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The hero and the whore: The third in a six-part series of stories on virginity.

Where Anthony feels pressure, Natalie finds comfort.

Where Natalie sees a blessing, Anthony sees only the burden that he simply cannot wait to be rid of — if only the opportunity would present itself.

Sex for teenagers can be the defining wedge issue that turns young men into liars and forces girls to keep secrets from even their best friends. And for those who choose to remain virgins, sex becomes the monster lurking in the closet — no matter how hard they pretend otherwise, it's always there.

"Nobody knows that I'm a virgin," says 18-year-old Anthony, a high school senior who didn't want his last name published. "I've been lying about it since I was in 10th grade, and it's too late to turn back now."

The lies began innocently enough. Anthony was a popular guy, a football player dating a cheerleader. Locker room conversations, as they always do, turned toward sex and Anthony simply let his ego get the better of him.

"It was easier to go along, to make stuff up, than it was to tell the truth," he says. "We hadn't done anything but kiss. Then there were all these rumors flying around. It got out of control, and I didn't stop it."

Anthony's girlfriend eventually dumped him, angry over lies he'd helped to spread and the pressure to have sex that came from every direction. She also left him with something of reputation, but not the kind he promoted amongst his friends.

"A lot of the girls think I'm something I'm not," he says. "And now sex has become this thing."

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Natalie has found security within a tight circle of friends, both guys and girls, most of whom are virgins like herself.

"With us, it's just not that big a deal," says Natalie, a Lineville native who didn't want to be identified. "We're all curious about sex, but that doesn't mean we're just gonna run out and do it. Still … virgins can talk about sex."

Plus, for girls, not having sex can be a wise decision. Beyond alleviating worries about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, being a virgin takes much of the venom out of high school gossip.

"It's a good thing for a girl to be a virgin because that keeps people from talking about her … she's safe," Natalie says. "If people know, or even think, you've had sex, you've automatically got this bad reputation for sleeping around.

"But with virgins, there's really nothing to tell."

That may very well be true — for girls. But for guys, the sexual dichotomy is wholly different.

"Guys lie. It's just what they do," says 18-year-old Andrew Curry. "They come up thinking they're supposed to be having sex. So even if they aren't, they'll say they are.

"They act like being a virgin is the worst thing in the world."

Not for Curry, who as a senior on the Talladega High School football team has something of a built-in advantage when it comes to talking about his decision to remain a virgin until marriage. But that's not to say he doesn't get picked on.

"Because I play football, I'm supposed to be this macho guy out trying to have sex all the time, but that's just not my thing," he says with a shy grin. "Some of the guys will give me a hard time, but a lot of 'em respect me because I stand up for what I believe.

"They're just quiet about it."

From lingering in locker rooms to his duties as a counselor for Talladega High School's Esteem Club, which helps students with issues ranging from sex and dating to drugs and alcohol, Curry has witnessed first hand the double standard that commands boys to chase sex while girls are expected to remain virginal.

"A guy can go out and be with whoever and it's no big deal, but a girl does the same thing and she's a … whore," he says, speaking barely above a whisper. "It's not fair. They're both doing the same thing — and doing it with each other — but one gets called a whore and the other's a player, a pimp, a dominant male.

"Just doesn't make sense."

And that's why Natalie, if and when she has sex for the first time, says she won't tell anybody, not even her best friend.

"Because I don't wanna be talked about," she says. "But for the guys, it's the exact opposite. They want everybody to know who've they've had sex with."

'Gatekeepers of sexuality'

Chante'lle Robinson, who also serves on the THS Esteem Club, says girls can be just as guilty as boys when it comes to sex, only their motivations are different.

"Guys use love to get sex," says the 17-year-old self-confessed virgin, in the soothing voice of a practiced peer counselor. "Girls use sex to get love."

Overall concepts about virginity, gender roles and sexual identity have been poisoned by the barrage of mixed messages sent to teenagers, allowing these double standards to survive and thrive. And yet the accepted image of virginity is still that of a woman, an archetype that has a long, deep-rooted history, says Tina Deshotels, professor of sociology at Jacksonville State University.

"Some say that our ideas over the importance of female virginity compared to males is a hangover from more repressive times when women were not allowed to own property," says Deshotels, who is a nationally recognized researcher in the area of sexuality, culture and gender. "Instead, their virginity was their property. Men have no such commodity, so they build their definitions of what it means to be a 'real man' by having sex.

"This is not the case for women."

Sex for men is a way of proving themselves, their virility. Meanwhile, women are given the burden of guarding not only their own innocence but are also responsible for keeping men at bay, Deshotels says.

"Women are still seen as the gatekeepers of sexuality," she says. "Women decide if sex will happen or not."

It's important to note that these roles — that of the virgin and the conquering hero — are changing as younger generations gain greater awareness and control over their sexuality, Deshotels says.

"Young women are now beginning to talk about men who have sex with 'too many' women in negative ways," she says. "However, the ideal of what 'too many' means is different and unequal with men having more leeway."

Chante'lle Robinson is quick to put men and women on equal ground.

"Oh, you'd better believe that a man can be a ho just as much as a girl can," she says, her open fist slapping the science room table.

Unlike girls, boys are rarely taught to value their virginity. Instead, they believe it's their responsibility to convince girls to have sex, a misconception that perpetually paints males as the aggressor and females as passive prey, says Tom Robertson, HIV coordinator for the Alabama Department of Public Health.

"A girl is taught to say 'no' and a guy is taught to push until he hears 'no,' but he's never taught to say it," he says. "Sex for guys is seen as the crux of manhood and virginity is the obstacle."

Though a constellation of false impressions orbit society's image of virginity, perhaps one clichι holds sway above all the others.

"Virgins are supposed to be geeks," Anthony says, anger rising in his voice, "Or at least that's how it's always shown on TV — people who couldn't get laid no matter how hard they tried. But that's not the way most virgins are.

"They're normal people who just haven't had sex … yet."

There is no doubt that the image of virgins has been unfairly stained through recent generations, which is perhaps one reason why terms such as "abstinence" appear far more frequently than "virginity" when sexual alternatives are being discussed.

"Virginity has, for reasons both valid and not, gotten a bad reputation," writes Hanne Blank, author of Virgin: The Untouched History. "In America particularly, a person who is a virgin is often seen as a rarity, a loser. No wonder church programs and abstinence education avoid it."

However, there might be some truth behind the Hollywood version of the awkward bookworm who's more focused on studying than getting lucky.

A recent study conducted by the University of North Carolina found a relationship between high IQ scores and sex. According to the study, an adolescent with an IQ of 100 was 1.5 to 5 times more likely to have had intercourse than an adolescent with above-average score of 120 to 130.

And according to a survey by Counterpoint Magazine, 60 percent of undergraduates at Wellesley are virgins and 47 percent of undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are virgins. The same survey found that no art majors at Wellesley were virgins, while 72 percent of biology majors and 83 percent of biochemistry and math majors were virgins.

But, for her part, Natalie is living proof that not all virgins are nerds sitting at home alone on Saturday nights.

"Just because you're a virgin," she says, "doesn't mean you can't party."