Nearing the commencement of her fourth year in college, Eve has learned quite a few things about sex. Eve, The Hatchet’s anonymous sex columnist, will share her observations and (sometimes dirty) thoughts about sex at GW with the population that fuels her fire.

Editor’s note: names have been changed to protect the naughty.

Everybody’s doing it, right? Thurston is a hotbed of sexual activity. The back staircases of sorority houses are used for discreet escapes post-coitus. Even The Hatchet runs a column all about sex, sex, sex! Everyone MUST be doing it.

But they aren’t. Based on a complete guess on my part, 18 percent of GW students have never had sex. And a few of those card-carrying virgins are my closest friends.

We all know why people maintain virginity.

“I haven’t met the right person.”

“In my religion, it is important to wait until marriage.”

“I’m scared it will hurt.”

“I don’t want to seem like a slut.”

“I’m too worried I’ll get pregnant/get an STD/die.”

But my real question for all those hotties with hymens out there is not why but how they resist the carnal urge to get down tonight, every single night. Or morning, for all you morning woodies. Or afternoon, for all you afternoon delighters. Or right before dinner in the kitchen because cooking turns you on, for all you … me.

No matter when you want it, or how you like it, sex is hard to resist. Chastity belts are slightly out of vogue, so how do my very sexy friends keep themselves from getting it on?

Two of my closest girlfriends, Boobs and Babe, are virgins because of religious reasons. They want to have lots of wonderful, mind-blowing sex, but only with their husbands. Both of these girls are smokin’ hot. Both of these girls have dated some smokin’ hot men. Both of these girls have natural, human libidos. And both of these girls make keeping these libidos in check, something I have legitimately never been able to do, sound as easy as … me.

For Babe, she thinks about “the guilt,” and how much she loves her boyfriend.

“When it gets to be all about the physical,” she said, “it can be bad news.”

So she makes out, cuddles and tickles her man to lighten things up when things start to get too heavy. Ultimately, she says she is just excited for the time when they can express their love physically. When I asked her if she was worried about the jump on her wedding night from kissing/cuddling/tickling to boning/banging/sixty-nining, she shook her head.

“You can feel it without doing it,” she told me. “And no, I don’t mean his boner, I mean true love, and I think that’s a big deal when it comes to sex.”

Boobs has similar sentiments. She thinks that the “light at the end of the tunnel” makes all the waiting worthwhile.

“Giving in to sexual feelings is not the only way to acknowledge them,” Boobs said. “And I’m not just “holding out” or something like that, because sex is so sacred and special to me and my beliefs, it is completely worth it and it takes away most of the frustrations.”

Boobs’s brother, Pecs, is the one man I spoke to that is still a virgin. He, too, is waiting until marriage for religious reasons.

“I can’t think of a greater gift to give your spouse, and a better expression of your devotion to her than to say that you have waited,” he told me. This beautiful sentiment was ruined for me when I involuntarily thought to myself well, diamonds are a pretty good expression, too.

Boobs, Pecs and Babe all understand why people have sex before marriage, and succeed in being very open-minded and not judgmental at all. I mean, come on, these are some of my best friends. And I think there is a huge difference between prudes (with whom I refuse to hang out) and virgins (who I study in awe like they are an animal life form that somehow survives without food).

Other friends of mine who waited or are still waiting for the right person, not necessarily for religious reasons, pretty much bide their time by masturbating or instituting an everything-but policy. My only complaint, my biggest complaint, I suppose about the whole virgin-or-not-virgin gap is the terminology. Why does one have to “lose” his or her virginity? The concept of sex as a loss, even if only in words, can be detrimental to those who are less sure of their sexual path than Boobs, Babe and Pecs.

For example, another friend of mine planned on waiting until marriage but then had sex with her long-term high school sweetheart. She wrecked herself with guilt afterward, trying to find a way to reconcile her beliefs with what she had done.

“But then I realized,” she told me, “that I enjoyed sex, and I wanted to keep doing it. How could I ask forgiveness for something I wasn’t sorry for? Losing my virginity was hard, but I grew a lot through it.”

And that’s what sex is, I think, beyond a physical sensation. It is a growth process, and when and where and how you want to grow through sex can only be determined by you. So if you’re 16 or 26, lose your virginity . or rather, win your non-virginity . whenever it feels right for you. Be it a two-thrust bust or a maudlin marathon, I hope it’s the beginning of something you never want to end.

Have a sex question you want answered? Send your sex-queries to [email protected].