Over the hill and far away, there I played. Only a girl, oh so sweet, oh so fair, prancing a dancing without a care. But! No good thing can last. One day, I woke up with an unidentifiably strange feeling within me. Suddenly, I realized what it was– I was missing my virginity! I was frightened. Where had it gone? How could I have lost it? And would I ever be able to find it? My mind was racing and my heart was pounding. I had to calm down. So I remembered Hillary Clinton’s breathing exercise that she wrote about in her book after losing the 2016 election. I trust Hillary, so I did what she said.
In, one, two, three, four. Hold, one, two, three, four. Out, one, two, three, four. Again.
On my final breath out, I felt much better. I realized what I had to do; I had to go on a quest to find my virginity, and I decided that I wouldn’t stop until I found it.
I first called my mother. “Mom,” I said, “I can’t find my virginity anywhere. Have you seen it?”
“What?! Don’t ask me questions like that!”
So I hung up and called my father. “Dad, I’m looking for my virginity. Do you know where it could be?”
“Ummm ughh bleep bloop hrrruughh??” I realized that it was a mistake to bring this up with my parents.
So I turned to the resources provided by Brown University. I made a CAPS appointment. I made a SEAS appointment. I made an appointment with the Swearer Center, even with CareerLAB. None of them knew where I had put my virginity, and I was losing hope at a supersonic rate. But I wasn’t going to give up.
I decided to see if travel would help at all in my quest; maybe my virginity was out of town. I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan, but then I took off my cardigan because it was too hot. I looked high and low up and down the West Coast. My virginity was nowhere to be found! I wasn’t surprised; I hadn’t been to the West Coast in years. So, I decided to leave on a jet plane. I didn’t know when I’d be back again, but oh babe, I hated to go.
But, as I had neither money nor jet plane, I decided to walk five hundred miles. I would have walked 500 more, but I was so tired. Then, just as I started to feel that I might faint, a tiny squirrel scampered past, holding what looked to be like several nuts in his mouth. I thought that was so fun of him! So, delirious, I decided to run after him and find out where he was taking these nuts. I’m not sure why that was the decision I made, but how it was serendipitous! The squirrel led me to a harbor filled with gigantic cruise ships. Fearlessly, I snuck onto one of them!
For the next two weeks until arrival at shore, I successfully acculturated to ship life. Since I had no money with me, I stayed in steerage and worked as a member of the crew. But, on some nights, I would make my way up to the deck where I met fabulously wealthy people, all of whom, it seemed after brief questioning, had also lost their virginities. I didn’t think that the loss of my virginity, however, had to do with wealth, since in steerage the boys would also talk about losing their virginities. Though it was a fun time, I only ended up more perplexed than before and I was relieved when we docked in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I didn’t know anyone in Hawaii when I got there, but I quickly set about in changing that. I signed up to work at an elderly couple’s pineapple farm–I told them that I would work for them in exchange for food and a place to stay–and they let me.
After all this time and energy spent on my quest, I still hadn’t found my virginity. I was getting tired. I strongly felt that the elderly couple might know where it was or at least how to find it, but I didn’t want to spring the question on them too soon. I knew that I needed to earn their trust first. So I waited. Weeks passed. Then months. I picked and planted pineapples and guavas all day, everyday. I helped them with housework and cooking. The couple became like my parents; I even started calling them Nana and Papa.
After five months of becoming part of their lives, I knew that I couldn’t wait any longer to ask them about my virginity.
I decided to talk to Papa first. “I need to talk to you about something, Papa. I came here on a quest to find my virginity because I lost it and I was wondering if you’ve seen it or if you knew where I could find it.”
He looked at me blankly, then recited this joke:
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there,” I responded.
“Tex,” he said.
“Tex who?” I asked.
“Tex two to tango!” he cackled.
He was right! It does tex two to tango. But that didn’t help me in finding my virginity, so I left him. If Papa didn’t have the answers, it was unlikely that Nana did. I was ready to give up, and I felt a single tear roll down my cheek.
Nana came up to me when she saw that single tear and so she took me in her arms and started to gently stroke my hair.
“My child,” she cooed, “What’s the matter? Are you not happy here with us?”
“No, no, it’s not that,” I said and started to sob. “It’s just that I lost my virginity and then I went on this whole quest to find it and it’s been such a long time and I have no idea where it went. I think I have to give up. My virginity is lost forever!”
Nana saw that I was hysterical, so she squeezed me tighter and wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“Hush, hush, my dear. Knock knock.”
“Nana, is now the best time for a knock knock joke? I’m not sure that’s what I need right now…”
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” I had no choice.
But instead of the response coming from Nana’s mouth, the response came from somewhere deep within myself. It spoke in a light and cool voice, and I felt like an early Autumn breeze had passed through my body.
“It’s me, your virginity.”
“What? Where are you? I can’t see you!”
“Do not fear. I am inside you. I am you. I don’t know why you thought you lost me. You’re still a virgin.”
It was then, dear reader, that I realized that the real virginity was inside me all along. And after going all over the world to search for it, I decided that I would hold on to my virginity forever.
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