a whore & a virgin

Depending on your definition, I may or may not be a whore, but my friend Betty unquestionably is a virgin.

She looks a lot like her Riverdale gang namesake: tall, blonde, blue-eyed, pink lipped. Betty was born and raised in the heartland of America, and she has the old-time pre-Vatican II religion, hard-line moral code, and terribly sweet disposition that stereotypically define those fly-over red states. She is twenty-nine, a Catholic, a virgin, and my friend.

Weird, isn’t it.

In part our friendship is a testament to Betty’s ability to repress and deny. She knows of my history as a stripper, but she is one of the very few who has never asked me about it, nor has she made any sidelong, nuanced and condescending reference  to it. She can visualize a vague and dreamy Monet watercolor of my sexual history, but she likes living in a place that spares her all of the glorious gory details.

For example, when she came and visited my apartment during the time of previous live-in boyfriend, she looked at our bed and announced that she would pretend he slept on the couch. And when I tell her of my dating, she will accept without question my tamed down version of my activities with menfolk; she and I just say that I “made out.” And it’s cool. I pretend that’s what I did rather than fuck him silly, and she pretends that I’m not pretending. It’s a beautiful circle of plausible denial.

I would do just about anything to keep her from reading this blog, however. Even she cannot deny the printed word. Indeed, both of us have staked our livelihood on our abilities to read and write, so this writing is most assuredly not for Betty’s eyes.

I met Betty her first day teaching at the institution where we are both Ph.D. candidates. I offered her a piece of gum and she has been eternally in my debt. Six years ago, when I met Betty, she was still very much the mid-West farmer’s daughter (for the record, her father, like mine, is a lawyer) so nice to people that it hurt her.

I like to think that in no small part I’ve helped her become more of a fully-functioning New Yorker. She no longer bows and scrapes to people who will gladly walk on her bent back. And she definitely has a slightly wider and compassionate view of what constitutes love—she even haphazardly ended up being a gay matchmaker between two gay friends of hers.

Even though she’s not entirely happy about it. Her mouth draws together like an equal sign when she’s not entirely happy. But at least now she voices her unhappiness a bit more often than she used to.

She used to just purse her lips and take it.

Betty’s growing acceptance of otherness has not quite approached a small “c” catholic attitude, though. I remember telling her of an acquaintance whom I said I was pretty sure would “assign me cheerfully to a little corner of hell.” Much as she herself would.

“Well,” said Betty, “not cheerfully.” Just a bit of judgment there.

She does, however, pray for my soul, and I kind of like the idea, even if I don’t believe in the God to whom she’s doing it.

Her praying is as much a testament to our friendship as is our bi-yearly trips to the Met, our movie going, our incessant conversation about celebrities. The fact that I give her US Weeklys for her plane rides home and know the color of lipgloss that would look good on her. The fact that I could buy her a wardrobe in her color, size and style, had I the money.

We’re very good friends. We just don’t talk about everything. Like politics. Or abortion. Or sex. Much. And it’s weird to have a friend with whom I have paradoxically and simultaneously so much and so little in common.

Part of my love for her is this: she is consistent. Betty is a woman who does not know how to be hypocritical. (With the exception of some fundamental Catholic beliefs that I don’t know enough about to argue, but that drive Donny mad with liberal Catholic frustration.) In short, I don’t understand her choice to wait to fuck for marriage, but I can respect it.

And I have little doubt she’ll get exactly what she wants: a Catholic man who loves her and will commit to her in the way that she and her church mandate.

It takes all kinds.

Last summer, Betty finally got a boyfriend. She came back from the land of amber waves of grain all aglow with love. We had ice cream  at Cones on Bleeker Street and talked of her hymen. Actually, of her virginity and how I hoped she would someday have the opportunity to lose it.

“Come on, Chelsea,” she said, “tell me: is sex that great?”

Oh God. Yes.

I told her to imagine she’d never had chocolate and take the best chocolate she’s had and then to quintuple that experience. And then quintuple that. Then imagine that she and the chocolate had a meeting of the minds. And then, maybe then, she’d begin to have a gossamer notion of what sex was like.

Her boyfriend—a total tool who wore too short shorts, among other venial sins—dumped her because Betty had movie posters of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Seriously, he said he wanted to be her fantasy man. He was that insecure.

Sigh.

I hope to high heaven, literally, Betty gets to find out for herself how unearthly, how celestial, how magical sex can be. It makes me sad to think of this beautiful loving woman never getting to know what it is to be Known. Biblically. And I’ve told her so.

But even more, I hope the best for my friend. I hope that she gets what she wants—a sanctified man—and she gets one who knows how to love every inch of her virgin body.

She deserves it. We all do. Virgin or whore, or something somewhere in between.

Comments

[bruised fruit]

yeah well tell betty that ken from amber waves of grain is most likely gay the shorts are a dead give away hey it's not like there's anything wrong with it it's just facts is facts she shouldn't feel too bad about that

in fact i think i'm in love with betty i always preferred her over veronica

[Autumn]

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones was hot. Even men should know this. Gah.

And, good for you to have such a wonderful relationship with her, despite, and because of, your differences. One of my closest friends is born and raised Christian, and we get a long very well, as long as we stay of certain topics.

[nemo]

hi.
i just need to get this off my chest and thats why i am posting this. i have a problem - a huge one, i am an uncontrollable sex maniac. i am still a virgin - but i cant stop thinking fantasizing and dreaming up sex scenarios and sexual encounters. I am into phone sex with three girls and make them and myself miserable by talking of sex when its not possible. why is it not possible? well. first i would like to keep myself for my wife-i am 29 (it seems the toughest thing to be able to do, the day i meet any of my phone sex friends-i guess i wont be a virgin.)
the second part is religious beleifs and conservatism. i would like to believe in a free society and free sex but i cant look the other way to religion..am a muslim.... i dont know what to do. i am a base person guising himself as an angel of chastity.
i hope one day i can either be a chaste person or be a proper street smart guy.
adios