For the Class of 2024, Some Fear Virginities May Never Be Lost

For many incoming first years, losing their virginity seems like a rite of passage before the college experience can really begin. Some make pacts with their buddies to lose it during their senior year of high school and, if the plot of my raunchy YA rom-com is to be believed, instead end up falling in love with their buddy after losing their virginity to the coolest kid in school. Some make agreements with their roommate to lose it during New Student Orientation and, again, if the plot of the darker, more mature sequel to my raunchy YA rom-com is to be believed, instead end up falling in love with their roommate after a positive but ultimately directionless, slightly suspicious experience with their residential advisor. 

However, after losing the end of their senior year of high school and the beginning of their first year of college, there's a thought on many minds: Now, when will they ever get the chance to lose their virginities? And, more importantly, when will they realize that they’ve been in love with the friend who has been under their noses the entire time?

There may never be a chance to retrieve these experiences that the first-year class has lost. Opportunities to lose your virginity only become scarcer with age, and opportunities to fall in love with your long-suffering, patiently waiting best friend become almost nonexistent.

 I still haven’t gotten any declarations of love from my first-year best friend, and I had a standard first-year experience, so I can’t imagine it happening for any of you. Or maybe it will, because you don’t get to interact with anyone other than each other, so when the campus reopens fully, you’ll both stew quietly in your possessive jealousy until you admit that you never wanted social interaction with anyone other than each other all along. I smell a threequel.

Exploitative and generally inaccurate college romance movies aside, the idea that one may never lose their virginity is terrifying. I mean, I assume. I wouldn’t be trying to pitch romantic comedies about 18-year-olds if I had a very good understanding of the human experience. Just go forth, young virgins, and remember that however you end up losing your virginities and/or falling in love with your best friends, I would very much like to make a movie about your experience. And I’ll make it so fricking quirky.