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Deep in California’s East Bay, on a mild fall night, a 32-year-old we’ll call Simon told me that minutes earlier, for the first time in his life, he had felt a woman’s breasts. The two of us were hunched over a firepit on a discreet wooden terrace while he recounted what had happened: The woman, with a charitable smile and some gentle encouragement, had invited his hand to her body. She let him linger there for a spell—sensing her contours, appreciating her shape—before he pulled away. Now Simon was staring into the embers, contemplating these intrepid steps out of the virginity that had shackled him for so long. He seemed in a bit of a daze.

“I haven’t been physi

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