the perils of virginity

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What is it that is so alluring about virginity?

In the human sense, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense since a loss of virginity is the sine qua non (let's leave the Virgin Mary and asexual reproduction out of it) of the human race.

In the metaphorical sense, virginity reflects something pure, something unmixed, something innocent, something clear. The longing to anoint or be anointed with such qualities (an understanding or course of action) is a delightful dream, but does it make much sense? Evolutions, whether literal or metaphorical, mean getting your cherry popped: What is assured becomes uncertain; what is whole becomes fragmented; what is good is touched by evil ... and that's how things are nourished and wax and change.

What brought this to mind was a report in Saudi Arabia warning that if women were given the right to drive, "it would spell the end of virginity in the country." The ludicrousness of the proposition cannot change the fact that someone -- and probably quite a lot of someone's -- might actually credit the notion. Pointing out the idiocy of the suggestion is a cheap and smug date. More interesting to me is the foundation for interfering in someone's contribution to the continuation of the human race... or even just having a good time.

It's a question worth wondering, I think: Whether socially or personally, who died and left this belief or mandate in the cat bird seat? Anyone might set up a pristine set of thoughts or philosophies -- the virgin, irrefutable truth -- but without the willingness to examine this virgin soil, the best that can be said of it is that bigots flourish ... whether within or without.

The older I get the more amazed and irritable I become at the very human capacity either to tell others what to do and imagine that there is some right to do so or to place some house-of-cards mandate on myself. Even a meager investigation of the human environment shows that purity and perfection and conclusions don't hold up very well. And since every virgin notion gets its cherry popped, what the hell is so compelling about this virgin territory in the first place?

The only honest virgin I can think of is this moment -- this right now, whatever the hell that is -- which is only virgin to the extent that it is always getting its cherry popped. Life is in the driver's seat and the virgins are all in back, imagining what it might be like to get laid.

Once again, I am brought around to something as simple as a wry bumper sticker: "Don't believe everything you think."
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