The Virginity Project

Fear-less and fancy free..

When Donnie first sent me the story in the previous post, I wrote back…

‘Wow. That is one big story and you tell it so well. It illustrates so beautifully what a powerful experience the loss of virginity can be, coming as it often does at a time in our lives when we are so 'in the moment', everything is new, we have nothing to hold back from because we don't understand the concept of holding back, holding back from what?’

As I read this, an image from a television program I once saw springs to mind. The presenter made his point by setting a sweet chubby baby down on a glass floor. Beneath the floor was a big fat nothing. Infinity. Space. Nada. Was the baby fazed? Of course not. Why would he be? Fear is a learned response. The millions of adults who have purchased ‘Feel The Fear And Do it Anyway’ will testify to this.

Beyond ‘innocence’, people have often found it difficult to articulate what it is that they think they are losing when we talk about ‘virginity loss’. But perhaps ‘loss’ is the metaphor for something more profound. Maybe it is the fearlessness that we miss the most.

When we fall for the first time, we often fall hard. To compound the dullness of the thud, some of us, well, Donnie, managed to time this with his first sexual experience. True to form, he finds the right words to describe this bittersweet collection of feelings…

‘Thanks. You're exactly right about us not holding back. I think that's what people REALLY miss when they talk about the loss of innocence. It's not the innocence they miss at all - I certainly don't - it's the willingness to throw oneself entirely into something with no regard for the consequences.

That's the most beautiful element of youth. And it's that feeling, the loss of it - that is really what we lose. That's the idea I think is so beautifully captured in the Eden myth. I remember in the months after she and I fell apart, I read ‘Paradise Lost’ for the first time and I was blown away by how brilliantly Milton captures just that feeling. Adam and Eve are in the full flush of youth, absolutely unafraid and perfectly in sync. But after the fall:

‘They sate them down to weep, nor onely Teares
Raind at thir Eyes, but high Winds worse within
Began to rise, high Passions, Anger, Hate,
Mistrust, Suspicion, Discord, and shook sore
Thir inward State of Mind, calme Region once
And full of Peace, now tost and turbulent:
For Understanding rul'd not, and the Will
Heard not her lore, both in subjection now
To sensual Appetite, who from beneathe
Usurping over sovran Reason claimd
Superior sway.’

Yikes! If you needed a reason to regress, there it is.

Through the past darkly....

Coming as they do, at a point in our lives when we are ‘unformed’, free from the adult shaped shackles of ‘holding back’ or ‘being sensible’, the teenage years leave us free to throw ourselves fully at our first sexual experiences with no holds barred. Heart and all.

In response to Donnie’s story, I wrote back and told him that I will never forget the first time that someone really hurt me. Not that it matters now, but I can still recall its smell, taste and feeling. For Donnie, this bittersweet event collided with another ‘first time’ – the first time he had sex. Ouch. Like many of you, he expresses his feelings clearly. Furthermore, with hindsight, he has learnt to appreciate the past. Good or bad, all our experiences have their parts to play. This is as powerful a story as you will ever hope to hear…

‘If I pause for even a second, I won't send this to you, so I am just going to send it as I wrote it before I have a chance to change my mind:

It was ten years ago this month that I lost my virginity and the experience has left me with memories at once beautiful and bitter.

I was in college, working at a bookstore where it was my job to catalogue all their books for sale on their website. I had a key and often worked late at night and this meant that I and the girl I loved had a place where we could go and be away from the dormitories and our roommates. To say that I loved her would be a pale word for a feeling of radiant brilliance. I savored her. Every angle, every facet of her mind and her words and her eyes seemed to infuse me with an energy that I had never experienced before. When I was with her I felt that blessings were falling around me in a circle, shielding us both from a grey and chilly world.

One night, late in the dark store, after talking about Joseph Conrad novels, we kissed more and more deeply, and everything began to spin around me; all the square angles of the books and shelves blurred like a cartoon as I removed the lace from the curves of her body. It was hard to believe she was real—that anything could be so beautiful. Of course I had seen naked women before in pictures, and that had somehow infused the whole idea with a degree of unreality that now seemed to surround us.

We were laying on the floor between shelves of old books, and it all seemed like magic rather than reality; like music rather than sounds. I remember how her heat surprised me. I remember how her legs felt when they moved up around my ribs. I remember something she whispered to me—a whisper I sometimes still hear at night. I remember when I climaxed, the feeling rising up in me in a rush of heat: not like the feeling it had been when I was alone.

I remember playing with her hair afterwards, as we lay together panting and hot. And most of all I remember the feeling much later, as the sun was rising and we left the store. She was wearing my coat. And everything in the world was different. I noticed it instantly—as though the world had changed color; as though everyone had been speaking in a foreign accent and now suddenly switched to my own. I felt connected with the earth and the trees and the animals around me, and, of course, with her. It was truly a revelation.

I felt redeemed; saved somehow from an emptiness of which I had once had only a vague notion. In the ensuing weeks, as we made love more and more, I felt as though I had discovered a spiritual salvation of which religion had always seemed a bland imposter. I had never been a religious person, although I had appreciated religion's emotional aspirations. Now I was part of those aspirations.

It was only weeks later that it ended for us, under peculiarly painful circumstances. We tried briefly to salvage what had been, but it did not work. I was faithful; she was not. My heart was truly broken, as it has never been before or since. I fell into a depression and a year later decided to kill myself. I lay on my bed holding a knife and staring at it. I put it to my skin, but did nothing else. I won't go into what happened next, or describe how my desperate attempts to salvage what she and I had were rebutted with two painful betrayals. Suffice to say that I put my life together, and in the decade that has passed since I have made a successful and happy life, one of which I am deeply proud; one which makes me so glad I did not take my life as I so seriously considered then.

Six or seven years ago I saw met up with her again at a restaurant on the East Coast. She was with someone else, and after our lunch, I was able finally and at last to let her go. At home, I threw away my mementoes of her. Since then I have found a woman I love with all my heart and this summer will be our five-year anniversary.

My college girlfriend has married, and I hope she has found a life of tranquility, and that her husband fills her heart, as evidently I could not. Although the pain she caused me can never be washed away, and can never allow us to be friends, I am still intensely grateful for what she gave me, and I am able now to look back on that night and the other nights with magnanimity and fondness.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking of her and I am reminded of lines from my favorite poem, Tennyson's ‘Ulysses’: ‘I am part of all that I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch where through / Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move.’

I told her then that I would always love her, and, for better or for worse, it seems to be true.'

Donnie, from the United States

The write to express yourself...

The brilliant emails and stories that you send me are a constant joy. This is what makes The Virginity Project tick. It doesn’t happen everyday – sending your most intimate sexual stories to a stranger can be a daunting prospect, but when you do, the results are great.

‘Oh my story isn’t that interesting – you wouldn’t want to hear it’.

Not true. Everyone has a different perspective. Your experience is every bit as unique as the tips of your fingers. And lets face it; the moment itself isn’t always much to write home about. What makes the story great are the details. How did you get there? What was happening around you at the time – literally or metaphorically? Can you remember why you lost your virginity? Compared to what you might tell me now with the benefit of hindsight?

The telling of stories is a powerful experience. Whether on paper or by voice, re-living a watershed moment can be revealing. I promised myself I wouldn’t mention the word ‘cathartic’ but I can’t help it. How many times have I observed a look of relief on the faces of people who have chosen to tell me stories? Too many to mention.

Asides from anything, it can be fun. And a chance to express yourself. So, people of the world, if you get the urge, pick up your pens and create. If you would like some guidance, drop me a line and I’ll send you some starting points but here are a few more to get you going….

Is virginity ‘loss’ a physical or mental moment?

Can you describe this moment?

What does your story say about you?

Does the way we lose our virginity matter?

Keep them coming - katemonroe@yahoo.com

* Please note – all names will be changed to protect identity *

The Virginity Project takes a trip....

Water Lillies is one of those French films that normally I would hate, and truth be told, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick between that and ‘Echo Park LA’, another film that features virginity ‘loss’, I would choose Echo Park or ‘Quinceanera’ as it was originally known. But that’s just me and there’s a reason for it. I like happy. I like bright and I like warm weather. Whilst elements of Echo Park LA are harsh, the story is told against the rich vibrant background of Latino life in the Sunshine state – California – with a guaranteed 365 days of nice weather per year. Life might be hard but the temperature is hot and the ‘uncle’ of the film is the owner of one of the cutest little gardens I have ever seen.

Horticultural preferences asides, ‘Water Lillies’ is another kettle of fish altogether. You know those French films that are set in the geographical equivalent of Staines? Not even Staines but Staines in the sticks. Staines in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and nowhere to go and the director never lets you forget this for even a moment or tries to dress this town up to be anything other than what it is. This is the filmic version of heroin chic. No frills, no spills, just real life with all the glamour of a bare bulb swinging back and forth across a sparsely decorated bedroom.

I’m just trying to flag up some of the internal prejudices that this rookie film reviewer has to wrestle with when she steps into the cinema and frankly I don’t suppose I shall be spending much of my life reviewing films for anyone other than myself with that attitude but I will say this: ‘Water Lilies’ is a terrific film.

This is a film that takes you back to a time when stuff mattered. I don’t mean the stuff that you think about now: houses, mortgages, jobs and money, I mean the important stuff. Desire, boys, girls and hormones. Do you remember when the four walls that surrounded your bedroom felt like the universe? Do you remember the first time you felt like you might die if the feelings you felt were not reciprocated? This film does. It takes us slap bang into the world of three very different young women as they explore their first forays into the world of physical love.

There are no holds barred here, literally and figuratively. The director pulls no punches when she illustrates how the foxier of the three goes about the technical loss of her virginity - I don’t want to ruin this scene for you, you’ll have to see it. These are young urban women with nothing to hold them back from pursuing their teenage desires, unlike the protagonist of my other new favorite film, ‘Echo Park LA’ – a bit of a misnomer actually as it came out in 2006.

Magdalena has no such luck. She is on the eve of her ‘Quinceanera’. This is the traditional Mexican celebration that informs the world of a girl’s impending woman hood. Virginal women hood. ‘Quinceanera’ means fifteen and as such, all fifteen-year old Mexican girls are supposed to be ‘pure’. This is a problem for Magdalena because she is pregnant.

Here we arrive at a theme that these two films share. One of the modern absurdities of our time is the misinformed belief that an inconsequential piece of skin is a reliable indication of virginity. Every sane person knows that a hymen can be broken in so many ways, none of which involve sexual intercourse.

For our French sisters, this tiny piece of skin represents nothing more than a physical barrier, something to be removed quite literally, again - I won’t tell you how - and, most importantly, in order to save face. No one wants to be a big prissy virgin. But for Magdalena, the presence of this anatomical detail is a saving grace. She might be pregnant but she didn’t have sex - at least not the penetrative kind.

And yes, in case you are wondering, it is possible to get up the duff this way. My friend’s thirteen-year old daughter is living proof of this fact. Hello? Fingers can fit into all sorts of places and sperm can swim!! Luckily for Magdalena, this oversight has been noted by the local doctor, luckily for us, not before our hapless heroine is dispatched to live with the other black sheep of her family, her gay cousin. Here the film finds its heart between the tender interplay of these characters and their protector, the lovely garden owning great uncle.

Neither film takes a moral stance on any of this activity; it merely observes the characters as they struggle to take their first sexual steps whilst being judged against the activities of their peers – Water Lillies, and the social mores of their elders – Echo Park LA.

Water Lillies may lack the surface sunshine of ‘Echo Park’ but it has a very warm core - topped off by some truly beautiful performances. OK, I know these girls are professional actors but this is some serious subject material and they carry it off superbly. Ditto Echo Park, which strays into documentary territory at times, so visceral are the emotions expressed by these actors.

Both films echo what I reach to achieve on this blog – the gravity and the humor of some very serious situations. For some people, the loss of virginity is literally life threatening. For others the consequences may not be so drastic, at least not to the naked eye.

Echo Park LA is available here.
Water Lillies is out on 14 March in the UK. Take a look...

Get fighting fit...

You are a creative bunch out there in the digital ether. ‘Regner’ from Denmark sent me this charming if highly poignant collection of thoughts and stories about virginity. Namely his own. It got me to thinking in another Carrie Bradshaw moment of contemplation that virginity loss is the conduit. The tunnel through which we drive so much of our anxiety, our sadness and our frustration with the way that life just doesn’t pan out the way we want it sometimes.

In many ways this story isn’t really about virginity loss. It’s part of it - the tangible part of a life that its owner doesn’t feel is quite up to scratch, but it’s not the whole story. This is the story of someone who has not yet grasped a sense of his own power. Put differently, he lacks confidence.

Confidence. Ten letters that pack a punch. If you want to define something indefinable, confidence makes a great example. What does it look like? Where do you get it? And how do you keep it? Big questions that require big answers and I’m not sure I am qualified to help but I will say this: we don’t have to be helpless.

The most powerful thing that a human being can do is to take action. We can’t make people fancy us more or grow taller or better looking, at least not on the outside. And therein lies the clue. Forget about the things that you can’t do much about and start working on the things that you can. Forget about labels like virgin or non-virgin and start defining life on your own terms.

Think of it like this. When a captain takes hold of the wheel and begins the long slow turn to take his ship in another direction, a tiny shift of ten degrees might not look like much but here’s the thing. His boat will end up in a totally different port. It’s the small things that make the difference.

Have a haircut, go on a diet, learn to dance or all of the above. Question your thoughts. Even one a day. Are the rest of the world really ‘so happy and in love’? Or is that just the way you chose to see them? Or what they tell you?

‘You can’t count other people’s money’ as somebody once said to me. Making assumptions about other people’s lives is just that – making assumptions.

Confidence comes from steering your own ship. A crisis of my own saw me take myself to my local gym a few years back. And I don’t mean Holmes Place. I mean the All Stars Gym on Harrow Road. It’s a starkly lit brick building with a boxing ring, a bell and a lot of large muscly black men knocking seven bells out of each other’s shadows. It was just what the doctor ordered. I didn’t go more than four times but it signified an important moment in my life – the moment I took control and decided to fight, quite literally, for what I wanted. And I found out this: the right energy will attract more of the same.

I shall step away from the pulpit now but hear this Regner. I always change people’s names to protect their anonymity. Consequently I find myself looking on web sites like this for new names to give to people. How would I know what a popular men’s name in Denmark is? Today I chose Regner because aptly, it means ‘wise warrier’.

Regner, if you are brave enough to tell the world your story then you have the strength to change it. Go forth and conquer (yourself) young man. I know you can do it.

'Hi Kate

You’ve written that you receive a lot of stories from late virgins. I am myself a 24-year old Danish ‘super-virgin’: I have never had sex, never been kissed, never held hands and it goes without saying that I’ve never had a girlfriend. This is my story and some of my thoughts on being a virgin for way too long time.

The Origins of Sex-lessness

I was brought up as a only child by my parents in a rural area. We were living outside of the village so there were few other kids that I could play with. When I was six years old and went to school I realised that my parents were different. It was a typical rural area where people were craftsmen or farmers. My parents on the other hand can be described as intellectual hippies – my childhood home was filled with books on philosophy, classical music and Buddha-statues.

They had little in common with the locals and little interaction with them. I am happy for all the things that I’ve learned from my parents and for the amount of cultural capital I’ve received but I wish that I could have avoided the negative consequences of being the strange nerdy kid who liked to read and hated football.

My company was good enough for my classmates when they were copying my homework but they would never invite me over or do anything else to include me. Needless to say there were a lot of social skills that I didn’t learn.

Things were bad but they got worse once I got old enough to realise that girls were very interesting. As any normal kid would do, I fell in love with Trine, a girl from my class. I think she also had a crush on me. In the afternoons, she used to walk a dog and it often happened by ‘accident’ that I met her on my way home from school.

I was completely obsessed with Trine. When I today read some of the diaries and poems I wrote during that period I am shocked at how creepy I was. But I never said a single word about my crush. Being the strange kid with no confidence, the task of expressing interest in a girl was a monumental challenge. Eventually her interest in me died out and she found other guys to be with.

But people are not stupid. Everybody was able to see that I was madly in love with her and as everybody who has ever been in a schoolyard would know, ‘strange fat kid being in love with someone’ is the best material a bully could ever wish for. I was ridiculed for being in love with Trine and I soon learned to associate love with humiliation and ridicule.

The years passed and I got to high school. I still had no confidence but gradually I gained a little and I got a few friends. But I was still unable to get a girlfriend. During my high school years, I only developed a crush on one girl, Luca. I met her at a high school party and I really don’t know how it happened but we managed to arrange a date. The days from the party to the date were the best days of my life. I was ecstatic about the fact that Luca had chosen me over all the other guys and that my long period of loneliness and unsatisfied desire finally seemed to be drawing to an end.

But then came the date. I arrived at the cinema with a spirit of hopeful anxiety and left with the same feeling the Polish cavalry must have had after having attacked German tanks with lances during World War 11. It was a complete disaster. It showed up that we were incompatible and had nothing in common. Our conversation consisted almost entirely of embarrassing silence and she soon became more interested in her cell phone than me.

This did nothing but reinforcing me in the belief that getting a girlfriend and getting rid of my virginity was a hopeless endeavour.

Time passed on and I graduated from high school. Until then I had comforted myself by the fact that I was not the only virgin and it is perfectly normal for some people to loose their virginity a little later. But being nineteen and on my way to university I could no longer use that excuse.

I moved away from home to go to law school. It was wonderful to get all that new freedom and meeting all the nice and intelligent people at the university. I was filled with hope – nobody knew me and I would be able to redefine myself as an ordinary outgoing guy with a completely normal relationship to the opposite sex. The gender ratio at law school was also in my favour with 60% of the students being female.

I got more confidence and became happier but I failed to make any real progress with the ladies. During my university years I have only been on dates with two girls and it didn’t work out. The first one came and visited me at home and I cooked her some dinner. The date was a nice experience for me since it learned me that a date can be a relaxed, down to earth thing but unfortunately there was no real spark between us and there never was a second date.

A while after, I had a date with Rikke. She was interested in me and I enjoyed the experience of having a girl wanting to be with me but I simply didn’t have any attraction to her. I stopped the thing after three dates.

How Not To Lose Your Virginity

Getting a girlfriend is at the top of my list of priorities but whenever I am in the vicinity of an attractive girl I run into a mental barrier. I am afraid of the entire situation, afraid of having to relate to another person in this completely new and unfamiliar way. I really want to flirt with her but my mind freezes and I’m completely unable to come up with anything to say so I just sit there in quiet desperation and watch some other guy taking her.

I simply don’t believe that I’m able to get a girlfriend. The girls at the university intimidates me – they are so pretty, so confident and so much in control of their lives. I feel that I’ve got nothing to offer them, at least not something that other guys cannot give them.

My body image doesn’t help me achieving my goal of getting a girlfriend. I have never been into sports or exercise and I love good food so it is no wonder that I’m somewhat obese and out of shape. To me it seems I have found a very effective way to preserve virginity. All you need to stay a virgin is fear of your preferred sex, lack of belief in your own personal qualities and a poor body image.

Inside The Virgin’s Head

Being a virgin after your teens is not a preferable situation, especially if you’re a man. Virginity is something one has to hide as if it was some terrible crime. Most people view virgins as pathetic losers who should just make more of an effort.

Being a virgin makes me feel inadequate and less a man than my peers. It is if there is a hole inside me where all the wonderful feelings of love and sexual desire should have been and this empty hole hurts. The physical pressure can be alleviated but I have found nothing that can compensate for the lack of emotional connection.

My virginity has also leads me to having some very ugly emotions from time to time. Misogyny is dangerously close and I would be lying if I were saying that there have never been moments where I have blamed my situation on the female sex. Luckily that disgusting feeling disappears quickly. Envy and virginity often goes hand in hand for me. When I see a couple kissing or hear people talk about their relationships, I ask myself what I have done not to deserve that.

Why isn’t it me being so happy and so in love? When I see what I can’t have it feels like an ice pick is being driven through my chest. I know that I ought to be happy on the behalf of those who are actually experiencing love, but I just want it to be my turn to be sitting at a park bench kissing.

I have read all the self-help books I could get my hands on and flooded every relevant Internet board and advice column in an attempt to figuring out how to defeat virginity. But nobody seems to have a clue about
how to do it. Telling people to wait and let things happen by themselves offers no help at all.

My description can seem depressing, and being a virgin when everybody else are having normal sex lives is depressing - but luckily life consists of more than sexuality and romance and I don’t go around feeling bad about my virginity all day long. I have great friends with whom I have fun and a loving family. I can appreciate the beauty in art, literature and music and I like being at university. Actually I would have nothing to complain about if it wasn’t for my virginity.

Yours sincerely

Regner’

Porn again teenagers...

I think I have just fallen in love with……..the Midwest Teen Sex Show. Anyone who is telling teenagers what they really want to know is performing a public service as far as I am concerned. Of course no-one is suggesting they actually go out and do any of this stuff, but if they do, at least they’ll be equipped for any eventuality.

There’s a neat video about ‘the first time’ on this excellent site but I like the latest offering - everything you need to know about porn. Rock on kids.

And check it out here: