The last time I ever saw her was the morning after we met. Her name was Natasha or Katya or some perfect Russian name for my perfect Russian one night stand. A love that began at the bar and blossomed on the dance floor and persevered through the taxi ride and culminated in her tiny little room in a dirty building somewhere in Moscow, don’t ask me where. I had to keep looking at her to remember what her face looked like.

When we woke up my head hurt bad and the rest of me hurt good, like I’d just had a strenuous workout concurrent with an unethical massage. I asked the girl (Tanya?) if she could help me find a taxi. Yes, she said, she was leaving anyways. It was Easter Sunday, and she had promised to visit her parents. My voice was hoarse from cheap cigarettes and good vodka and the restless sleep you get lying next to a strange body on a strange bed in a strange country. She said she liked my voice. Russians are weird, or just good at lying. Even as she gave me her email address, written on a tiny purple post-it note in swirly blue ink, I knew I would never contact her. I already knew her better than I ever would by actually knowing her. There was no mess between us. We wouldn’t ever learn to hate each other. I’m not sure she ever even knew my name. (Women are more logical about these things.)

When I was a freshman, I was a virgin. And, like most virgins, I knew with all my heart and soul that everything would be much better after I had sex. Jesus Christ would ride his golden chariot out of the sun to offer me eternal happiness, impossible wealth and a proud paternal high-five. Then I was sophomore, my V-card fresh-punched, feeling no different. I figured that what I needed was a relationship. That didn’t work. I decided that I didn’t need a girl to validate me.

Of course, that’s just what losers say. I promised to focus on my studies, but that never works. I’m a film major. You know how many hot girls star in films? Kabillions. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to find the love of my life or the fuck of the century. It was a moral quandary. Still is. I fall in love with every girl I see, why oh why won’t none of them sex me? “You’re a simple man, a house cat,” says the angel on my shoulder, “wait for the right girl.” “But this is college,” says the devil, “don’t you owe it to old man Darren to have as much young man Darren sex as possible?” I throw up my hands and see where the night takes me. Bless college: the random hook-ups, the dormcest, the friends. A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, but he will confide that the list is shorter than it could be and longer than it should be. I would guess I’m probably about normal for a skinny stooped prep school boy: a few relationships, a few dry spells, some shut-outs, some hat tricks.

I would guess that there is less sex at Stanford per capita than at most schools. We are either smart enough to ignore our base impulses or shy enough to never act on them. There was some rueful outcry a couple years ago when Playboy announced a Pac-10 issue and nearly had to rename it the Pac-9 after Stanford barely proffered a showing. We ended up fielding two girls, and only one showed any R-rated skin; next to that, you had enough Arizona girls to fit in a pool for what looked like the hottest girl-on-girl orgy that you will never be invited to. Who’s got the time for the old in-out?

Maybe I’m wrong, and certainly I’m cynical. But I find myself meeting more virgins every day. And I’m left with the vague sadness of missed opportunity. Maybe sex isn’t so important. If you believe Keats, the true transcendent moment is that millisecond before the first kiss, when all the expectation and elation jumps your perception into hyperreality. That is the moment that love gets made — the sex unmakes it by completing it, carving banal reality from elaborate fantasy.

Natalya. That was her name. Natalya. Everything between us was brand new, for the very last time, the alpha and omega. We left her apartment and walked outside into the cold Russian sun. When she got me a taxi, I realized I had no money. She gave me some rubles and one last kiss, quick, farewell. We were already miles apart, years away. When she turned she didn’t look back. I did. I remember staring out the rear window and thinking, this is what life should be. She was my first blonde, an angel, seductive, acrobatic. She was beautiful. That was Easter.

Darren Franich would have written a lot more columns about sex and drugs if Nanci Howe and Maureen Powers didn’t exist. Email him job ideas at dfranich@stanford.edu.