I Was a Virgin Nymphomaniac

Entering high school with the highest sex drive I’ve ever had in my life to date, my Freshman year was tortuously frustrating. Not because I wanted every guy in sight, but exactly because I didn’t. I desperately wanted someone, yet my fantasies brought my standards so high, and I judged so thoroughly on first sight, that no one seemed good enough.

No, too fat. No, too tanned. Too hairy. Too tall. Watch for an erection… nope, too small.

It didn’t help that girls are expected to be practically sexless. We’re not supposed to want sex, we’re supposed to use it. We’re not supposed to be attracted to a male body; maleness is supposed to be an ugly and silly thing that we tolerate for its usefulness. Knowing that I didn’t feel this way, and being encouraged to think I was alone in it, did wonders to isolate me from my own sex for fear of its judgment, and to make even just experiencing lust seem so taboo that it was made all the stronger.

So, with a boiling sex drive I wasn’t supposed to have, and very specific tastes that seemed unmeetable, I was almost convinced that I was somehow broken on both levels and that I would go on like this, desperate for the impossible, through the rest of my life.

That’s how primed I was for Kyle.

Catching a lot of flak for being short and skinny and perceived as pretty feminine, girls called Kyle cute and treated him like a little brother; boys were more vicious. But I think the treatment from the girls hurt him more. Yet I thought he was beautiful.

When the first school dance of the year rolled in, I showed up dateless and depressed, but seeing Kyle off at a chair in a corner, I challenged myself to have the nerve and skill to make the best of the opportunity. He didn’t seem to notice as I closed in, and as I saw his dejected-looking state, I wanted to be delicate, but playful.

I carefully took the seat behind him, plus a deep breath, and lightly tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up from staring at the floor’s tiles and craned his neck around, saw me and widened his eyes in nervous attentiveness.

“What’s wrong?” I fought to be heard over the noise.

Confusion sat on his face for a moment. “Oh! Right.” He shook his head, putting some motion into fluffy, light hair. “Nothing. This is my neutral state.” He chuckled at his self-deprecation.

I don’t think my face showed anything. “Do you have a date?”

“April twenty-second.”

I was embarrassed to smile at the joke, but I couldn’t help it.