In America, to be poor, or black, or fat, or trans, or Native, or old, or disabled, or undocumented, among other things, is usually to have become acquainted with unwantedness.
None of the people I interviewed believed that they were owed the sex that they wished to have. It is also entirely possible to process a difficult social position with generosity and grace. It is a horrible thing to feel unwanted-invisible, inadequate, ineligible for the things that any person might hope for. But he had worked hard, he told me, to start thinking of himself as a person who was capable of a relationship-a person who was worthy of, and could accept, love. “Sometimes I think, why would a woman like that ever want me?” he said. “Not having erotic capital, not being part of the sexual marketplace . . . that’s a serious thing in our world! I mean, practically everyone has sex, so what’s wrong with me?” A twenty-six-year-old man who was on the autism spectrum and had been molested as a child wondered, “If I get naked with someone, am I going to take to it like a duck to water, or am I going to start crying and lock myself in the bathroom?” He hoped to meet someone who saw life clearly, who was gentle and independent. “Embarrassed doesn’t even cover it,” a thirty-two-year-old woman who chose the pseudonym Bette told me. Some were not, sometimes for complicated, overlapping reasons: disability, trauma, issues related to appearance, temperament, chance. Some of the people I talked to were virgins by choice. To my surprise, messages came rolling in. I knew my first subject personally, and, after I interviewed her, I put out an open call.
Lately I have been thinking about one of the first things that I ever wrote for the Internet: a series of interviews with adult virgins, published by the Hairpin.