Interview with Details magazine's Jeff Gordinier on "The Virgin"

       Male or female, young or old, ravenous or picky…we all have one thing in common when it comes to sex: we remember our first time. How we lost our virginity, whether it was perfect, horrid, or perfectly horrid, is a pivotal moment, the turnstile to a wonderland more complex than the movies or manuals could have told us.

       In this month’s Details magazine, author/editor Jeff Gordinier chronicles a classic tale of that quest in "The Greatest Virginity Story Ever Told"

(it's called just "The Virgin" in the print version): hormone-crazy Otto, guided by his wise friend Bill, means to leave his cherry in Vegas before going home to England. The difference is that Otto has Down syndrome.

        “I read some stories about Lucy Baxter, Otto’s mother, and her quest to find a partner for Otto,” Jeff said in an email interview for www.lizlangley.com (Baxters are famous in England). “While her comments had stirred up a controversy in the U.K., it dawned on me that Lucy’s desire for Otto to find both partnership and sexual release was, in spite of the unusual circumstances, a moving expression of maternal love.”

       In “a lovely stroke of luck,” Otto’s family was planning to visit America, so Jeff met Otto and Bill at the Grand Canyon and road tripped with them to Vegas.

       “People really open up on the road,” Jeff says, and in their hours of driving, talking, and listening to music, he “captured these fascinating conversations between Otto and Bill as we floated through the Southwest.”

       He came to see more than a sexual pilgrimage, but “a story of brotherly love, if you will, between Otto and Bill,” the latter serene and watchful, the former exuberant and keen.

       “ It’s really about “these two young guys…talking about love and sex and (in some ways) the nature of what it means to be a man.”

       Jeff Gordinier has a surprising way of turning a phrase and of letting a story tell itself; he deftly takes a hormonally-charged losin’-it quest, set in strip clubs and casinos, and hands over an adventure textured with depth and heart.

       And it’s clear that he really likes these guys.

       “I hope readers will come to see Otto Baxter as Otto Baxter, not just “some guy with Down syndrome.” Otto’s got a strong, distinct, unforgettable personality.”

He’s also great at roulette numbers, taking over karaoke bars and generally be 21 years old.

       “I had a hard time keeping up with the dude,” Jeff says.