Hi, Sarah –

I started college this fall admittedly lacking experience with guys. I had guy friends and a quasi-relationship with a guy who called me last week to fill me in on his new boyfriend, but that’s about it. But everyone, including my ex, told me “college guys will be different…”

In October, after my roommate had gotten through her third boyfriend, I met a guy at a party; he turned out to be a senior from another school.We talked for about five hours, he asked if he could kiss me good-night, and we said we’d keep in touch.

So we started e-mailing, and he wrote me these mostly chatty, casual e-mails…except that in each one there’d be a line like “Thinking of seeing you this weekend gave me immediate solace.” (I read and love the Dawson’s Creek recaps, so I know “solace” is kind of a dirty word, but it seemed sweet at the time).He asked if he could come see me again, we made arrangements and he came to visit.We went to a party and then he went back to my room, which maybe was my first mistake.

He somewhere or other found a James Taylor cassette and started kissing me (inexperience red-flag one…probably not a good sign that all I was thinking was a) when I was eight and found out what French-kissing was, my initial reaction was “Ew! Someone else’s actual tongue in your actual mouth!” and b) James Taylor was one of my dad’s choices for make-out music.)

I guess I most have seemed tense, because all of a sudden he launched into what became a six-hour discussion about my “innocence.” The pinnacle: I’m a snowball, white and pure and round (ugh), and he doesn’t want to be the one to hurl me into a wall.So he doesn’t want to corrupt me, or accelerate or slow down my self-determined rate of corruption.And all correspondence has gone downhill from there, to the point where because of the “rift of experience” between us he doesn’t even know if he wants to be friends…but he wants me to keep writing to him, although he’s repeatedly lectured me on how different I am in e-mail than in person, and wants me to send him my fiction.

Is it worth trying to pursue anything with a guy who’s totally fixated on my “innocence”? Is this sweet or an excuse for not getting serious?Or maybe – and I hate to think this – just manipulation to get me to want to be corrupted?

Sincerely,
Snowgirl in a Snowstorm

Dear Snowgirl,

Oh, for god’s sake.You weren’t just loosed on the world from a convent cloister high above the alpine clouds.You are a college freshman.College freshmen have varying levels of sexual and romantic experience.If the guy had a genuine interest in you as a person, your relative lack of experience wouldn’t matter to him.And yet, he’s fixated on it, to the point where he can’t commit to a…friendship?

One word: ew.Another word: immature (and I don’t mean you).And yet another word: condescending.

Read over what you wrote to me.Maybe you’ve left out Wannabe Don Juan’s good points, but frankly, he comes off as utterly patronizing and neurotic.It’s not sweet; it’s self-absorbed to a Dawsonian degree, and it’s more than a little sexist as well.Tell him to get over it, and if he brings it up again – and he will, because he thinks he’s all that and a side of fries – tell him to fuck off.

[12/7/00]

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