The Virginity Project

Growing pains....

Bum! Sorry about that guys. The video I posted last weekend got pulled - which just goes to prove my theory that you should never save things 'for best'. I'd been planning to post that for an age and I just should have got on with it.

Hey ho, as an alternative, I thought about posting this, a video that really does exemplify the true meaning of innocence and then I thought sod it. I'm kicking virginity loss to the kerb today. Instead, I'm going to remind myself why I love Mary J Blige so much. Here she is. The diva herself, chanelling pure Tina. Tina Turner that is......

 

The age of innocence...

This put a smile on my face….

Oranges are not the only fruit...

It’s Thursday and I am back from a place where real oranges grow on real trees. Yes, it’s true. I am such a townie that the sight, no, the apparition, of edible fruit growing on actual trees was an almost continual source of fascination during my trip overseas. Needless to say - and taking the credit crunch into account - I was apprehended at Palma Airport attempting to smuggle six tons of Mallorca’s finest through customs. Enough oranges and lemons to prevent an entire ship’s worth of sailors suffering from scurvy. Not really.

I was a little nervous though and I’ll tell you why. Just before I left for the airport I got an email from the BBC’s World Service asking if I could take part in a global debate about virginity that very night. Now I love doing radio, but not so much in a busy international airport with Spain’s scariest flight attendant telling me that if I don’t get on the bus NOW and board the plane that is just about to leave then it will go without me and I will be forced to purchase another plane ticket. Sadly it seemed, my window of opportunity was too short and I couldn’t make the debate. It’s a shame because it was an interesting subject.

The topic on everyone’s lips was this: ‘Should a woman be a virgin when she gets married?’

Now, just before you check to see you haven’t crash-landed in another century by accident, consider the following figures:

33% (or 2.1 billion people) of the planets population are Christians (I include Catholics, Protestants, Anglican’s, Evangelicals etc in this figure)

21% (or 1.5 billion people) are followers of Islam

16% or 1.1 billion people are Atheist, non-religious or Agnostic

The remaining 30% are a melting pot of Hindu’s, Buddhists, Sikhs, Rastafarians and other assorted religions.

The point I am attempting to make without involving too much maths is that this stuff matters to people. A high proportion of the world’s population do believe that a woman should be a virgin when she gets married. Shocking but true.

Of course, if you asked me the question I would say ‘not in a month of Sundays’. I might consider it if my male partner was prepared to follow suit but that’s not going to happen. Plus, the words ‘shutting' and 'stable door’ and ‘horse has already bolted’ spring to mind. That ship, my dears, and hopefully the one with all the oranges on it, has already sailed. It’s too late and it doesn’t really matter, at least not to me. But to some people it does, and so once again I find myself asking the question ‘why?’

I respect the individual’s choice to do as they please with their bodies. If someone makes a conscious decision to hold onto their virginity until such point they deem appropriate, I am down with that. Sadly ‘doing’ and ‘pleasing’ are not part of the modern vernacular of many religions. Critical choices are being made for people – mainly women it has to be said - on their behalves. How does this work? What is the reason for this? Are we not able to make these decisions for ourselves? In this day and age, I genuinely do not understand why this is happening. Viola Anderson sums up my confusion thus:

 ‘viola anderson June 12, 2008 at 5:14 am

Try to remember a time when the only reliable birth control was total abstinence from sex. It follows then that men would insist that their wives be virgin before the marriage in order to be certain that any child born would be his own. The virginity was not the object – assurance of paternity was.

Nowadays, at least where reliable birth control is available, insisting on virginity (for that reason) is an outdated practice.

However, if the object of requiring the virginity of the bride is to prevent the woman’s comparing her husband’s sexual practices to any other man’s, then it is a whole different matter and is surely an unreasonable requirement.

It is another example of how a man’s fear (in this case, of not being as good as some other man) has been foisted onto the woman who is required to save the man from his fears of inadequacy.’

I couldn’t have put it better myself. This is one of over 400 comments that were posted on the worldhaveyoursay site where the topic was first raised. It is an emotive issue and the comments on the site reflect that.

 I cannot help but come back to the same blindingly simple thought again. In the modern age, women, as well as men must be able to make these choices for themselves. It really is that simple.

Now for the facetious bit. I can’t help it but honestly, this story is worth telling twice. I posted it on my blog last year but if you didn’t see it then, try it now. This story tells you everything you want to know about the word ‘unbelieeeeeevable’.

 

 

Power to the people...

On Tuesday, we heard about Darcy's dilemma. Today, the people talk back!

First up is Ted, the sixty-year-old owner of a story that I posted on October 21st last year. I don't mind admitting that there are times when I think Ted lives between the fictional pages of a Mills and Boon novel, such is his attachment to an old fashioned approach to 'married love'. But despite this affliction, Mr T can always be relied upon for a well thought out and brilliantly written response. What I particularly like about his reply today is his rather brilliant shopping analogy. Turns out, sex and shopping are related after all….

'Darcy, I am something of an authority on virginity and the associated Christian guilt-complex in that I was a virgin for a VERY long time. But the more I think about the topic of virginity, the less qualified I feel to speak!  There is so much I realize that I do not know. Nonetheless, here are a few reflections, and a plea, following your piece.

Plea first:  do not think yourself into a 'no win' situation in your understandable concerns about the end of your virgin state.  Rather, try to think yourself into a 'no lose' frame of mind.  I don't mean, ' no lose virginity'. I see this as your 'property' to control as YOU wish and change, when you, and only you, want to.  Think of it like this:

Imagine that someone gave you the gift of a sum of money, and you went out looking around stores and saw lots of quite tempting things on display for sale...yet, tempting as these items may have been, there was nothing that seemed 'just right', nothing that you would have been completely happy at parting with your money in order that you might own it.  On returning home, you might have a pang of sadness that you did not have a tangible object in your arms, and feel 'left out' when you saw your friends proudly clutching things, but you would still, I should think, feel a secret glow of knowledge that you had retained your full 'purchasing power' for possible use at a future date when a range of even more attractive produce might be on offer. 

It might also be worth remembering the comment of the pianist Liberace, who, when asked if the taunts of critics upset him, replied:  'I cry all the way to the bank!'

Well said, Ted.

Next up is my blogging friend DJ Kirkby. DJ does more than just blog. She is a midwife and as such, the owner of some practical advice for the aspiring non-virgin. I know I said this wasn't about me but I have pulled her last point up front and made it the first point. I think it’s the most important one:

 'My thoughts after reading Darcy's letter:

 8) Life is written in pencil, nothing so wrong that it cannot be remedied in at least a small measure and nothing so gloriously perfect that it cannot be improved upon.

1) She is an amazing person, very brave and strong even if she may not believe this about herself.

 2) She is not ready to have sex/make love yet. We all mature sexually at different times and all have to meet the right guy to turn our 'sexy' switch on, even if it is just someone we do not know on an intimate level.  It could be someone we see regularly like a teacher or a friend. It does not have to be the guy that she actually has sex with the first time, but she should wait until she feels that all-important urge of a sexual nature.  

3) For some people this never happens at all and they choose to embrace a life of celibacy, there are many websites with forums for like-minded people on this topic.

 4) She may bleed a bit, but if both her and they guy are expecting it, it shouldn't be an issue. Have some baby wipes close by.

 5) Do not be ashamed to use lubricant for your first or even subsequent times, the wetter the better and more comfortable making love will be.

 6) The position that Darcy should use the first time or anytime she makes love with someone is whatever position they end up in, these things are better if not planned out to the nth degree.

 7) If she has sex with a man she later finds out has betrayed her or was not the one she considered to be the 'one', she will recover from this, even though she does not believe she can'.

Short and to the point. Thank you DJ. Last up is Sophie.  I interviewed her for my book last year. At twenty-three years old, she may be the baby of our panel, but that doesn’t make her any less qualified to have an opinion. Here we go: 

‘Hi Darcy

Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is that everything you've said is extremely normal. I've had the same background as you - no abuse, no bullying - but that doesn't mean that you or I aren't allowed to be scared!

My current boyfriend comes from a Catholic background, so I completely relate to the pressure that puts on you. We're open in all parts of our relationship but it’s taken a long time of talking and patience to deal with some of his 'religion-related' issues.

It's a difficult toss up (excuse the pun) as we're born into a modern society and our lives reflect this - yet we are still entrenched in a very traditional way of thinking. There's nothing wrong with that, but it’s something to keep in mind. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to live by these sets of rules; getting the right balance isn’t easy.

As for the deed itself, four months is a good amount of time to be with someone - but its still not that long. If you think that doing something will create feelings of regret - chances are your instincts are right and it just not worth pushing yourself.

Unfortunately, I can't say whether your boyfriend is or isn't serious about you, but a four month relationship says to me that it’s not purely sexually driven. Ask yourself if he's pressuring you to do it and that will give you a better answer than I can.

I can tell you though that my first time was a very good experience, I had been with my boyfriend for about the same time as you. We hadn't discussed it or planned it - it just happened. I didn't bleed (probably because I'd been very sporty in my early teens), and it didn't hurt. I think that negative experiences are usually more memorable, and are often over-exaggerated.

I think that taking advice from friends is a fantastic thing, but remember that they too are in the same position as you. I'd really hate to be thought of as condescending, but I certainly didn't know enough about sex at seventeen to be giving sound advice. Also, being on top doesn't make a whole lot of difference from a pain perspective, but as you grow to enjoy sex, it makes it more pleasurable.

 It's a bit of a cliché - but when things are right for you, you'll know it and you wont feel so uncertain. I'd suggest waiting a little longer until things become clearer.’

Darcy, I hope my contributors have helped you to make a tricky decision  a little easier and on that note, 'The Virginity Project' is planning a little ‘self help’ of another kind. I am off for some serious R&R on the sunny isle of Mallorca. See you in a week or two, adios amigos!

Its not all about me...

Today I shall turn the reigns of power over to you, the readers of and contributors to ‘The Virginity Project. In short, I got bored of the sound of my own voice so I decided to let someone else do the talking. Power to the people and all that. I'm not the only one with an opinion. To this end, I sent the following story to some of the people I am lucky enough to correspond with. It'll be interesting to see how they reply to Darcy's dilemma.

Story today. My panelists and their replies tomorrow:

'Dear Kate

My name is Darcy and I was born in 1991. Virginity Loss: TBC.

I recently found The Virginity Project and it's actually boosted my confidence considerably. I'm still a virgin and feel a bit of a freak if I’m honest. I've never been bullied or sexually abused or anything like that so I don't see why I have the feelings I do about sex.

I think, deep down, it may have something to do with my religion. I was raised as a relatively strict catholic, so I feel very guilty when I even think about sex. I have never even...er...’self-helped’...and if my boyfriend does anything like that for me then I don't particularly feel any kind of sensation - mental or physical, apart from ‘oh...this is happening’.

The actual idea of sex doesn't scare me. I think I probably would have sex with my boyfriend (of four months) if he asked me, because it may make him happy and I wouldn't feel like I've missed out on a teenage milestone. I just don't know how I'd deal with the guilty feelings, and if everything went wrong, the feelings of regret.

I think the way I end up loosing my virginity will matter immensely for all my future relationships and my future thoughts on men because I've only ever had two boyfriends before. I've also been researching around the topic to try and get some answers to my problems and what I decipher thus far is this: women are told they will get nothing from their first time apart from pain or possibly pregnancy. They are told they will bleed and that the boy will probably freak out if he's bled on and then they will be labeled a 'slut’, so nothing really fills me with confidence.

I had a conversation recently too with a friend of mine, and she said that for a first time it is advisable ‘for the girl to be on top because then she can control what happens. Missionary is just plain painful’ but I don't think I'd have the confidence to go ‘on top’, so I'd just have to deal with whatever pain comes my way (And I don't really fancy bleeding on anyone!)

If you haven't got bored of me ranting about my status, then thank you for reading this far. It's nice to be able to write all my 'V-thoughts' and rants down and tell someone how I'm feeling about it because I really don't know what to do. And if I talk to anyone properly about it then they could just say I'm making a big deal out of nothing. It's nice to know you're not alone with these things.

 Thanks again,

Darcy x'

‘Woman describes losing virginity to her dog!!’

When I read the line above, I actually expected to see a film about someone sitting and telling their pet about their long lost virginity. Nothing wrong with that I thought. I tell my cat all sorts of things. Turns out, that wasn’t what they meant.

If you can get past the extreme ick factor this film engenders then I have to admit, it makes compelling listening. Don’t worry, there are no scary visuals.

But it still left scary thoughts somewhere more pertinent - my head. I needed something nice to think about. This helped. Laughing – tick, teddies – tick, innocence - most definitely. Bring it on.

(Apologies for not posting the YouTube link directly. If there are any Typepad brain-aches who know how to do it since the new 'Compose page' was introduced, please tell me!)

Sunday service…..

This story speaks for itself. Its owner wrote me last summer to tell me about her search for love and companionship, a search that her family thought she shouldn’t make due to her sexuality. Luckily, Sadie* is a pioneer. I don’t suppose there are too many daughters of Christian Evangelist preachers who are prepared to go against the grain and stake the claim over the life they instinctively feel they should have.

 Which brings me to my next point. Lately this blog seems to have morphed into a one-woman mission to insist on the most basic of human rights. I can’t help it. Instinct should triumph over dogma. Marriage or not, gay or not, whatever or not, we cannot deny ourselves the most basic of needs. A sex life has to begin somewhere and that usually begins with the loss of virginity. Read on…

 Sadie. Born 1973. Lost virginity aged 35.

 ‘Hi Kate

I'm back again....finally with the rest of the story.

First of all a poem was what started some of this for me. It was the thought: ‘If I died today, what would I have most regretted I didn't do?’ And for me it started with kissing. I didn't want to die having never kissed someone. And then it progressed to ‘I don’t want to die having never been loved physically like that’.

As you know from my earlier story, I had no interest in sex with men because I'm gay. For years I wasn't able to seek out relationships with women because of my religious beliefs and because I kept trying to heal myself i.e. not like girls.

About two years ago I asked my counselor if he thought I was healthy in general and he said ‘yes’. I had been in counseling for years and I suddenly decided I was wasting my life trying to fix something that wasn't fixable. I finally started to accept myself and my love of women as something that just was.

The result of this is that I started dating for the first time in my life. I went out on dates or ‘friendship outings’ as I like to call them because a lot of these were just ‘get to know you’ events. I got to know myself a bit as well. I developed more confidence that someone would actually want to date me.

To skip ahead, a couple of months ago I met someone who I wanted much more than just a friendship date with. I was looking for someone who had a lot of the same religious things in common as me. We are both Christians, I can go to church and hold her hand, God and gratefulness is important to us both. Both of us would only like to be intimate in a committed relationship so soon we were dating.

I am still stunned that I lost my virginity. You asked ‘how does a lesbian lose her virginity?’ I think it's the first time you are fully naked and physical with someone. I asked my girlfriend and she said it's both oral sex and any type of penetration.

My strongest thoughts afterwards were: The church/Christians have totally lied to me. The church has made sex sound like crack. Something so powerful that you will be addicted. Something that is evil and then magically becomes good the moment a priest says something over you like ‘your married’. That is all a lie and I think it does a disservice to tell people or even hint at these things.

Sex and intimacy was sweet and playful. It was lovely. We were gentle and fun with each other. We talked a ton about it before. We talked about the areas of our bodies we felt insecure about. We talked about what we wanted and hoped for. What we had heard. And then we also talked during and after just checking in on how emotions and all were doing. It was really helpful and healing for me to talk like this. And she was so sweet. We are well matched sexually because we both have similar wants.

People told me I'd be scared, I wasn't. People told me they shook. I didn't. I had thought through this decision so much that I think when the time came I was just fully ready. I learned that I am an Aries lover. This is something I totally didn't know about myself until this. I thought all that stuff was junk. She said she was surprised I was a virgin because I didn't act like it. But I think the reason why is found in a poem by E.E. Cummings that says ‘the body has an intelligence of it's own.’ I did not need to train it. It knew what to do.

Our relationship is still going great. I do not feel any different. I do not feel guilt. I do get in some way why it was a great thing for me to have sex in a committed relationship. I think when I was younger I would have had some self-judgment due to the religious voices I'd heard through growing up. But here's the thing. Those same religious voices won't let me get married because I'm gay. So the best I can do right now in seeking to live the life I want is by keeping sex in a committed monogamous relationship.

I know I'm a rare breed. I was a virgin until just before my thirty-fifth birthday in order to figure this out. The decision to have a more spacious and wholistic understanding of sex than the church’s literal and confining view took me a long time.

The church has made being anti-sex it's own God. The church, especially the evangelical church in America judges the body as evil. It may not say this outright but it does come through. I think I've heard more about the evils of sexual temptation than any other topic. But in the end, sex for me was nothing to do with temptation. It was a choice to live instead of kill everything in me that was embodied.

Besides this, I have told three very open and accepting friends and it will stop there. But in needing to tell someone about all my years of working towards this and all the crap I had to figure out for myself, I wanted to tell my story somewhere. If I ever told my story in a Christian community I would be soundly renounced. I get that. But you know that just keeps the fear and lies about sex in play. 

One more thought. I am so glad I didn't force myself to date, marry and have sex with a man. I know another girl who did that. She has to drink alcohol to have sex with her husband. She stayed a virgin until she was married. And now she is basically stuck. I definitely am glad I didn't do the same as her just to ‘look good’ for the church.

 *Name changed to protect identity. Part one of ‘Sadie’s’ story was published on September 10 last year.

To have and to have not....

Sometimes a story’s interest lays not so much in what it does say as what it doesn’t. This is a curious little tale with some large holes. I was going to wait and post it once its author filled the gaps but I can’t hold back.

He raises a subject not often mentioned: the male urge to have sex with virgins. I was going to try and dress that up a bit but what’s the point? This is what I mean to say. Since the dawn of time, the virgin woman has held a certain allure. This is beyond the need for verifiable paternity so that the correct children inherit the correct wealth and it’s also beyond the concept of virginity as commodity, something to be traded via marriage for upward social mobility.

This is virginity as fetish. The idea that the virgin woman imbues us with something magical that cannot be gained elsewhere. Youth perhaps? Or even a cure for Aids? This may seem a preposterous idea, but in this day and age, children in some parts of the world are suffering under the tragic and misguided belief that sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS.

Virginity is a powerful and potent symbol. As ever, I turn to Hanne Blank and her book ‘Virgin: The Untouched History’, for some clarity. She says this:

‘In eroticizing virginity, youth, physical nobility, ignorance, inexperience, fragility, and vulnerability are objectified from the perspective of someone who, by definition, is none of these things. The erotic charge of sex with a virgin rests on the interplay of the sexual aggression of an experienced partner and the sexual submission of a virginal one. It champions sex as a vehicle for completion and transformation, and it insists that a person who has sexual access to a woman automatically claims or colonizes her, body and soul.

Virgin territory. Perhaps that’s what its all about. Is it that deep down, man needs to plant his stake, so to speak, upon virgin soil, previously unsullied by anyone else? Who knows? The owner of our story certainly isn’t sure. ‘I am not a religious person’, he tells us, ‘but I may have been influenced by religious thinking’. He then finishes by telling us ‘my obsession with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general’. This is a large statement with no conclusion – yet. Watch this space and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of one of The Virginity Project’s most perplexing challenges yet.

*‘Brady’. Age unknown.

'Hi Kate,

Wow, have you ever set up a good website. The topic of virginity has consumed my life. First of all, I am male. I abstained throughout high school, figuring that there was ‘one for everyone’. I soon changed my mind and thought that I would have to have sex because nobody seemed to have any morals whatsoever and that if I were to be seen as ‘cool’ by the ladies then I would have to lose my virginity. This logic does not make much sense as I write it. I didn't have it, but to have it, I had to have had it previously: the paradox of virginal thinking!

Anyways, my friend hooked me up with a ready and willing (drunk) girl at the bar one night, and we did it. Unfortunately, she was not expecting a one-night stand and ran off upset. I also did not feel that much better about myself for having done it. It really seemed like nothing had changed, besides perhaps feeling a bit more superior to another girl, my first serious girlfriend, who had just broken up with me.

Still, there was a yearning to have meaningful sex. The one-night stand didn't do much to make me feel like I'd accomplished anything besides thinking ‘Yes, I'm cool, girls. I've done it’. Then there was another paradox: I was desiring a virgin so much, but then thinking why had I decided to go ahead and lose my own virginity?

Since then, I've had a series of girlfriends, both serious and not, from near-engagements to one-night stands. Yet still, I long for a virgin. I believe it is the only way I can find pure, everlasting love, and form a pure, unbreakable bond with a girl. I am not even a religious person, although I may have been influenced by religious thinking. Where I got my beliefs from is a whole other question; some guys don't seem to think virginity is an issue at all.

My obsession, (as I will call it) with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general. It's a depressing cloud that covers me. I try to find happiness in the girls that I'm with, yet I confront them, I challenge them, and make them feel guilty for what they have ‘done’. It makes me wonder if I can ever be happily married or love my wife the way I know I could. So, I'm waiting, sometimes to the point of hopelessness and despair, for the girl who will pledge herself and her love to me and make me feel like a whole, complete human being.'

*All names changed to protect identity.

Everything but the girl…

Perhaps you think that as a non practising Christian, I have something against god. Perhaps you think that I believe that people should throw caution to the wind and the rest of you be dammed. Actually I don’t. But I will tell you this: I am irritated beyond belief by the ways in which religion controls women.

Whoever invented the contraceptive pill was a genius. Could he, (for in a lovely twist of irony it was a he) ever have dreamt what a tidal wave of change would wash over a world that kept women chained to the cooker/home/bed simply because they couldn’t control their own fertility? I am oversimplifying the facts but this is what it really boils down to. Women used to need men and now they don’t. Except for the things that really count in life: love, companionship, warmth and protection. All the things that men need too.

We are all singing from the same song sheet, so why the fuss? Why do people persist in telling other people what to do and dress it up as something else? Its 2008 and women (and men for that matter), must be able to make basic choices for themselves without the burden of guilt.

Here is a consummate lesson in ‘owning your own sexuality’. No muss, no fuss, this is the story of a girl who asked the question, ‘who makes the decisions around here’?

Me, god, or the judgement of everyone else?

I think you know the answer.

Lynette, Southern California, USA (Born 1985)

I was the ‘everything-but-sex’ girl for a good six years of my sexual maturity. My first kiss came from a boy who pushed me up against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat.....not all it was hyped up to be. He'd come over while my mom was at work and we'd make-out for hours. I'd let him put his hand up my shirt but that was the extent of it, after all, Jesus was watching.

One day he thought himself clever and slipped Mr. Happy over to the side of his shorts and I very accidentally came into contact with the most disgusting, wrinkly appendage I'd every felt. I was pretty much over it right then and there.

Boyfriend # 2. I'm sixteen now and everything-but-sex now includes my hands and his hands and a crazy, messy blur of clothes and mouths and ‘everything-but’. I asked if he was ready. I was scolded for even bringing it up and we continued on as if nothing had happened. I got to hold on to my v-card and assume the Christian mould and he got to continue being a weenie.

For years I pulled out the 'waiting till marriage' speech every time someone asked, when secretly, it was merely by chance that I hadn't blown it at sixteen. It became this crazy, inner struggle between what the church had told me was right and what I really felt. This continued until I was twenty. Enter Mike. Four years older than me and very much not a virgin. Beautiful piece of man. Incredible, charming and seductive. I knew he was a bad idea the second I laid eyes on him.

I let him take me to dinner. After a month of make-out sessions with me saying ‘no, no’ and him saying ‘I won't, just let me *stay* here’, I finally gave it. I'd like to believe I ‘gave in’, but truly he had one foot in the door already.

It was amazing. I went home that night and stared at myself in the mirror for an hour. I felt like something in me had shifted and like it should have shown on the outside...it didn't. But I had been changed; I had taken charge of something that for so long had been controlled by something other than myself. And it brought me closer to the thing I had feared for so long, that maybe God's not so concerned with whether or not I'm wed before I'm bedded. Maybe it's about being aware of myself and things that I'll stand for. My happiness, my confidence, my self-respect came from being that much closer to understanding the inner workings of myself.

God still loves me, and now so do I. And seriously, everything-but? It all came down to owning my own sexuality and allowing it to grow within me without being told how to do it.

The times they are a-changin’?

Perhaps it is the practice I have been getting with the interviewing of people, or maybe it is a lifelong skill that I simply never noticed, whatever it is, I appear to have an innate ability to get people to talk about stuff - without really trying. Take last week as an example. It was Saturday and it was national expose your flesh day. You know the one I mean. The one day in the year that the sun comes out and people everywhere, much like the ecstatic scrabbling of dogs looking for leads, tear open the doors of their closets and don the most optimistic item of clothing they own in order to celebrate April’s first five minutes of sunshine.

And so it was that I found myself in a strapless sun dress standing outside Somerfields in Brentford, yes, Brentford, at 7pm on a Saturday night. It was my old buddy Mark’s birthday and I had the dress to prove it. We met at The Brewery Tap. On arrival I was reminded of a previous visit, many moons ago. It was vaguely comparable to the scene in American Werewolf where our hero arrives at the back of beyond, pushes open the door to the local pub only to be met by rotating heads and the stony silence of a series of League of Gentlemen look-a-likes.

Except this time they were smiling. Kind of. ‘We don’t get your type around here much’. This was clearly what they were thinking as I perused the facilities. To the right, a pool table – still nobody on it! So far, so good. To the left, the judge and jury, a motley bunch consisting mainly of Brentford’s most ‘senior’ members, and, starboard, our host, stationed behind his taps, much like the captain behind the controls of a large sailing ship.

The pub might not have changed much but I have. I’m more of a driver than a drinker these days and I couldn’t resist half a lager in one of those glasses that looks like the thick glass windows of an old fashioned pub. You don’t get many of those to the pound in your average Gastro pub. Nope, there’s wasn’t a herb-crusted cod nor pan-fried frittata in sight at The Brewery Tap. This is what we would term ‘a proper boozer’. You’ll have a packet of pork scratchings and a pint of Young’s and be glad of it here at the Brewery Tap.

Now, I know I said I had an innate ability to get people to tell me stuff but I’m only half telling the truth. Mark began celebrating his birthday at around midday so I can’t take all the credit. Mr Lager played his part too. It was quite a scene as I stepped out into the self-designated young(er) persons area i.e. the garden. A lot of celebrating had clearly been done and one person was asleep on the table.

The birthday boy was having a fine old time, if you could only get a look behind his sunglasses – so the thing on a Saturday night out in Brentford. My good friend Tania had also been let out of the house for the night, a party girl if ever there was one and it wasn’t long before they were contemplating the piano action in the front bar. Yes ladies and gentleman, this wasn’t just any old real boozer. This was a real boozer where real old people sit around and listen, sometimes even joining in, to another real old person who plays the piano and sings. Tania looked like she had died and gone to heaven. I, meanwhile, spent some time getting to know the birthday guests. The first conversation went something like this:

Him: what do you do with your time then?

Me: I interview people about virginity loss.

Him: (raising eyebrows), I don’t actually remember losing my virginity but I am about to become a grandfather.

My turn to raise my eyebrows now and you would too if you were looking at what I was looking at.

Me: If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?

Him: I’m 39

Me: and how old is your expectant son or daughter?

Him: It’s my son, and he is 13

Here I will leave a long silence in which to contemplate this astonishing piece of news, although in real time I think I did continue to gabble about something whilst lifting up my jaw from its resting place on the pavement. Here was a normal enough looking man, of sane mind, no outward signs of poverty/ill-education or any other cliché ridden stereotype that you might care to reach for in order to explain such a calamity, telling me that his thirteen year old son is about to become a father. Tania has a son who is 13. He is a lovely boy but he still laughs if you tickle him. He is a child.

For the record, the man looked like he had been slapped about the face with a fish. And in amongst the lager, cigarettes and the warmth of a first Saturday evening spent outdoors, I felt sad for this man, and his son, and most of all, for a girl who had managed to conceal a tiny human being inside her body for almost seven months until the bump got too big and the game was up. We want to believe that this doesn’t happen in this day and age, but it does. Virginity loss can be every bit as dramatic now as it was for our parents.

Revelation number two pales a little in comparison but it is no less poignant. The owner of the tale was Dave, a forty two year old man, whom, as it turns out, was a frequent visitor to many of the same watering holes I frequented in my teens. The Cobwebs, The Bull and Bush and The Old Ship. We revisited them in our memories and then got onto first gigs.

Me: ‘My first gig on my own’, (up until13 years old, my brothers took me to gigs. Genesis, Echo and the Bunnymen, Blancmange, I was a pretty eclectic kid), ‘was the Hammersmith Palais to see Africa Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force’.

Him: ‘I was conceived outside the Hammersmith Palais’.

There’s not much to say to that except how the monkey nuts did that happen?

As it turned out, he was adopted and he didn’t find out this truly unique piece of information until years later when he questioned his birth mother and she told him the truth about her ‘situation’. Without going into too much detail, a night out at the Hammersmith Palais can be memorable for many a reason, not least for the fumble outside in the car that led to the birth, and the adoption of a son in 1966.

Perhaps I do have one of those faces. Or maybe we are just a generation who are happier with the truth. We no longer live in an era where pregnancy has to be concealed – unless you are thirteen years old. In a week when I was also told a story about a woman who gave birth to her second child and lost her husband to a heart attack on the same day, I realise that truth really is stranger than fiction. You don’t have to scratch the surface of most human beings too hard in order for them to tell you stories that you will never forget. We all have them. Perhaps I might write down a few of my own sometime.

Meanwhile, the party in the pub continued. Not only that, but the ice had begun to melt as Tania and Co talked the pub pianist into playing a selection of Elvis classics and the evening’s entertainment really got underway. Later, as Mark, with two fingers bandaged from an accident earlier in the week, attempted as good a rendition as you could ever expect to hear from a man with only eight digits of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, I fancied our geriatric audience were enjoying themselves more than they let on. But it still wasn’t quite like this in our day, they seemed to say. Actually it was. You just didn’t talk about it is all.

*All names have been changed to protect identity.