On Choosing a Career

Men have it rough - not only is it traumatic to still be a virgin as each month of your teenage years rolls by, but when the long-anticipated occasion does "arise", it is fraught with anxieties, awkwardness, fumbling and embarrassment. Indeed, losing it, especially in the wrong way, can scar you for life.

Take, for example, my best friend at the time whom we shall call for the nonce Felix. Now Felix, despite his name, was unlucky with the ladies to the extreme. Not only had he not plowed his first furough by the age of 19, he hadn't even had a date. Of the men of our group, as the petals of our virginity were plucked one by one from the bloom our youth, he alone was steadfast in his celebacy. And despite our best efforts to hook him up with the local "sure things", he kept his hitless streak intact.

Our local drinking spot was small and usually frequented by the same patrons night after night. But not on the night Felix lost his virginity.

A married woman, about fifteen years his senior, sat it the corner of the bar, belting them back like there was no tomorrow. I went over to chat her up, with Felix in tow, and gathered through a conversation where every second word was "cocksucker", "asshole", "bastard" and "arsenic" that she had just discovered her husband had been cheating on her.

I got called to the dart board, but Felix lingered, perhaps sensing as a lion senses which gnu of the herd is the weakest and how it could be taken down with least effort. His stratagem: lower her resistance with alcohol, which also had the spin-off effect of building up his courage. I kept watch out the corner of my eye as they swilled back beer and whiskies, and low and behold, about a hour later both were gone and their forest of empties cleared from the bar.

It seems I was not alone in putting two and two together, so we ordered a round, raised our glasses in toast and assumed he had spirited the woman away to the local motel which did a good trade from our pub. At least Felix was finally off our charity list, we thought, and could henceforth take care of himself.

So imagine our surprise when he came in the door fifteen minutes later, face bitten by mosquitos, some brambles on his clothing, and a clump of vomit in his hair. It appears he had done her in the bushes behind the building and the unfortunate lady had "climaxed" orally.

But since he was beaming from ear to ear, we left him alone at the bar, where he stared contentedly into space for the next hour. When his reverie broke, he turned to us and said:

"Boys, I'm thinking of becoming a divorce lawyer". And he did.