virginity

I sat beside a pretty girl while I was taking the jeepney to work today. She was very attractive - fair skin; pretty face; matching orange bag, blouse, and sox, as well as brown belt and bag; silver jewelry conservatively worn. She was indeed a lovely sight.

However as I looked at this stranger who squirmed at my unintentional yet intrusive stare, an out-of-place question suddenly popped in my head.

"I wonder if she's still a virgin?"

I have no idea why I came up with that. But then it got me thinking. What is virginity anyway?

Is it the possession of an unbroken hymen? Or the absence of sexual experience/ intercourse? It's a big deal for a lot of people - virginity. Maybe because of the conservative nature of our culture. I'm not sure, but I couldn't care less about it. I have long since lost my virginity and have made no effort whatsoever to hide it.

Some time in college though, being the psycho freak that I am, I started a pseudo study on myself and a number of girls I was acquainted with.

I hypothesized the possibility of determining virginity by mere 3rd person observation. So with just a critical look, I will be able to know if a girl is a virgin or not.

Of course with the aide of personal experience, observation, and the expo facto I had about my female acquaintances, I had come to deduce that one important characteristic of a girl that has lost her virginity, is the amount of attention she pays to her choice of undergarments.

Yes, girls who are no longer virgin tend to pay more attention to their choice of underwear (and with good reason if I do say so myself).

I thought I was pretty good at spotting this by now. I noticed that girls who were more meticulous with the color, style, design, and quality of their lingerie were less likely to be virgin.

How did I devise a method to learn this? I became an Avon dealer which placed me in a very good position to access what would otherwise be sensitive information. And so that was my conclusion.

But here I was, in a jeepney, staring at this pretty girl without the faintest idea if she was virgin or not. And queer as it was, this bothered me.

So I have come to realize that maybe virginity is not supposed to be something determined by just observation. Maybe it's less palpable than that.

I'm thinking maybe virginity is like temper.

• Not many people will know to what extent you have it. But if you're careless, everybody will find out
• Some people find it valuable how long you can hold on to it
• Everybody has it, but more often than not, almost everyone, at one point or another has lost it.