Last month, my brother David and I drove down to Venice Beach to hang out for a few hours before I dropped him at the airport for his return flight to Texas. It was a Friday after working hours and people were out. I mean, out out. Before us lay a panorama of swimsuits and tan skin.

Walking along along the bike paths, I noticed how attractive the groups of women were. How beautiful and inquisitive. My eyes did a double-take and landed on two of them behind us. They turned and walked into a coffee shop a few doors down.

As David and I moved on, I thought, So that's where your mind goes when you haven't gotten any in a while. Or in my case, ever. Not only am I a virgin, but one who apparently forgets that he is one, too.

Blame it on global warming, an exhaustive job search or the fact that I'm working my way through a chronic injury (see below), but it still doesn't cross my mind as much as you might expect. Then, it does, and the obsession starts. Why am I still a virgin? I wonder. What's stopping me? Why haven't I crossed that bridge?

As it turns out, like most of life, it boils down to just a few things. Three reasons, by what I gathered. Each are related and like dominoes, as one goes, so go the others.

Here are the reasons why I believe I'm still a virgin after over twenty years of trying.

1. Physical Discomfort Due to Chronic Pain

The last time I attempted penetrative sex was in the midst of the pandemic. It was early 2022, only a few days removed from New Year's, and I had met someone online. The woman was attractive, funny, and "open" to casual, sexual experiences. She also happened to live nearby. We had drinks and eventually made it back to her apartment.

After making out on her couch and following her to her bedroom, my back began to stiffen. That's the wrong body part, I thought to myself. She proceeded to help me undress.

A few moments later, I was laying in front of her, attempting to go down on her while experiencing lower back spasms as my half erection withered and my face winced with pain.

"Are you okay?" she asked. My body or my best laid plans? I said, "Yeah, but there's something I should tell you." I pulled myself off of her and decided to put her mind at ease.

Lying next to her, feeling as comfortable as you can with a stranger you met hours earlier, I began telling her about my condition, Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS), how it came on slowly in the course of my thirties. How it's likely related to my scoliosis, but seems to be exacerbated by a dysregulated nervous system as well. I told her how, in my early forties, it's the worst it's ever been. Not disabling, just increasingly limiting. Slowly, we got back up to dress.

I finished by telling her it was nearly impossible to attempt sex in my condition. Not only painful, but scary and distracting as hell. To put it differently, being in pain while resting is one thing, but experiencing it while in motion is much more intense. Even typing this story is difficult. With good posture and frequent breaks, I still function day-to-day.

I don't know if the physical aspect of being unable to have sex will change, but I do know this: being in constant nerve pain during waking hours is difficult enough.

I'm hopeful that it will one day heal itself from MPS. The sex I dream about is painless, not excruciating, and I only have one body to experience it with.

2. Porn-induced Erectile Dysfunction (P.I.E.D.)

This one stings because I could have avoided it had I been willing to make some better choices, and paid closer attention to what I let myself consume. I chose a different path, though. Somehow, I don't think I'd be a virgin if I was not a pornography addict, also.

P.I.E.D. occurs in men when the brain is desensitized due to consistent porn use flooding their neural pathways with dopamine, the end result being that real-life sexual experiences are not stimulating enough for them to sustain arousal. I've written firsthand accounts of this, and it's not pretty. It's confusing and painfully real for all parties involved. More than that, it's avoidable, and as porn use in young men keeps increasing, it's something both parents and teenage boys should learn about if the latter are sexually active.

I began experiencing P.I.E.D. almost eight years ago, in my early thirties, and though I was aware of what was happening, continued masturbating to porn with regularity until I entered a recovery program in 2019. This timeframe contained consistent episodes of malfunction, so much so that I eventually had to stop attempting penetrative sex all together.

There was the woman I met in my neighborhood, developed feelings for and tried to sleep with. There was another woman I met months later, but could not become exclusive with due to lack of sex. The length of time between partners increased, and it was a year later before I met someone who, despite sharing incredible mental and emotional chemistry, I still could not get an erection around. It's shocking, even today. Everything seemed to work except my private parts when called upon.

When I wrote Looking At Naked Women in Real Life, I was dating someone who almost become my girlfriend after meeting at a bar and getting to know each other over the course of six months. I took a chance and told her about my addiction. She read my article and liked it. She appreciated how vulnerable I was and how different I was from other men.

Still, when it came time for sex, I couldn't be with her that way and the relationship suffered. It pained me to see how it affected someone else up close. Women need sex despite my Christian upbringing saying otherwise. We wished each other well and parted ways before the pandemic. I haven't mustered the capacity to date anyone or pursue a woman since.

P.I.E.D. begins as a strange phenomenon that, in my case, caused me to retire from sexual encounters altogether. I'll return at some point, but not until I'm confident I've rewired my brain enough to become naturally stimulated.

I want to experience sex, but I also want to stop watching pornography. Thankfully, one requires the other. The first one will happen when my mind has finally healed.

3. The Long-Lasting Effects of Sexual Shame

Lately, I've had the sneaky suspicion that I'm about to really learn some things about myself. I supposed you could say I'm already learning them. I feel like I've been contracted for so long, I can't help but start expanding.

When it comes to my virginity, I feel most strongly about this third reason because I've carried it the longest. It's not noticeable like the first two, but sifting through it instead of running from it might just be where the self-discovery journey begins.

Picking up where E.D. leaves off, I believe the reason I watch porn is because of the underlying safety it provides. It's voyeurism at its most delectable: watching from a distance so I don't have to participate. Let's drive that point further: I don't have to do anything. No kissing or foreplay. No intimacy or immediacy. I certainly don't have to experience any depth of feeling and act on it. No penetration between humans as we've committed to for thousands of years.

But why, if I might ask a follow-up, do I feel so comfortable with not participating? With being a happy voyeur? Someone who is romantic and relational, and still waiting on the sidelines? That's the real learning curve, once I get real with myself. I took it to my therapist last year to see if she might back me up.

"Stephen, you didn't exactly have a dialogue around sex," she said, lovingly. "You had no discussion, no teaching. You were told not to do it because of the Purity Culture, but that's it. Of course, you're going to have moments where you feel like this is wrong."

It is wrong, I thought to myself as I sat across from her in her office during the latter stages of the pandemic. It's always been wrong. From making out with a girl in high school and getting scolded by her parents, to sneaking around with my first love, because her mother suspected us and forbid me from spending the night. Even in my late twenties, traveling halfway across the world to visit my girlfriend, but realizing, to my dismay, that sex was impossible because she was guilt-ridden as well. Our parents were old friends; the religious circle was complete. I never realized just how much I was afraid of sex until I started trying to have it with someone else.

I never realized how much it scares me. Still. I feel like it's wrong and that I'll get in trouble, so I stay away.

Sexual shame is the link that, although I still may not understand it, trumps any sort of physical dysfunction I may be going through at any moment. It's the tipping point, a mountain I'm still climbing and navigating at the precipice of middle age.

When I do lose my virginity, I will know that I've shed the weight of it. Something that I never asked for, but was forced to carry until I was strong enough to let it go.

Atforty-three, I now know that most people who cross paths with me assume I'm not a virgin. They've told as much, and I'd react the same, if I were them. I don't like it, but in our fast-paced culture, we think everyone who graduates college has at least some experience unless they've taken a vow of celibacy.

Looking closer, I wonder if any strangers at all can tell since that detail would never reveal itself in public. It is not a handicap, a deformity, or a classified disorder. There is no indication of it in daylight, only at nighttime if the opportunity for intimacy progresses.

I wonder, if I'd talked to those Venice women, if they would somehow notice what was different about me? If I'd shared a cup of coffee with them, would they pick up on what sets me apart?

I did not speak to them on the edge of the boardwalk that evening, just grabbed pizza and beer with David. The two of us sat outside the small cafe and talked about how life speeds up. The sun moved over the water, past the beachcombers. At long last, the array of athletic bodies dispersed with their tank tops and different shades of tan skin.

I could have slept with one of them, I told myself on the drive home from the airport. Isn't that strange? That's something I can still do!

It's just that I have a few other things to do first. When I finish them, I'll throw my trunks on and drive back to the beach for a cup of coffee.