The Virginity Project

What time is love?

You kind of fall in love, in a little way, with every person that you interview.

Most often, you have never met before. You will have had a conversation to discuss arrangements, venues and any questions they might have. But essentially they meet you as a stranger. You sit down together, the tape recorder goes on and they begin to tell you the intimate details of their lives. Often things that they have never told anyone.

Last week I spent an afternoon going over old transcriptions, laying them all out on the floor, each character wrapped in a transparent A4 sleeve, their cores printed neatly out onto chunks of crispy white paper. To read them again was a bit like having them all over for tea. Violet made me laugh the most, somewhat in contrast to her story, which is not the easiest. Perhaps it is her voice, a rich northern Irish lilt, so hard to get your ear around that I had to transcribe her interview myself, knowing it would have taken my regular transcriber weeks compared to my days. But it is more than her sonorous tones. It is her diction, her choice of words and the way that she looks at her life. A life that has included six children, an errant husband, a stretch in goal, or the ‘hokey pokey’ as she calls it and a journey away from her family at the age of thirteen, no money in her pocket, to begin a new life in London.

As I read her words again, I am sitting back at her feet with my Dictaphone, looking at a tiny lady who has lead a huge life. A clock hangs behind us on the wall, but she doesn’t know what time it says because she never learnt to tell the time. ‘If anyone ever asks me the time Kate, I just tell them that clock is ten minutes fast.’

She didn’t learn to tell the time, or read or write because when she arrived in London she got a job in a Lyons Corner House and earned a living, many of her friends turning to prostitution to make ends meet. Why am I telling you all this? I am not really sure, but it is partly to illustrate the fact that virginity loss is just an episode in the ten part series that makes up our lives. Every episode reveals something further about the main character.

Which is why, even though I set out to interview people about the loss of virginity, I always want to know about the journey. How do we get to the point where we can lose our virginity? And are there clues, hidden in those nascent episodes as to what the future might hold? How far forward do we travel on from that point? Where does the story end?

Fifty-seven years later and in a cozy council flat in South-East London. Violet has not returned to Ireland since the day she left but her accent is as robust as it ever must have been. As she sits on her armchair, not unlike a queen on her throne, and recounts her teenage misdemeanors, I catch glimpses of the thirteen-year old girl in the face of the grand dame that sits before me.

No introductions nessesary...

We are in a virginity hotspot.

I received this email from Chloe*……

Billy meet Chloe

Chloe meet Billy

Dear Kate

I actually am still a virgin even though I am going to be thirty years old this June. I went to Catholic school until my junior high, age fifteen, and a Catholic girls school for one year where a nun is the headmaster who was very popular among students for being very strict.

My family, especially my mother herself, is also rather conservative. So I turned out to be rather a conservative person as well, especially regarding matters related to sex. I have been taught since I was little that a good and nice girl would save her virginity until her first night after her wedding for her husband.

I suppose it is probably due to my experience overseas, where I got to meet different people from different countries and backgrounds that I had my mind opened up to new ideas, I became more open-minded. And now after having different experiences and listening to different ideas, I am torn and it feels as if I am in front of a crossroad and if I decided to take one of the two paths, I would not be able to go back.

On one hand, I have this idea that I would be perceived and perhaps even feel myself less worthy in front of a future significant other who is still a virgin, (perhaps having similar background like mine), since the teachings from Catholic classes and from my mother are so ingrained in me.

On the other hand, I also think that if I would like to have a good marriage, it would be probably wise to find out before whether the two of us are compatible and a potential problem like the sex life can be resolved or at least understood before getting married.

My biggest fear is that since I have very little experience even in the foreplay area since I have never had a long-term boyfriend to explore with, the problem is probably going to be from my side.

Recently, as I project that I probably will not marry nor find a long-term significant other, and if it is not such a big deal about losing virginity especially the thought that it is not as glorious as a lot of people perceive, I am considering that I probably should change the way I perceive virginity - in particular mine.

I am not sure why I am writing to you actually, and by now after writing this long, I am a little bit tempted just to erase the e-mail. However, I suppose my curious side won the battle and I was wondering if there are people who are torn about this matter like me as well?

I suppose it is rather a nice feeling to know that I am not the only person who is having doubts about this and it would be even nicer to be able to discuss it as well.

Best wishes

Chloe

Would anyone like to feedback to Chloe?

Please comment or email me: katemonroe@yahoo.com

*All names changed to protect identity.

Like a virgin?

Sex is everywhere. There’s so much of it, you can’t even see it most of the time. It’s on the telly, the Internet, in magazines and newspapers. It entices you to buy things, it’s a gang that you want to join and if you buy these very sexy underpants then you probably can. One could quite easily delude oneself that virtually everybody in the world is having sex, right now. It is a currency, a method of communication. It is the wallpaper of life.

I am here to tell you that not quite everybody is having sex. In fact, quite a few people have never had sex. Billy, below, might imagine that he is in a minority but he is not. I am no statistician, but in the last eighteen months, a fair proportion of the people that I have approached have been virgins. Not one of them has been a wart-covered sociopath with little in the way of charm or beauty. They all appear to be perfectly normal people – of all ages, who have never, for one reason or another, had sex.

Whilst my primary motive has always been to research the loss of virginity and the subsequent journey that we take, perhaps by excluding those who have chosen (or not), to retain their virginity, I am not painting the real picture. I will begin to make amends by posting Billy’s thoughts on the subject…

Hello Kate, or Ms Monro,

I just discovered your Virginity Project while
performing a web search. I like the idea for the site,
but that's not why I'm e-mailing today.

My ‘problem’ is with the small paragraph that runs
down the left margin of the page. It says, ‘Losing our
virginity, it happens to all of us, no matter who we
are or where we come from’. I find this to be
a generalization and somewhat presumptuous. Surely you
don't believe that everyone on the planet loses their
virginity?

You could drop that opening sentence, or replace it
with something less... antagonistic. If anything, I find
it puts more pressure on the virgins of the world,
making them feel even more estranged, given
that apparently everyone has sex.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to point out. I put the
word 'problem' in quotes above because I'm not someone
who takes offense to... well, anything really. As such
I'm not going to be disappointed if you leave
the sentence up on your site. I just wanted you to know that
reading it made me feel like crap, and has no doubt
made the same impression on other perpetual virgins who
stumble upon your site.

Sincerely,

Billy*

Dear Billy

Thank you for your imput. Consider my side panel
modified.

No, seriously, I take your comment fully on board
because it is a valid one. I have, in my travels,
encountered quite a lot of virgins. All of different
ages, some of them having made a conscious choice to
hang onto virginity and others not.

Is this something that you might consider writing
about? It’s an interesting perspective and one that
people might be interested to hear about. Have you
perhaps had near misses? Or do you have an ideal
scenario in your head? I don't know, I am just
throwing the idea out there....

Anyway, many apologies for making you feel bad, it
certainly wasn't intended.

Best wishes from Kate

Hi Kate,

I appreciate the small but significant modification.

As for writing, I'm sure I'd have a fair bit to say on the subject if I
thought about it. But I'm still at odds with myself about the whole
situation. I can tell you I've not had any near misses, nor am I waiting
for the right moment as many people like to say. In truth, I've never
had anything, ever, at all.

I'd be surprised if there existed a more virginal virgin.

I don't have any obvious flaws that would cause this incredible streak
of nothingness, so I can only assume there's something instinctually
missing from my genetic makeup. Hmmm, but that would suggest a
hereditary trait, which would be impossible! So let's call it psychological instead
of genetic. It's not even a lack of sexual drive. I have more than
enough of that.

Similarly, I also have to assume that whatever I am missing is present
in most people, explaining why so many of them lose their virginity at
a young age. Obviously sex is a hot topic so these discussions do happen
with some frequency, The common theme is that it's quite easy to have sex,
or more specifically to find a willing partner. In fact it's so easy that people
are almost having sex by accident, after a night at the club/bar or
wherever.

I used to think it was my extreme introversion that caused it, but I
don't believe that anymore. I don't believe it because, as your blog's
main page so simply states, virginity is lost "no matter who we are or
where we come from". And based on what I've seen in my 26 years on the
planet, it's true. Don't get me wrong, introversion is certainly not
going to help the aspiring non-virgin, but with relationships being
partially a game of odds, eventually you're going to get a hit, introvert or
otherwise.

Now I'm at a point where I feel it's too late. Or rather, I haven't
completely decided what I feel yet, but ‘too late’ is a popular thought.
Heck, more than half the time I'm convinced a relationship isn't even
something that I want. And it's frustrating, because thinking about this
obviously accomplishes very little. And the more I think the more time
passes and the further behind, (and more frustrated), I become.

My rationalization is that since most people start in their mid to late
teens, that's about a decade of experience that any potential mate
would have under her belt, (in a matter of speaking). And like absolutely
every skill of value, the more practice and experience you get, the
better you become.

This isn't limited to the actual act of sex. Movies and
television often portray relationships as fated encounters that defy
explanation, and many people are subdued into believing this. I would
wager that these people, particularly from previous generations, are of the
mindset that a relationship is something out of our control that just
happens, rather than a skill to be honed.

Which is what brought me to your website in the first place. I was
searching for a site that tackled virginity from the virgin's perspective.
Maybe a community of people who are virginal and beyond a reasonable
age, (say twenty). But if such a place exists I haven't found it yet, and if I
did would I even like who I'd found? What I did find was yet more
evidence that I'm in a startlingly small minority, which abruptly ended my
search.

Well, I guess in the end I did have a fair bit to say. I could say more
but I'm not sure this is even what you're looking for so I'll stop
here. It was still interesting for me to get some of this on
paper. Writing has a way of forcing things into a somewhat meaningful
order.

Have fun with your studies,

Billy

*All names changed to protect identity.

Lock, pick and roll..

Good old Penn and Teller. There we were, worrying about abstinence all week and they had the answer all the time!

Climb every mountain..

My search for stories takes me on a journey of sorts. Over hills and dales, down motorways, skiing off piste from time to time, often hitting a target and occasionally grinding to a screeching halt. One can never tell where the road might lead you but one thing is for sure, you have to be prepared to explore.

Last night I got a call from Janice James*, my sister’s oldest friend and the only woman I have ever met who has six children. And didn’t want to stop there. Her husband, unsurprisingly, had other ideas.

In the time since Janice first met my sister and the present day i.e. donkey’s years, all of her children have grown into lovely teenagers.

Bingo! I thought, I need to interview more teenagers; Janice has six of them, so some of them must have mates who might want to talk to me.

Let me point out here that the thought of interviewing Janice’s kids was not an option, at least in my head. Far too much ick factor, for them, not me.

Janice, clearly, had other ideas.

‘Hi Kate’, she said on the phone last night. ‘It turns out I have a family of prudes’.

Excuse me?

‘I have asked all of them to tell you their stories and none of them will do it. I can’t believe it. I’ve even taken all of them aside separately and asked them to give me one good reason why they won’t tell you their story’

‘Err, Janice, I can kind of see why they might not want to, I am their mother’s best friend’s sister after all, they know me.’

‘That’s not the point’, she said, ‘we all know how and when each of them lost it because we sit and talk about it around the dinner table every night. I don’t really see what difference it makes.’

‘Well, quite a lot apparently.’

‘The little one said she would tell you, but that’s not much good because she hasn’t lost hers yet’.

God bless her.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Apologies to Janice’s kids for the haranguing. And many thanks to their plucky mother for trying on my behalf, your effort is appreciated.

My transcriber, on the other hand, recently struck gold with a brilliant suggestion for an interview. I followed the trail and quickly got a result. I have always maintained that it was highly unlikely I would ever interview anyone older than ninety one year old Mary Stuart, a lady I travelled down to Cornwall to interview last year.

I was wrong.

Today, I am off interview a lady who was born in 1907. She is a hundred years old. In preparing for the interview, I realise that I will be talking to one of the first women in this country to vote, not that long before she married her husband, and, I suspect, had her ‘first time’.

And the best thing of all?

We are not related, we have never met before and she absolutely does want to be interviewed.

Bingo!

*All names changed to protect identity.

Losing it for the second time...

Your stories

I often think, as I go about my virginity related business, cripes, there are a whole lot of ways to lose one’s virginity. Charon QC, recently told me that each time he made love to a new woman, he felt a little bit like he was losing his virginity all over again, which I thought a rather lovely sentiment.

Must pin him down and interview him sometime. I’ve been trying for ages but he’s a bit slippery. He is a lawyer after all, lets say no more on the matter.

Seriously, he makes an interesting point. If virginity loss is too nebulous a concept to carve into stone, who is to say that we cannot lose our virginity more than once. Because there are all sorts of ‘firsts’, and how we perceive them is a very personal business.

Which brings me to Ed Seeker and a story he recently mailed me. If you want a to take a rollercoaster ride into the mind of a man, have a read of ‘MEN Speak the Unspeakable’, the book that Ed co-authored with Mickey Elias.

The most pertinent part of Ed’s story, for me at least, is that he finds the second experience, the experience of ‘receiving’, more powerful than his first heterosexual experience.

Of course, men have been ‘receiving’ since time began but they have not always held with the idea of virginity loss. In days gone by, virginity was a concept more often applied to women than men.

In the 21st century we have come over all ‘equal opportunities’. We have crossed a gender divide that placed men firmly on one side of the fence and women on the other. The waters in the middle are muddy and metrosexualized man no longer needs to lurk behind the beauty counter in Boots because he has his own section of products to choose from. Before I stray into new territory, I shall finish with a question for you….

What is your definition of virginity loss? Is it the straightforward union of a penis and a vagina?

Can it only happen once? Or can we have multiple virginity losses?

Perhaps it is an emotional change, as opposed to a physical one?

What do you think?

I am all ears….

Email katemonroe@yahoo.com or comment.

Remember, all names will be changed to protect identity.

Edward Seeker. Born in 1966. Lost virginity aged 21 and 26

I am a genuinely bisexual man, as opposed to ‘afraid to come out of the closet’ gay man, aged forty-one, who’s been married, and had equally sublime and heartfelt straight and gay relationships.

I lost my ‘straight virginity’ aged twenty-one to my later wife of ten years. We had a fairly ‘open’ relationship, trusting and honest, and as my need to explore my homosexual urges grew irrepressible, I found myself in spring 1992 in a well-known gay cruising area in the west of England. Amusingly, my Dad drew my attention to the area one day as we drove past, ‘that’s where the queers meet’, he told me.

Aha! I thought.

I had been there a few times before and had some fumbled mutual wanks that were as exhilarating as they were frustrating. On this particular night, I made eye contact with an older guy who was very handsome, and who gave off a gentle yet powerful masculine vibe. We kissed passionately outdoors for some time before he invited me back to his place. I’d never undressed for sex with another guy, and it was very slow and sensual, romantic even.

His home was large and comfortable, and I felt very at ease with him. Touching and being touched, full body contact, completely naked was quite mind-blowing, with twenty something years of gay fantasy to catch up on. We spoke little and I found myself acting quite shy and felt very young and inexperienced.

I needed, more than anything, to experience being fucked, having always been the ‘fucker’, and Mark duly obliged. I recall the sudden fear as he lubed my arse, and as he attempted to enter me, a feeling of being out of control swept over me. It took him a while to get inside, he was quite well hung and my first reaction was of an agonising burning sensation, extremely painful and sharp.

I remember lamely trying to jack myself off while he was inside me, but noticing that the pain had made my erection disappear. It did get better as he persisted and he was keenly aware of causing pain, and I don’t think he stayed inside me for very long at all.

What remains more imprinted on my memory is the closeness we experienced afterwards, hugging and holding and talking. It turned out that he rarely fucked, preferring to be on the receiving end; and I found myself more interested in exploring his body with my hands. ‘You’re very good at stroking’, he said to me.

I’d probably only been there for a couple of hours when I left; it was a weekday, with work the next day. I think we exchanged numbers, but we never made a second date.

I remember when I got home, a sense of feeling less excited and elated than I thought I would – often the case, I find, when reality and fantasy have a huge gap between them! And almost, if you’ll pardon the pun, a sense of anticlimax.

It felt different to losing my virginity with my girlfriend at twenty-one. There was a feeling that the ‘first’ virginity was almost a burden to be rid of as soon as possible, almost a stigma, (for blokes anyway), that got worse the longer it was borne.

With this second experience, it was more of a hunger to find out what it was like to receive. To be the one penetrated was very different; it lacked the sense of ‘losing it’ in a sense, and was, I think, more powerful for that.

Keep your own stories coming….

Let the weekend inspire you, pick up a pen and cast your mind back to your ‘first time’.

Silence your internal editor and go with the flow. First thoughts are always the truest!

What is your definition of a ‘first time’ anyway? Virginity means different things to different people. Assuming it means the straightforward union of a penis and a vagina precludes all sorts of experiences.

What do you consider your ‘first time’?

Can you recall what was going through your mind? What was your motivation? Love? Anxiety? Hormones?

What do you see now that you didn’t see then?

Let yourself go……and email me the result: katemonroe@yahoo.com

All names will be changed to protect identity. Don’t forget to tell me your age, how old you were when you had this experience and what country you live in.

Thank you

An American tale....

Your stories

Max is the co-author of an American website called Virtual Love. He sent me the following story, written by a twenty-nine year old woman from Salt Lake City, Utah.

I have made only the tiniest adjustments to this story. I want you to hear the words just as the author has written them. She touches on a crucial point. That sex and intimacy are inextricably linked – but that they are not one and the same thing.

Sex can be intimate, but true intimacy does not necessarily involve sex.

Long-term consequences

The choices we made on one of the most important issues of our intimate life are crucial, even if takes us years to realize. The more so if it happened in a way we didn't expect it to be.

Most stories I've heard from my friends related to their first time seemed kind of typical tales and what I would call a small event in their life. When I recalled my first time, the emotions were overwhelming to say the least. I'd say that they remained in my head, tearing me apart for many years after. A common story of a guy, and a girl who thought she was in love and didn't know what really the guy was thinking of. The first night, and farewell with no words and explanations.

Of course, time cures everything and the moment, however bad it was, passed with the months fleeting away. But what heart seemed to forget, body remembered.

The next time, when it came to physical intimacy, my body remained tense. The deadly silence and surprised face of your partner who couldn't explain why it got so difficult to break through the ‘tightness’. Later on it turned out that sex become a problem for years. The constant fear of being abandoned and hurt once again, made it impossible to build up normal sexual relationships.

The tension remained inside me and I couldn't physically let anyone in. Overcoming the difficulties of the first time which remained a sad experience, made me wiser and cautious but it still was a moment hard to forget. It took almost ten years after I finally coped with the pain with the help of a caring and loving partner, who was patient enough to understand.

That should have been a lesson, a difficult lesson to learn, that sex is not about physical activity but more about emotional ties. As I realized, the problem was actually that we don't know where the real place of sex in a relationship is. We tend to see sexual activity isolated from the emotional side, when in fact both are closely related.

Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder..

Its all very well gawping in disbelief at America’s insistence on teaching their young that abstinence is the only way forward, when I wonder if we really have a leg to stand on here in the UK?

Are we really that far ahead in the sex education stakes?

Rose Hacker doesn’t think so. And she should know. A month ago, this writer, therapist and dress designer turned one hundred and one years old.

Fifty years on from the publication of her book, ‘Telling The Teenagers’, a rare excursion into the realms of sex and personal relationships, she asked the question in her fortnightly column for the ‘Camden New Journal’, ‘how can our society still be failing children and young people in so many ways’?

She’s got a point. Whilst sex education may be compulsory in UK secondary schools, the curriculum still focuses largely on the reproductive system, along with the physical and emotional changes that take place in adolescence. Anything beyond this is discretionary, including lessons about contraception and safe sex.

Davina McCall made a fine effort to re-dress the balance recently in a documentary for Channel 4 entitled ‘Lets talk about sex’. In classic McCall style, she got straight to the point and shipped a couple of head teachers, one of whom asked the reasonable question, ‘what is controversial about teaching somebody how their body works and how to protect themselves?’ and a group of teenagers, out to a Dutch school for a few days investigation.

My heart did go out to them a little as they sat and squirmed at the fairly explicit sex education cartoons that their Dutch counterparts watch as a matter of course…but…this is the physical reality. This is the nuts, so to speak, and the bolts. Our natural instinct as human beings is to mate. And by pretending that it’s not, we communicate an unhealthy message to healthy teenagers with healthy hormone levels.

And the Dutch teach it all within the context of love, friendship and emotions.

Top all this off by comparing our lousy teenage pregnancy figures with Holland’s – lets just say, Holland - 5, United Kingdom - Null points, and I think you see where I am going with this.

I realise I am preaching to the converted, so, just to make things a little more interesting on a Thursday afternoon, put yourself to the test:

This is the same test that Davina McCall, the pupils, and their teachers sat in the aforementioned documentary. Anyone with a commonsense knowledge of sex should, apparently, be able to get 35 of the questions right….

How did you score?

If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine!

Teenager with a one track mind..

Girl with a One Track Mind cut straight to the chase with Monday’s post.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

$1b is an astonishing amount of money to spend on a abstinence programme that tells teenagers to do the direct opposite of what every hormone in their body is impelling them to do on daily basis.

As Niki, one of The Girl’s commenters says, ‘one of the easiest ways to get a teenager interested in doing something is to tell them not to do it’.

We have a long way to go, both America and the UK, before we get anywhere near the level of sophistication the Dutch apply to the teaching of sex education. They have one of the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy in the world.

Enough said.

Still, I cannot deny a morbid fascination with George Bush and his abstinence programmes.

I wonder how he lost his virginity?

Gosh, it really doesn’t bear thinking about does it…….but…I would still love to know.

In fact the thought of going to America and interviewing Americans in general gets me going. Where does the reality lie between the progressive ideas that pour from the pages of books like Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Borat’s unfortunate frat boys and the popularity of The Silver Ring Thing and other chastity promoting movements?

What is the grassroots truth? Where are America’s youth really at?

And how might those stories compare with those of their parents? People for whom the tipping point between the 1950’s paranoia and purity combo and 1960’s ‘liberation’ is still a relatively fresh memory?

America is a fecund patchwork of cultures, ideas, opportunities and sophistication peppered with an elite few who still persist in wearing the emperors clothing. I would relish the opportunity to cut to the chase, to take that written snapshot of a country that inspires global loving and loathing in equal measures.

All from the perspective of it’s virginity.