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 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.

Hot monkey love....

It is hard to summarise love in 200 words but that is just what I did last week when a nice lady from Harper Collins emailed and asked if I could contribute to a Valentines Day blog to celebrate the launch of a new book. Said book is a fabulous collection of love stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. Having written a lot about love lately, I was only too happy to continue the theme. You can read it here.

But today’s themed vote for romance goes to Leah and George. Leah and George are two Gorillas’ from the Congo. Leah, the female, has already made history by becoming the first gorilla ever to be photographed using a tool. That’s not an innuendo. In 2005 she was photographed testing the depth of a lake with a stick before wading in. Humans would do well to take heed. This month, the pair made Simian history by becoming the first animals ever to be photographed mating in a face to face position.

Writing in the Gorilla Gazette, a team from the Wildlife Conservation society said:

‘Leah was lying on the ground and George was looking into Leah's eyes.’

Diane Doran-Sheehy, anthropology chair at Stony Brook University has observed more than 500 gorilla matings in the wild—and none were face-to-face.

‘It is an interesting observation and raises questions about why they sometimes engage in it,’ she said.

There may be practical considerations given the apes’ marshy habitat, for example.

‘Perhaps a female doesn’t want to be face down in the swamp,’ Doran-Sheehy said.

Or maybe they just looooooooooooove each other?

A rose by name....

Clearly it is the week to celebrate women of great substance, albeit with a little tear in our eye. I am sad to report the passing of the magnificent Rose Hacker. At the same time, I am metaphorically whooping with joy at the achievements of a woman who fought as hard as she bloody well could to make sure she left this world just a little bit better than the one she found.

Teresa, my trusty transcriber alerted me to the whirlwind that is Rose Hacker.

'She's the world's oldest journalist. She wrote books about sex for young people in the sixties. Why don't you see if she'll talk to you about virginity loss and sex?'

She did, and one hot afternoon last summer I found myself sitting in the presence of a genuine VIP. All one-hundred-and-one years of her. You can't underestimate the importance of people like Rose Hacker. She was born in 1906 and she helped to set up what we now know as 'Relate' but was then known as ‘The Marriage Guidance Council’. This earns her the slightly saucier title of 'World's oldest sex therapist'. But jest not. It is relatively easy for the likes of me to get people to talk about their sex lives but it wasn't for Rose back then. This is a woman who constantly stuck her head out on the parapet at a time when people simply did not talk about their sexual lives. This wasn’t the only world in which she moved.

A peace activist, a politician, an artist and the author of the book ‘Telling the Teenagers’, a guide published in 1966 to help parents talk to their children about sex, Rose Hacker never let a day go by without doing something extraordinary.

In 2007, a local newspaper reporter saw her give a speech at the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in Tavistock Square. He was impressed. He offered her the chance to write a fortnightly column for the Camden New Journal. Another new career was born.

Last year, she said this to Guardian journalist Mildred Amadiegwu: ‘It would be so easy for me to sit in this chair, listen to music and do nothing,’ she says. ‘I can understand people my age who just give up.’ So why doesn't she? ‘Because of the state of the world. I think it's very important that people should listen to people like me - and we're being totally ignored.’ Does that make her angry? ‘Yes. But I'm furious about everything.’

Her last column for the Camden New Journal was published on January 31st 2008. She died four days later on February 4.

Making a difference right to the end.

I only had the pleasure of Rose Hacker’s company once but I shall replay it many times in my imagination.

Let Love Rule?

Donkey’s years ago, in my early twenties, I got my first proper job. Don’t get me wrong, I’d had hundreds of jobs by this point but this was the first where I got paid monthly i.e. I was going to stay put for longer than ten minutes.

I didn’t mind because it was my hearts desire. My first job in the music business. A whirlwind of gigs, guest lists and glamour, at least in my imagination. In reality, I got to answer the phone to Ian McCulloch. This was no great hardship at the time because I was a huge Echo and the Bunnymen fan. I also got to observe my boss at close quarters, a flame haired Viking of a man with a penchant for the re-arrangement of everyday audio equipment.

‘What do you mean the spare phone doesn’t work?’

‘Well, I phoned BT and they said it wasn’t broken enough to fix’.

He picks up the phone and dashes it to the floor.

‘It’s broken now’.

Okey dokey, I’ll just give them another call then.

In amongst this tomfoolery was the very real opportunity to see as many free gigs as I liked. Me and my friends made full use of this facility. Glastonbury with The Cure, backstage camping and access all areas? I was there. The Cramps at The Crypt in Brixton? Count me in. The Happy Mondays at Wembley Arena? Truly one of the magical musical hi-lights of my life. But it wasn’t just the big boys I was interested in. I went to see the little fish too.

In the winter of ‘89, I went to some dump off Oxford Street to see the first British show of a new artist that the agency had just signed. His name was Lenny Kravitz and he tore the place to shreds. A man, a guitar and a stage. That’s it. Even to my untrained eye, it was quite obvious that something was up. The rest of the crowd thought so too. Both Roachford and Terence Trent D’arby left the room shortly afterwards – literally and metaphorically.

Fast forward to the present day and it is no surprise that Mr Kravitz is a multi million selling babe magnet of a talented man who has……..decided to give up sex until he gets married. Yes, you heard me. Lenny Kravitz will remain celibate until he meets and marries the woman he loves.

Now, I had planned to ponder upon the idea of ‘secondary virginity’. The idea that one can ‘start over’ again, even if one has had quite a lot of sex, thereby attaining secondary, or ‘born-again’ as some types prefer to call it, virginity. But I don’t quite think this is Mr Kravitz’s style. Spiritual he may be, but ‘born again’, I think not.

But once I had googled the words ‘Lenny Kravitz + sex’ and flicked my way through ten pages of the above mentioned story, and counting, I had to ask myself – again, why is it that we cannot get our heads around the fact that some people actively choose not to have sex, for a whole bunch of different reasons? Is it just too much of an anomaly in today’s society to abstain, not for religious reasons, but simply because you want to save it for someone that you really like, or even, dare I say it, love?

I have an issue with ‘The Silver Ring Thing/True Love Waits/Creepy teenage-controlling-right-wing Christian groups. I don’t think it is right to ask what are essentially children to make very adult decisions about their lives and their bodies. It is natural to grow, to change and develop. People must be free to make individual choices as these changes occur. This is what living in a democratic society is all about.

Having said that, I do think it is a sensible question to ask yourself if you are having sex with someone: why am I doing this? I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to this question but there is something to be gained by asking it.

Much as I don't like to link to her tedium, (although I do wish her a speedy recovery from her recent illness), Dawn Eden posted this on her blog the other day:

"There is no such thing as giving the body without giving the soul. Those who think they can be faithful in soul to one another, but unfaithful in body, forget that the two are inseparable. Sex in isolation from personality does not exist! An arm living and gesticulating apart from the living organism is an impossibility. The separation of soul and body is death. Those who separate sex and spirit are rehearsing for death'.
—Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married

OK, it’s a tad dramatic but it’s an interesting point. Are we hurting ourselves by having sex with people that we are not commited to? Perhaps this is what Lenny is driving at. Sharing bodily fluids with another human being is pretty serious stuff. Is it not better to do it with someone we love?

Lets face it; we’re not likely to find out unless one of us marries him. Which brings me to my next point. As I pondered these questions in the shower the other morning whilst simultaneously meeting Lenny Kravitz, falling helplessly in love and moving lock, stock and cat to Miami, I arrived at the part where we were just about to get hitched….and panicked! Could I really marry a man that I had never ever had sex with? What if it was awful? A let down, a damp squib. Perhaps he doesn’t even have a penis? My mind flailed around trying to find answers to imaginary questions. This is serious stuff.

I came to my conclusion. No, I don’t think I can marry Lenny. Much as he impressed me with his axe skills all those years ago on a dingy London stage. Marriage is too big a commitment without first road testing the rest of the equipment. Quite apart from the fact that I might go bonkers in the process. I admire Lennie’s commitment to his cause. I would high five him if he were sitting on my bed right now but it would take a lot more than a wedding dress and a ring to win my heart. Sex is way too big a part of a relationship to take a chance on.

Unless we’ve got an ‘everything but’ situation on our hands? Ok, now this I might be able to work with, maybe for Lenny. But then what’s the point in waiting until you get married when you’ve done all the important stuff anyway. Penetration is merely a formality when it comes to sex. There are a hundred ways to enjoy each other without ever having penetrative sex. Or, 'what goes around comes around', as Lenny might say...

This is not a cat blog…

‘Oh yes it is….’
‘Oh noooo it’s not….’
‘Oh yes it IS….’
‘Oh nooooo it’s NOT…’

It’s just that my life isn’t all about virginity loss. Particularly at this time of year. As my eyes go slowly square and my stomach gently rounds, my life revolves around re-runs of ‘Batteries Not Included’ (love it), ‘Titanic’ (love it more), and ‘Mission Impossible’ (not bothered). I also enjoy the odd trip to the vets. Not the money aspect. Nope, I could do without a whopping seventy-five pound bill but it is almost worth it for the pantomime performance that is….the local vets.

There is little point in trying to get away with a dull trip. It simply doesn’t happen. There’s too much going on. The pets that look like people! The drama! The embarrassing accidents! If you want to learn anything about life, death, and frequently yourself, just go and hang out at your local veterinarian’s. My most recent visit is a case in point.

It was the Saturday morning before Christmas and on the face of it, I was there for an annual ‘booster’ injection. In reality it is just a very expensive manicure for a cat with stupidly sharp claws. ‘Shall I give his nails a little clip while he’s here?’ Ben always says.

I’d like to see you try, I think to myself as three staff members attempt to wrestle six kilos of angry cat to the ground and curtail those claws. It never happens. He didn’t earn the name Edward Scissorhands for nothing. Hey ho, all this was all to come as I seated myself next to a gentleman of eastern European extraction. I know this because he was talking to his tall son in a Russian accent.

‘Go. Go. Fetch coffee. I will be fine here’, he said as the young man bent to fit his frame through a door that now looked like something from Alice in Wonderland and set forth into the day. Portly, rain-coated and elderly, my new neighbour now bent down to fuss with the contents of his basket. He didn’t look like a pet owner and that’s what I love about the vet’s. I love the way that the most innocuous looking characters, people that would normally cut you up in their cars or jump the bus queue are reduced to a big sappy heap of sentimentality when it comes to their pets.

Today was no exception. A long low bleat came from below as the old man extracted an equally old cat from a white wire basket. The noise was patient but persistent. ‘I don’t feel well’, it seemed to say. ‘I really wouldn’t bother making all this fuss if I felt fine’.

‘There now Mushi’, said the man as he hugged a tattered old cat to his chest. ‘Don’t worry now. Everything will be ok.’ One look at Mushi told me this wasn’t the case. I am no expert, but a cat with a tongue slung sideways out of its mouth is not in good shape. Mushi might be ‘going home’, but not to the one he arrived from.

Slowly my heart began to crack in two. ‘Come back here Son’, I thought. ‘Why did you leave your father to fetch coffee? Come back and help. You’re young. He’s old. Mushi is all he has’. I pictured the old man leaving the vets with an empty basket and I slunk further down into my seat. I wonder if the man lives near his son or is Mushi the only real friend he has in the world?

The call came. ‘Mr Ivanov, you can bring Mushi through now’. No one said a word but the silence said it all. Eyes flickered familiar thoughts around the room. This is the day that every pet owner dreads. Let it be when we are young and fit, not old and lonely. Let it be quick and painless, not drawn out and dramatic. Some time later, a tear stained assistant emerged from the room.

Not long after, my less theatrical turn arrived. As the staff fought to ‘organize’ my spitting companion, I asked the vet, ‘How do you do this job? I thought my heart would break when the old Russian man shuffled into your room with his sick cat’.

‘Its not easy Kate’, he said. ‘And it gets harder as I get older. But you have to do the best thing for the animal. Its not fair to keep a sick animal alive’.

‘I know’. I said. ‘But I can’t bear the thought of that old man going home alone without his pet and feeling sad’.

‘Oh, you don’t need to feel so bad’, said Ben. I’ve known this family for a long time and that man has a wife waiting for him at home, he’ll be fine. He also has a girlfriend, but you didn’t hear that from me’.

Well blow me down with a feather. I didn’t see that one coming. You’re right, as I watched the old man leave the vets that afternoon with an empty basket and the tall son who finally arrived back with two cups of coffee, I didn’t have to fight the urge to drive him to the local refuge and purchase him a pet with my own money.

So what’s the point of this post? I have no idea. My brain has turned to mush and I couldn’t think of an ending to this story if my life depended on it. But try this for size. As we step into 2008, we can cat-astrophize until the cows come home, but the truth is often simpler, happier and far less dramatic than we like to imagine.

Happy New Year y’all!

The Love Parade...

Angst, hope, fear and joy. You can always rely on good old virginity loss to deliver such a jaw juddering compilation of human emotion. Wars may be won and dictatorships may fall, but taking the giant leap into adulthood will always be scary - guaranteed. Out here in the rest of the world, however, there is no such luck. Sands are shifting, gender is bending and ordinary people everywhere are still trying to work out what it is we should be doing.

The tension replicates itself everytime a helpful gent opens a door for me. For a split second the fear is palpable as his eyes lock on mine, his arm starts to shake and....he panics. 'Shit! I've just made the most terrible mistake. I forgot. Women open their own doors now. OMG! She looks murderous.......aarrrRRRRRGGGGGHHHH'. Sound of heels being turned, swiftly followed by door slamming in face.

Just for the record, I have no issue with door opening. But I do get the dilemma. There's a whole load of argy-bargy going on out here as we dance the strange dance of trying to work out where we all stand. It used to be so simple. Not any more. In the words of a young woman I interviewed recently, 'we’re just going mental, aren’t we? We’re taking over.’

We are. Oh look. We have.

There are details to work out its true, but on the whole, most of us are leading lives that our grandmothers wouldn’t recognize. But where does that leave the male of the species? Confused is what. Birth control got the ball rolling, and it pretty much hasn’t stopped since. We earn money, we rule roosts and we generally dance to the beat of our own drums. Literally. Ever heard of DIY? The two boys walking behind me in Cavendish square the other night certainly had. Let me refresh your memory:

Posh boy one: (Talking about mutual female work colleague), ‘Don’t you think she’s just really blaaddy hot? I do, but she obviously masturbates wayyyyyyy too much!’

Posh boy two: ‘Yah, she's just not having the cock is she? She’d much rather go home and masturbate. But she’s still blaaady hot!!’

What? I wanted to know, was all that about?

Well, boys and girls, I think I might have figured it out. Beneath the joviality of two happy ‘hoorays’ out for a jocular night of ‘penis jousting’ - their words, not mine, I believe we may have arrived slap bang at the centre of a very sore spot.

Men are petrified that they are surplus to requirements. Think about it. All the signs are there. Women do not require the presence of a man any more than they need another area of their body that requires hair removal. We are self-sufficient. Heck, we don’t even need men for pleasure any more. ‘Female’ and ‘masturbation’ were two words that didn’t often appear together until relatively recently, at least in public. But they do now and there’s no turning back. Women have found their power, and they’re not afraid to use it.

And how about babies? Worried about replication? Don’t!! Our new found earning power can buy us all the sperm we need - bringing with it a whole new meaning to the words ‘grow your own’. Just imagine. No fuss, no muss and no more pesky ‘relationships’ to navigate. Babies bred without the addition of an actual man. There is it. Fear with a very real basis. Welcome to our brave new world.

Or not. Men are so much dimmer than I thought.

It’s never, ever going to happen - and I’ll tell you why. Never in a month of Sundays will we fall out of love....with love. We live for it, we breathe for it and our lives depend on it. There is not a cat in hells chance that women will ever get bored of men. Hello? Hormones!! The urge to build a nest and sit in it will never cease. We have been hardwired this way since the dawn of time.

Men might become house-husbands and women will likely take over the world, but partnership will always be the name of the game no matter how many girls find new ways to ‘entertain’ themselves whilst the likes of you lot get your acts together. Although I suspect that in the case of our two lovable toffs, the line that launched a thousand books might be more appropriate: ‘he’s just not that into you’. Stick an ‘S’ on the front of that quote dears, and we might be scratching the surface of truth.

Whatever. Some things will never go out of fashion and love, my friend, is one of them. Worry not gentlemen. The future is not orange. It is red, it is heart shaped and it’s rhythmic beat is coming to a town near you – soon!!!

overheardlastnight.com

A quick ‘wave’ from sabbatical land as I report fresh from the front line of the gender divide. Two young ‘chaps’ blew the whole thing wide open last night as I skipped through London’s Grosvenor Square. Unwittingly so. They didn’t know I was listening - at first.

Toff One: (Talking about mutual work colleague), Don’t you think she’s just really bloody hot? I do, but she obviously masturbates wayyyyyyyyy too much!

Toff Two: Yah, she's just not having the cock is she? She’d much rather go home and masturbate. But she’s still blooooody hot!!

Me: (In front, shoulders moving silently up and down as trying to stifle laugh)

Toff One: (Whispering), I think that person just heard what we were saying.

I did, but I'm not sure I understand what I heard.

Answers on a postcard, but preferably an email to The Virginity Project.

Puuurlease put me out of my misery! (Whilst I go and do the obvious).

How does your garden grow?

People often want to know what inspired this crazy journey. What the monkey nuts got me up off my backside and out into the wide world to ask a whole bunch of people, strangers mostly, about one of the most profound personal moments of our lives...the loss of virginity. It's hardly your common or garden pastime. In fact an allotment would have been a lot easier. Heck, I like to garden as much as the next person, but I just don't think it would have been quite as, lets say, absorbing...

The truth is that I was bored and uninspired. Bored of working for people, and uninspired by earning money and spending it on new shoes and dinner. That kind of lays the groundwork, but there's a little bit more to it than that. Lulled into a sense of torpor I may have been, but I was also something else. I was itchy like an itchy thing for a challenge. I was crouched beneath an invisible starting pistol that I didn't even know existed. I was, basically, gagging for a change.

It's a funny old thing, but when you really have the intention to do something different with your life, even if that hot fire of frustration is subconscious, when you've got the steering wheel of destiny gripped between both hands, the universe does have a strange habit of sticking a cosmic sign post in your path and waiting to see if you read it or not. And so it was, that I found myself lounging on El Matador beach one fine September afternoon and breaking the bread with a very special friend. We soon got down to the afternoon's entertainment - the in's and, ahem, outs, of our early sexual endeavours.

J and I had very different stories. His was a boy's for a start, but that wasn't what got my attention. It was more to do with the precision with which he could tell me the dates, times, names and exact details of every single conquest almost but not quite achieved in the lead up towards the literal climax of his story that got me going.

It was the frustration, the lust and the desire, this boy was horny! Alongside the descriptions of parents who had the complete and utter temerity to move to the countryside just as he came of age, thereby drastically reducing his cherry popping chances that made me laugh. It was the pain and the sheer hormonally driven passion to scratch that sensational itch that seems to afflict so many teenage boys just at the point when puberty strikes that captured my imagination. Most of all, I loved the fact that it was all so box-fresh in his mind, so oven-ready to recall, even now, a straight twenty-five years after the event.

'Everyone's got a story like this', he said. 'You should collect them'

Right then and there, and completely out of the blue, my fate was sealed. I knew without a single shadow of a doubt that I was going to do exactly that. I hadn't missed the signpost. What's more, it made perfect sense. Most people on this planet will lose their virginity. But no two will have the same story.

That last point becomes all the clearer to me now, as I consider the fact that there is often more than one reason why we do any given thing. I could leave you with the story above, or I could tell you more. Not just about my own reasons, but indeed the universal impetus to talk to a complete and utter stranger about our inner worlds.

Many months later, my challenge now well underway, I decided to imitate the interview process. How could I expect to understand how my interviewees felt about telling their virginity loss stories if I wasn't prepared to try it out myself? A friend offered to ask the questions. I was quite astonished at what came out.

Number one. My story was completely and utterly devoid of hormonally driven sexual desire. Number two. It kind of bugged me. There was no itch to scratch here, at least none of the sexy kind. Good lord! There was something hideously wrong with me. Without ever really acknowledging it to myself, my story had bugged the hell out of me for this simple reason - it wasn't sexy. Sound stupid? It is. But the thoughts that we formulate in our teenage minds have a funny habit of remaining just that. Teenage.

Which explains my willingness - and that of my interviewees, to lay ourselves upon the lines of truth, albeit many years later, and re-live some of the biggest moments of our lives. The best way to move forwards, it seems, is often to take a step back.

In my case, to a time when I was quite possessed by the idea of being a grown up. So much so, that I was happy to hand my virginity in a gift-wrapped box to the sexiest French boy that I could find. That was the deal. I forfeited desire, the real deep down and dirty delicious kind, but in return, I got what my heart desired more than anything - to be an adult. The sexy bit came much later, once I'd found myself a boyfriend who could actually speak the same language as me.

And that as they say, is that. Two completely different stories and one great big fat reason why I have never found it difficult to get anyone to talk to me. Face to face that is. The Internet is different. Here I understand the reluctance to part with intimate sexual information - the Internet is not a person. But out here, in the sentient world, people are moving towards the experiences, whatever they may be, that subconsciously they need in order to push forward. We are all doing it. You are probably doing it right now. Because you really never know what is around the corner, or in my case, the beach.

Don't take the cherry off my cupcake...

Being British, one does feel the need to spout off about the weather from time to time. Therefore, I am sure you will be pleased to know that it is THE most stupidly gorgeous day here in London. The sky is blue, the sun is shining and the birds really are singing in St James Square.

The cupcake of my day has just been iced with a bacon sandwich and cup of earl grey tea. Could life get any better?

Maybe.

Here is technical virgin.com.

If you’re American, you will have seen this. If not, hold onto to your horses.

The star of this clip was fired from her job as a kid’s TV presenter when this went live.