Kirsten Anderson

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Ariel Hampton

There are many things I haven’t done in life. I’ve never been to California. I’ve never been skydiving, or scuba diving, or even snorkeling. I’ve never been on a date, kissed anyone or had sex.

I know, you’re thinking, “What is UP with you and California?”

Well, we can get to that later. For now, though — about that no date-kiss-sex thing.

It’s very strange being what I call “an adult virgin” in this time in history. One hundred years ago, if you weren’t married, everyone assumed you were a virgin. Now, though, they automatically assume that if you’re over the age of, say, 18, you must not be. But I am over the age of 18 by a pretty decent distance — though I’m not exactly ready for retirement — and I am a virgin.

This can be difficult to explain to people in those situations where it comes up, most often in doctors’ offices or emergency rooms. Emergency rooms are the worst. As any woman knows, you could arrive in the ER with your head broken open and blood spouting from your brains and some resident or nurse would be standing next to you asking, “When was your last period? Are you pregnant? Could you be pregnant? Okay, we’re going to have to do a pelvic exam.” If you say there is no way you could be pregnant (provided you can get the words out past the spouting blood), they sort of look at you like, yeah, sure, everyone says that. If you say you’re sure because you’re not sexually active, they might give you a semi-pitying look as if they think you’re a hopeless naïf who probably just didn’t realize that she has had sex.

(I must confess, sometimes this thought has crossed my mind. I think to myself, Is it possible I had sex and I just don’t remember? I don’t know. I mean, sometimes I have trouble remembering what I wore the day before or things like that, but I like to think I would remember if I had had sex.)

This isn’t something I planned, of course. It’s certainly not a religious thing — I don’t have a bracelet, or a signed promise or anything like that. And trust me, God is not choosing me to carry the Second Coming. There’s got to be better candidates than me or we’re all in trouble.

And it’s not that I’ve been too picky, that I’ve turned my nose up at viable candidates. Simply, no one ever asked. And remember, I mean not just never asked to have sex with me, but never asked me on a date.

When I was in high school and college, this didn’t bother me too much. I knew I was a late bloomer, so I just thought that once I got out of school and into the big wide world, I would meet someone who could see beyond my ugly duckling exterior and sweep the real me off my feet. Or at least I’d meet someone dumb, drunk, desperate or vision-challenged enough to have a go at me. But as it turned out, there were no feet sweeper-offers, and apparently no one dumb, drunk, desperate or vision-challenged enough.

For a while I tried to romanticize my situation. I told myself I was some kind of enchanted princess, someone who floated above everyone else, separate and extraordinary. There had to be something magical in being so extravagantly untouched, didn’t there? But you can only float on that silver bubble for so long. Then suddenly one day it’s gone and you find yourself saying, “What the heck happened here?!”

I’m a fairly logical person, and I like solving problems, so I approached this question like I would any other. The obvious answer is that it’s my looks. I realize I am not very attractive. But then again, it’s not like I have no nose and there are oozing sores all over my body (not that there’s anything wrong with not having a nose or being covered with oozing sores; in fact, I bet people with those issues have had sex). I may be, as I often describe myself, excessively plain, but I am not the ugliest person on earth — though some days that takes some convincing. Surely, though, other people who are not supermodels have had sex.

It reached a point where I would find myself on the subway looking around at other women and thinking about the likelihood that they were not virgins and why. Look at that woman sitting over there. She’s no great beauty. She’s average at best. But she’s got on a wedding ring and has two kids with her who look like they’re definitely from the same gene pool. That’s got to be proof. She must have had sex at least two times. So what’s so great about her? What does she have that I don’t have? Okay, breasts.

But I refuse to believe that all flat–chested women are virgins. How about that woman standing by the door in this car, reading the New Yorker? She’s tall and thin and very sophisticated looking, like she has a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette in the other even when she doesn’t. She can’t be more than an A cup, but she’s just too chic looking to be a virgin (unless by choice, like if she’s in a cult). And I just can’t believe that a woman who is wearing those kind of dominatrix boots has not had sex.

If I eliminate general physical unattractiveness as the reason for my state, though, then I have to deal with the idea that I have a terrible personality. This is a much bigger problem. After all, if it’s just my appearance at least I can try to wear distractingly pretty clothes or get good haircuts. But what if there is just something innately wrong with me? Is there? Am I really that awful? I try to be helpful and polite. I work, so I’m not a shiftless sponge. I’m low-maintenance (one of the benefits of being plain; I mean, you can only do so much). I’m reasonably well-read and can carry on conversations on a number of topics. Or that’s my perception of myself. Could I really be something much worse? Am I grating or boring? What if I’m a bitch and no one has ever told me this? Is it too late to change? Is there a drug that would give me a new, more charming demeanor? As bad as the problem is with my outward plainness, the thought that I might have the world’s worst personality is much, much worse.

No matter how much I have analyzed my situation, no matter how much logic and reason I have applied, it still keeps coming down to just two options: either I am the ugliest girl in the world with a personality that ranks only slightly higher than those of despots and terrorists, or I am one of those people who just slips through the cracks in life — the one who never quite gets a promotion, whose lottery numbers are always one digit off, whose name is mistakenly left off the list. I hope for the latter and fear the former. But with no clear answer in sight, I am left in an odd state, like a somewhat uneasy perpetual 14-year-old who is curious about this sex thing and wonders when it will be her turn.

So what should I do? I guess I could always put an ad on craigslist (“Deflower me!”), and I’d like to think that someone, however suspect, would reply. Though I guess considering how things have gone in the past, I probably shouldn’t make any assumptions. I could ask a well-meaning acquaintance to help me out, but I guess after all this time I’d rather not have pity-sex. I don’t want to be part of someone’s application for sainthood, or the female lead in a barroom story. To complicate things further, I fell hard for someone in the last year or so, and occasionally he casts just enough starlight in my direction to make me believe, even though I know I shouldn’t. Maybe I have turned into the reverse of that 14-year-old, more curious about love than sex.

I don’t know what to do. You learn growing up that time passes by and there is nothing you can do to bring it back, there is no way to go back. But even if I could, I’m not sure what I would do differently, I don’t know where, when, or what went wrong. And now I don’t know what lies ahead. All I can do is wonder, and marvel at the strangeness of it all.

— Kirsten Anderson

One summer day, about two years ago, I stopped at a grocery store, intending to buy … what, exactly, I don’t remember. But I do remember walking by the vegetables at the front of the store, where my attention was drawn to one particular eggplant, balanced precariously on top of a pyramid of aubergines. It was smallish, more purple than black. I picked it up and saw its distinguishing feature: a small bump protruding from its center that looked exactly like a nose. I held it up to the light — with its stem and cap perched at a rakish angle, it looked for all the world like a jaunty, beret-wearing French artiste.

This, ladies and gentlemen, was an eggplant with character. I bought it and took it home.

I named it Jean-Pierre. What was I to do with it? I certainly couldn’t cook it. Maybe I could preserve it somehow. I called Dad, who suggested that I get Jean-Pierre irradiated. Well, that sounded easy. Then he explained that this meant treating Jean-Pierre with radiation. I don’t have any kind of nuclear equipment in my apartment (you know how these small Manhattan apartments are, it’s either the futon or the superconductor), so that was out of the question. I could put him in the freezer, but then if I took him out, he would defrost into a mushy pulp. And what kind of life would Jean Pierre have in the freezer? The ice cube trays don’t have much to say, and everyone knows Haagen-Dazs containers are just pretenders from a fake pseudo-Scandinavian country. Jean Pierre would be miserable in there.

One day I noticed some puckering in Jean-Pierre’s skin. He was beginning to soften as well. I knew I was running out of time. I finally decided that all I could really do was just take a good picture of Jean-Pierre, and let him live through that.

I wondered where I should take the picture. My apartment doesn’t get much light, so that didn’t seem like the right place. The front steps? No, too much traffic. I obsessed about it, discussing all the different options, soliciting opinions from friends and co-workers. If you wanted to take a really good picture of an eggplant, where would you go? Finally I decided that I would take the picture in Central Park.

Then the weather stopped cooperating.

I waited through days of rain and clouds and began to despair — Jean-Pierre was beginning to age rapidly, and I didn’t know how much time we had left. I tried to think of appropriate indoor locations — maybe one of the museums or at a café?

Then the sun burst forth one day, and I knew this was my last best chance. I rushed out of work that afternoon, explaining to everyone that I had to get home so I could bring my eggplant to the park to take his portrait in the perfect summer late-afternoon sun. I took Jean-Pierre out of the hanging basket in the kitchen that had been his home this last week or so, and carefully placed him on the window sill — I don’t even remember what I was doing or why I put him there. I turned my back and, a second later, heard a gentle thump.

I turned around slowly and looked at the windowsill. Jean-Pierre was gone, out the fourth-floor window, a victim of an uneven window sill and gravity.

After all that — in one moment of recklessness, vague stupidity — I had lost Jean-Pierre, and now I didn’t even have a picture to prove he had existed, to remember him by. But I guess I don’t need it. I can close my eyes and see him right there, deep purple, sloping nose and cheery beret. How lucky I am to have known this remarkable vegetable, even for such a short time.

Au revoir, Jean-Pierre.

— Kirsten Anderson