A third ingredient to the mix is homoerotic. There is no way to avoid this with groups of three. Even in the most repressed situations, at least two out of the three people are of the same gender, and all parties are interested in the situation, else they would stop participating.

In my story, as in my perceptions of cuckoldry from real life, betrayal is on the horizon. There’s a real possibility that any pair may break off from the group and form a greater intimacy. That prospect keeps the game competitive, and the players had better give their best performances, bank on everything they have in their bag of tricks—because, ultimately, someone must lose.

Innocence in Extremis

Debra Boxer

I am twenty-eight years old and I am a virgin. People assume a series of decisions led to this. They guess that I’m a closet lesbian, or too picky, or clinging to a religious ideal. “You don’t look, talk, or act like a virgin,” they say. For lack of a better explanation, I am pigeonholed as a prude or an unfortunate. If it’s so hard to believe, I want to say, then imagine how hard it is for me to live with.

I feel freakish and alien, an anomaly that belongs in a zoo. I walk around feeling like an impostor, not a woman at all. I bleed like other women, yet I feel nothing like them, because I am missing this formative experience.

I won’t deny that I have become attached to my innocence. If it defines me, who am I without it? Where will my drive come from, and what will protect me from becoming as jaded as everyone else? I try to tell myself that innocence is more a state of mind than body. That giving myself to a man doesn’t mean losing myself to a cynical world. That my innocence doesn’t hang by a scrap of skin between my legs.

In college, girls I knew lost it out of impatience. At twenty-one, virginity became unhealthy, embarrassing—a female humiliation they could no longer be burdened by. Some didn’t tell the boy. If there was blood, they said it was their period. I cannot imagine. Some of those same boys thought it was appalling, years ago, that I was still a virgin. “I’ll fuck you,” they said. It sounded to me like, “I’ll fix you,” and I did not feel broken.

I don’t believe I’ve consciously avoided sex. I am always on the verge of wholly giving myself away. I think emotionally, act intuitively. When I’m attracted to someone, I don’t hold back. But there have been only a handful of times when I would have gladly had sex. Each, for its own reason, did not happen. I am grateful to have learned so much in the waiting—patience, strength, and ease with solitude.