virginity restores culture
boyfriend is telling me about how america used to pride itself on grit and story-telling. the more you’d seen and done, the more people you’d been, the more life, the more passion, the more heart and steel and stone of being an american. that was before i was alive. i am alive in the age of virginity. when people are not enraptured by the spirit of life, but horrified of it. where america feels so media-saturated the only salvation is virginity. being 29 and never trying a beer. adults who don’t look like adults. sexless and too good for everything. fractured and complicated lives don’t show signs of strength like it used to. he articulated something i’d noticed in my life now, my first time being this old. the world can’t be entertained by a good story, by wrinkles on people not in their 80’s, by failure and promises and love endings and low pay and tires popping and parties and experience. it’s not funny, interesting, inspiring, or sad, a life that wavers from point to point all in the pursuit of life. it now means suffering, always the suffering and nothing else. i started piecing it together for myself when i couldn’t tell anyone my stories. as a woman, i haven’t, and likely won’t get to have my sylvia plath moment and tell anyone a story at the bar that will endear men and women alike, enlighten and entertain. i’m too titted up for that. maybe when the wrinkles set in for real and i start teasing my thinning hair up high. but i have them, the stories she was looking for. and i love people with them, like my boyfriend. i am alive when the world is putting on sunscreen to sit indoors and i just have all of this stuff.