi-layered our society is.

Furthermore, I can't hide my disdain for LDS. I can't pretend I'm not disgusted by the fact one of the faith's founders claimed to have a "calling" just so he could sleep with as many teenaged girls as he wanted without receiving disdain from his followers. I won't trust a religion that refuses to allow the "non-worthy" into their temples, even for their children's weddings. A true church would not turn anyone away. THAT'S "charity"... not baptizing someone posthumously against their wishes. Religion has nothing to do with building $3 billion malls... and it never should.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop reading about their alcohol-free Cinco de Mayo festivities and their Vegas honeymoons sans gambling. There are, apparently, numerous Americas - and I'm happy to live in one of them that's real.

the world according to Chelsea.

I've been thinking a lot about my own personal dogma. I thought it was finally time to articulate my theory of living, be it as crass as it may seem. But, hey, to each her own. I don't expect you to be like me. I doubt your liver could handle it.

1. Do not marry someone unless you have had sex with them.

I don't even get this shit. It blows my mind that there are people in modern Western society who meet someone through church or some other socially-sanctioned "pure" avenue, go on three chaperoned dates with them, and then get engaged at Arby's. They then spend two months planning a wedding with sparkling grape juice and crepe paper streamers. We try on dresses before purchasing them, right? We won't purchase a car if we don't know how it drives. There ain't no marriage lemon law, and I don't like to hesitate. I'm a living exception to the rule that no one's going to buy the cow if they've been getting the milk for free since the second time they met.

2. Every day is worthy of a celebration.

Now I don't mean this in some "OMG life is so beautiful. I am SO blessed! Everything is perfect and I am so adorably awesome!" sort of way. What I'm saying is, why the hell not? Every day is a suitable day to drink a bottle of champagne or wear a party dress or dine at a fancy restaurant you can't really afford. Call it hedonism but I prefer to live my life and enjoy it while I'm still here. So pop the cork and pop it off.

3. Be a whole person.

I like dancing. I also like writing (though it's mostly blatherings about daily occurrences that irritate me or frothy poetic nonsense that I jot down and hide away). I also like arguing about politics, watching documentaries about cults of personality and home decorating. My point is that I don't look to one thing to fulfill me. I never grew up saying "I want more than anything in life to be a wife!" I am a wife, but more importantly, I'm a person. I seek fulfillment through my relationships with other people, but mostly I find that fulfillment in my relationship with myself.

4. Just get over yourself.

I've had the hardest problem with this lately. My envy has been eating me alive. Yes, of course I wish I didn't drive a shitbox from fourteen years ago/have acne AND wrinkles/work a 9 to 5/have lovehandles. And yes, I am pissed off at people who have things that are nicer than my own. However, if I didn't just get the fuck over myself, I would be obsessing about these things ALL THE TIME instead of writing hilarious blog posts for you to read. So actually, you should be thanking me for getting over myself so I can make the world a (warning: subjectivity ahead) better place.

5. Live and die by the Hitachi Magic Wand.

I'm not screwing around with this one. Really. REALLY.

Bow down, bitches, and give thanks to your saviour.

I don't fucking get romance novels.

 I'm not heartless, I swear. Brokeback Mountain made me cry.

I know it's not going to shock anyone, but I really don't care for that whole "I have a uterus and thus I am only interested in storytelling about heterosexual love affairs with non-descript characters and one brutally over-dramatized sex scene" thing. I understand that there is a segment of the female population that secretly reads trashy Harlequin romance novels about ripping corsets and riding "members," and that's fine, because they keep that shit on the down low. Nobody would dare to read "Mistress: Pregnant by the Spanish Billionaire" anywhere remotely public.

But, unfortunately, it is socially acceptable to read the printed diarrhea that is any Nicholas Sparks novel. And I want to punch this douchebag in the face simply for introducing his particular brand of fantastical and formulaic love story into the cultural lexicon.

Yet another movie based on one of Sparks' books just came out, with Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth (don't worry, I have no idea who the fuck he is either) playing the romantic leads. Now, I'm not going to see this piece of shit movie - he's responsible for six of these god-awful things so far, and the only one I saw was A Walk to Remember because I was fifteen and a romance-junkie friend dragged me against my will - but I bet I can narrow the plot down in one sentence: Rebellious individual meets overly generous and kind person, they each learn the error of their own ways, make out, and then one of them dies.

.... And this guy makes MILLIONS of dollars? Why, you ask?

I'll tell you why - because American women are given no great fantasy. We all want to escape our lives, right? Transcend the banality of rising at the same time every morning, working in the same cubicle, bogged down by the decision of whether to have chicken or fish for dinner. Society has established numerous legal avenues for men to just get away from their lives - sports, whiskey, Xbox 360, Tolkien, sportscars, the list goes on, ad infinitum.

What do women get? Romance novels.

It's just assumed that LOVE is all we care about. It's just assumed that from the second we're born with a vagina we're just waiting longingly for our princes to come. All our dreams revolve around the white dress, the diamond ring, the moment of completeness when we find The One and can settle down and start popping out children and never worry about anything again except for The One maybe dying in a mudslide (Nights in Rodanthe) or dropping dead at 17 with leukemia (A Walk to Remember) or enjoying a wonderful life with us and then forgetting the entire thing in old age due to dementia (The Notebook).

So basically, Nicholas Sparks is dictating our greatest desires and deepest fears. I'm so glad there's yet another man who knows exactly what women want. I'm also so glad that the vast majority of women have absolutely no taste in literature, because they're all making me look so much more posh by default.