The Virginity Deadline

The day Marcus Crawley tried to become a man

It was a warm evening in late April, 1972. A senior in high school, Marcus Crawley had recently turned 18. He could now legally drink alcohol. But he had a problem….

He was still a virgin!

His number one goal in high school was to lose his virginity before he graduated. He had come very close on numerous occasions but something always happened to keep him from rounding the bases and sliding into home, so to speak. (The baseball terminology was appropriate in light of the fact that his father had been a baseball player.)

But now there was only a month left before graduation and Marcus Crawley was still a virgin. His father had told him countless times that if he wanted to achieve a goal he needed to stay laser-focused on that goal and maintain unrelenting determination to reach it. “You don’t quit the game just because you strike out on your first at-bat,” was one of his father’s favorite aphorisms.

Well, on this warm evening in late April, 1972 Marcus was as determined as he had ever been as he walked into the motel office. He had been planning the evening in his head all week. In his pocket was a condom and after paying for a room he slipped the room key into the same pocket. He then went outside to get into his father’s car…