Around this time last year, I wrote an article about what it’s like being a virgin in St Andrews.
Because I’m running out of ideas, and I think it added something important to conversations about St Andrean sexual politics, I decided to write a follow-up. Now, a lot of things have changed since 2017, but only one matters for the purposes of this article. Just one year ago, I was a neurotic, painfully awkward and emotionally immature virgin, with no idea how to negotiate the social and sexual realities of adult relationships.
Today, however, I’m no longer a virgin. I am a Post-Virgin.
A Post-Virgin (don’t bother googling it, I just made the term up now), is someone who gets hung up about their virginity, and expects the earth to move when they lose it. When it doesn’t, when the Post-Virgin achieves their hole but not their goal (I’m sorry, I can’t believe I just typed that), when they are deflowered but not empowered (right, I’ll stop) they lapse back into having the same unhealthy attitudes they had towards sex while still virgins. I mean, I’m reasonably sure this is a distinct category of people, but even if it isn’t, it’s a way to talk about my own ongoing sexual misadventures while maintaining the degree of distance you get from using ‘they’ instead of ‘I’.
So, as the first few hundred words of this article should have made clear, I am a terrible person, with a poor grasp of how sex works. However, last year, I both slept with, and had a relationship with somebody. Sadly, it was in that order: we hooked up on Tinder in the afternoon, and then hooked up in the more literal sense in the evening. Because we had slept together, we had to sleep together again, because that’s what you do when you find someone willing to sleep with you, isn’t it? And because we had slept together, I assumed I had the intelligence and maturity to deal with a relationship. Those assumptions led to a relationship that gave both of us a lot of unnecessary stress.
What I’m asking, then, is difficult for the reasons above, but also necessary. Necessary, because even the best pretence can crack, and when it does, you’ll be the one holding the sharp edges. So, here goes:
My name is Jamie Rodney. I’m almost 21 years old. I have been in relationships. I also don’t know how to be in relationships. And that kind of sucks, but I think it’s better people know, and if any of this article rang true with you, I’d encourage you to admit the same.