The Virginity Project

Happy Monday

 

Because its Monday, the sun is almost shining and I am sitting in the library, desperate for an excuse not to get down to the real business of work, I am going to post some links that have done it for me lately.

The first comes from 'Dooce'. In case you are not aware of her presence, according to an article in the Observer last year, Dooce is number five in the ‘50 World’s Most Powerful Blogs’ list. That takes some doing and it is not without foundation. Dooce routinely gets upward of a 1000 comments when she posts on her blog. She speaks from the heart about issues that matter to everyday people. Not only that, but she does it with style and wit.

I revisited a post she wrote last year about her dog (she does that a lot), which cracked me up. When I re-read it last week, it had the same effect. So here it is again, complete with detailed pictures of an escaped racoon:  ‘Chucks heightened sense of AWESOME’. Tell me you read this and didn’t love it and I simply won’t believe you.

Next up is this little nugget from Salon.com. In a new fortnightly series, Salon.com features people doing what I love them to do the most: telling stories about their lives. In this case, the subject matter is specific and one that is inextricably tied up with the theme of this blog……love, actually.

In this week’s story, eighty three year old Paul Pesce tells the almost inconceivable story of how he came to be married to his wife of fifty-five years. It’s a corker.

Finally, a news story that gives me a renewed sense of rightness about the world that we live in. Obama has repealed the ban on funding for organizations that offer advice or perform abortions in the US. This is a good thing. Denying women the right to control their own fertility is going backwards. Backwards is not good. Forwards is so much better.

I watched 'Elizabeth' on Saturday night. In it, Sir William Cecil, one of the newly crowned queen’s closest confidantes, requests her ladies in waiting to bring him the sheets from Elizabeth’s bed every morning for inspection, because, he says, Elizabeth’s body no longer belongs to Elizabeth, it belongs to the state. Please note, to any one who wishes to challenge me on the above, those days are SO over.

It doesn't matter how you as an individual feel about this issue. Nobody wants to have an abortion but I would defend until my dying day the individual’s right to make this choice for themselves if the occasion befits it. Case closed and long live Obama.

Bum. Now I’ll have to do some work.

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

This story was all over the web like a rash last week. In summary, Natalie Dylan, a 22-year-old student from San Diego, is auctioning her virginity off in order to pay for her master’s degree. Bids have apparently reached the 2.5 million pound mark. Her actions do not surprise me. Women fully comprehend their commoditized position in society today in a way that our grandparents did not. Nothing much has changed. In a bygone era, a father would have treated his daughter’s virginity in exactly the same manner. The only difference being that marriage would have been part of the package. Lucky for Natalie, this no longer applies.

Don’t think for a moment that I applaud her actions, but I am cogniscent of them. The part that I don’t get is that without the promise of marriage, what do the bidders actually think they are purchasing? What motivates a man to want to pay such a large sum of money to have sex with a girl, just once, that he will never see again? What deep, dark button is pushed inside a man that makes him think that this is a good use of his time? A woman would never think such a thing. Or so I thought…..until this little number arrived last week like a scene from a film script that I might get around to writing one day.

You could not make this up, but it’s true. And it just goes to show that men are not the only people to fetishsize something so intangible, so ephemeral that we barely even know that it exists. It literally lives inside our heads. And yet it changes lives forever. Read on and let me know what you think.

David. Born 1980. Lost virginity aged 13.

‘Kate,

I am twenty-eight and I live in the United States.  I lost my virginity when I was thirteen years old to a prostitute.  Most of my buddies were bragging about the sex they had and I did not know how to approach any of the girls I knew. 

One day, I worked up the nerve to approach a street whore for sex.  It cost me $40.  I was visibly nervous and she realized I was a virgin.  She told me everything would be ok and she took me back to the one room apartment she had.  She told me she loved having boys loose their virginity to her and she also told me about the number of thirteen and fourteen year old boys she experienced. 

She laid me down on the mattress and began to undress me.  I was literally scared stiff.  She pulled my pants off and and stared with amazement at my hard-on.  Before she put my dick her in her mouth, she said ‘you will remember me for the rest of your life’.  It was the most amazing experience of my life.  I remember cumming in her mouth and she swallowed.  She let me finger her and explore her body.  By the time I was done, I was hard again. When she saw this, she offered to fuck me on one condition and that was when we were done, she would get to shave my pubic hairs. 

She told me told me she keeps them as a trophy of her conquests and she showed me the pubic hairs of every boy whose ‘cherry she popped’ and she had the boys' names and dates when they lost their virginity.  She got on top of me and then fucked my brains outs.  I can remember the intensity in her body as she fucked me.  Her muscles were strained and the area between her breasts and neck were red with blood.  I remember her screaming when she had her orgasm.  I eventually blew my load in her.  She then got her razor out and shaved my dick completely bald and was laughing while she did it.  Stupidly, I gave her my name and she put my hairs into the envelope, which she then sealed.  I have wanted to tell this story, but not to anyone I knew.

Thanks...D’

West is best...

Sometimes I work out of the London Library. It is just off Jermyn Street, which is a properly British part of town. It is a road lined with ‘gentlemen’s outfitters’. Shops that sell suits and walking sticks, hats and old bloke shoes, colognes and handkerchiefs. It is a little bit like stepping back in time, a process that is usually completed as I step through the doors of the library only to find old guys napping in leather armchairs and a general sense of a bygone era that you don’t find in too many places these days.

Which is a roundabout way of telling you that once I start climbing the stairs to the reading room, this picture frequently stops me in my tracks. 'Here is a woman who looks like she might have an opinion or two about virginity loss',  I think to myself as I climb.

As it happens, it turns out that she probably did. Her name is Dame Rebecca West. She was a trustee of this library between 1967 and 1983 and upon further investigation, I discovered that she was an accomplished author and journalist, a woman who covered the Nuremberg trials for the New Yorker and was once referred to as ‘the worlds best reporter’ by President Truman. She was also a traveller, continuing her overseas adventures well into her seventies and eighties.

Co-incidentally, I also discovered that she is the author of one of the funniest (or most tragic, depending on how you are feeling), quotes of all time:

"I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

All hail Dame Rebecca West.

Write for your life...

When I first began this blog, I couldn’t bear to push the 'send' button on a post, so paralyzed was I by the thought that somebody might actually read it. These days I don’t think about it so much….but it’s taken me a while to get here.

I wrote furiously as a child. Writing always seemed to be a good way of working out problems, as well as documenting what was going on around me. But it wasn’t until I went to work at a company called Cunning in 2004, that I was actively encouraged to write.

‘You’re good at that’, said my boss as she read the biography I had written for their website. ‘Why don’t you do it more?’

I didn’t know the answer to that but I soon got some practice as I started knocking out company press releases. Then we got sent on a copywriting course and something else happened that had not occurred since my athletic youth – I started to win prizes. That was all the encouragement I needed.

Cut forward to 2009, and I find myself in an unlikely position, helping other people to write their stories – your virginity loss stories. Not that you need a lot of help. It never ceases to amaze me what great storytellers people are. Although given the rich seam to mine that is virginity loss, perhaps this isn’t such a surprise.

And me? I learnt the hard way. Once you begin to blog, you are hit with a stark realisation - you have to fill it with content. I am not lying when I say that I found this scary. Not only that, but by this point I had also given up the sanctity and protection of my day job. All that was left were the four walls of my kitchen and something else that got in the way – myself.

Myself has the capacity to be highly irritating. Myself thinks that it knows how everything should be done and actually…it doesn’t. So I had to learn to think a different way, to bypass all the little tricks and ploys that ‘myself’ had put in place to stop me getting what I wanted - some decent, interesting words that might make sense to another human being.

So how did that work out for me? Did I do battle with the monolith that is my own mind and win? I did. And I am here to tell you that it can be done – by anyone. If you were thinking about writing your own virginity loss story but can’t seem to get started, worry not. Me, myself and I are here to impart the following useful facts to you:

Number one  – never, ever wait for inspiration to strike. You could be waiting for a very long time. Life just doesn’t work like that. The best thing to do is to begin. Start with one line, any line and keep going.

Which brings me onto this neat little trick. If the above foxes you, try this. Free write. This is something I got taught in a class and its no big secret. Set a clock for five minutes and begin to write. You mustn’t stop. Even if the only thing you actually are writing is ‘I can’t think of anything to write’. This exercise serves an important purpose because it shuts off your internal editor. You know that annoying voice that asks you ‘how is this going to sound to the outside world?’ Ignore it. Keep on writing. This is your raw material. Spit it out and keep going. You might be surprised at what comes out.

Tip two. Like a decent cup of tea, (hey, I’m British), nice writing depends on being allowed to brew. An hour, a day, a month, it doesn’t matter. Distance gives us perspective. Walk away and do something else. I love my day job because it gives my brain something different to chew on. When I come back to the writing, I can eek out the bits that don’t make sense. Editing is the nicest part of the job. Enjoy it.

Tip three – or ‘the all-time top tip for getting to the truth?’ What is it that you actually want to say? Many a time I have sat in front of my computer trying to find a fancy way to say what it is that I want to say. Don’t do that. Say what it is that you want to say, in the way that YOU would say it. Nothing has a more powerful and truthful resonance than YOUR voice. Believe me. Keep it simple. Try it, you will see.

And finally, a little disclaimer for tip one. Sometimes, when all is well in the world, inspiration does strike. I still mean what I said before, don’t wait for it! But on the days that the planets are in correct alignment, your favourite socks are on your feet and the sun is shining brightly, if inspiration strikes, then go with it. Don’t make the mistake of feeling so great about it that you get up and go out for a walk to celebrate. No! Stay indoors and write until you can’t write anymore. Go with the flow. This won’t happen every day but when it does, open up your arms and grab the opportunity.

And finally, I am always here for feedback. I love receiving your stories and I love posting them on the blog for others to read too. But if you just want a second opinion, drop me a line: katemonroe@yahoo.com.  And a final word… writing about the past is an eye opening experience. My best advice is not to hold back. Go with the flow and write what you feel. You might be surprised at the results but you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Go forth and write people!