No problem, except when you leave college and go back to the world of normal people — people with jobs and bills and debt who live in suburban wastelands, drive bad American cars, and are related to you — you are forced to come to terms with who you are. You Are Not Different. It's ugly. You remind yourself no rich Daddy paid your way there: you're the sole Virgin Dormee on scholarship. Your parents actually eat meat and potatoes — no macrobiotic options at this cafeteria. They've never heard of croquet or Kierkegaard. All the differences come crashing down, and there you are: ponytailed, in jean shorts and Adidas, eating fries with your primary-school best friend in the local McDonald's parking lot, realizing that no, sexual intercourse is just what your people do.

But summer was not forever. Sophomore year began, and I was back in old form — deconstructed dress shirts, metallic lipstick, gartered fishnets — and picking at cafeteria sashimi with golden chopsticks while chain-smoking Nat Sherman Fantasias. Errol greeted me by making a cluster of artistically arranged hickeys on my neck. He had made some exciting purchases, he wanted me to know: a shiny anal vibrator, not to mention hermaphrodite porn from Prague. It was all back to abnormal!

But the thing was, I felt suddenly rusty about our old ways. The rationale was foggier than before. Our audience was gone. There was a whole new flock of Virgin Dormees for the campus to corrupt. What use were we now?

Still, it never occurred to me to doubt Errol until a mutual friend approached me and asked me last year's question: why I thought Errol would do everything but It anyway.

I was still a cult member. I beamed dumbly like a TomKat-era Katie Holmes, far too indoctrinated in my partner's
ways for self-consciousness or shame. "That vaginal-intercourse shit is so our parents' generation, so old school, so mainstream, you know?"

Mutual Friend groaned, having heard our shtick too much by now. "I think you should know that your man is not some genius sex artist. He's a virgin."

I laughed. Oh, how I laughed! Too loud, too long, for what felt like hours, days even, weeks, that laughter of delirious, deluded women. The idea drove me nuts. It was so painfully obvious, and yet I had never examined the fine print beneath Errol's preferences. Virginity was one thing when tagged stylishly to a girl's dorm room, but to a guy — the horror! Adult males were just not virgins!

I had to deprogram myself, make a definitive break from Errol. But how? The answer was standing in front of me: cheat on him. With Mutual Friend, who was incredibly average by real-world standards and therefore exotic at SLC.

Once in MF's room, I took the reins and arranged him on top of me. We proceeded to engage in very biologically programmed, traditional sexual intercourse. Like any first sexual encounter, it was slightly off — too fast, too soft, too dry, too quiet, then too loud — but the awkwardness was a beautiful thing to me. In all my time with Errol, I had forgotten that I loved Intercourse the Ritual.

Soon, I became that secretly coveted thing, The Girlfriend. We did it once a day. I got infections. I considered oral contraceptives. Upon the first condom rupture, I skipped to the nurse's office and expressed pregnancy panic like I was collecting a Girl Scout badge. When I downed the morning-after pill with a swig of beer, it was like being home again. I was with a man who did It and had done It before, an It never exceeding anything more than pure, simple, the-way-your-grandparents-did-it, mediocre Intercoursing!

Meanwhile, Errol disappeared. Onward to some new disciple, I'm sure. I always thought of him as my virgin, but I suppose I could never prove it. In an anthropology class that year, I learn that only in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands of South Africa can tribal leaders determine male virginity through a simple physical exam. Not only can they detect a "male hymen," they can tell by how you pee (projectile stream = virgin; messy spray = done It) and by the shade of your knees versus your legs.

In Errol's case, it's a shame eyeballs don't tell tales.