The Virginity Project

Laugh? I almost spilt boiling water all over my....

I have struggled to make you laugh at times. Heck, I have struggled to make myself laugh at times. It’s been a challenge. Virginity loss isn’t all fun and games. But it is a bittersweet combination of comedy and drama. And therein lays the fun. I have searched high and low for that ‘laugh out loud, you could not make it up’ story and I think I may just have found it.

Granted, it’s a lot to do with perception. I don’t think the owner of this story thought it was funny at the time. But time, as they say, is a great healer. It even heals scars. Scars caused by the application of boiling hot water. I shouldn’t laugh, but I did. Read on – and weep...courtesy of the excellent hownottogetlaid.com...

Ho ho ho...

Oh stop it. It’s Christmas. We all need a crap joke at Christmas. Correction – we all need a crap virginity loss joke at Christmas. Here it comes….

Virgin girl is on the phone and asks her boyfriend to come

over and have dinner with her parents. Since this is such a

big event, the girl announces to her boyfriend that

after dinner, she would like to go out and make love

for the first time.

* * * * * * * * *

Well, the boy is ecstatic, but he has never had sex

before, so he takes a trip to the pharmacist to get

some condoms. He tells the pharmacist it's his first time and

the pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour.

He tells the boy everything there is to know about condoms and

sex.

* * * * * * * * *

At the register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many

condoms he'd like to buy, a 3-pack, 10-pack, or family

pack. The boy insists on the family pack because he

thinks he will be rather busy, it being his first time and all.

* * * * * * * * *

That night, the boy shows up at the girl's parents

house and meets his girlfriend at the door. 'Oh, I'm

so excited for you to meet my parents, come on in!'

* * * * * * * * *

The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table

where the girl's parents are seated. The boy quickly

offers to say grace and bows his head.

* * * * * * * * *

A minute passes, and the boy is still deep in prayer,

with his head down.

* * * * * * * * *

10 minutes pass, and still no movement from the boy.

* * * * * * * * *

Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the

girlfriend leans over and whispers to the

boyfriend, 'I had no idea you were this religious'.

* * * * * * * *

The boy turns, and whispers back, 'I had no idea your

father was a pharmacist'.

* * * * * * * * *

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!!!

The long and the short of it.....

I am back on the hunt for stories and it feels good.

This time I am looking for funny. Ok, I don’t mean funny like the time you popped your cherry whilst watching Tommy Cooper. I mean funny like parent’s walking in the room, pets running off with condoms, relatives being mistaken for lovers in darkened corners, that kind of thing. I need some light to balance the dark, some humour to wash through the angst, some stupidity to counter the gravity of what can be a pretty serious moment in one’s life.

I am under no illusions. What may be viewed as funny now, probably wasn’t at the time. Genuinely ‘laugh from the belly as you rid yourself of your incumbent virginity’ stories are as rare as hen’s teeth. But no matter whether the humour is real or perceived, there is much potential for comedy in this situation. How can there not be when there is so much pressure, expectation and hope squeezed into this single moment as we walk the walk from child to adulthood?

The possibilities for interpretation are endless. And perhaps that is where the secret to my quest lays – interpretation. An irate parent, an un-cooperative body part, a forgotten name, the right person can pull the comedic elements from any tale and make it a story worth telling.

I happened across a good opportunity as I strolled through Holland Park, last weekend. Lurking amongst the undergrowth, as rare, as preening and as delicate as the park’s other famous residents, was Tommy the Rock-star. I can think of no other, more honest introduction for him because not only is he one hundred percent bona fide rock-star but he bloody well looks like it too. Perhaps it is the dark Raphaelite curls that brush the delicate shoulders of this man-boy. Or the lips, torn, surely, from the face of an unsuspecting Steven Tyler? Or maybe its just the milky white skin that encases six foot something worth of frame held, precariously, together by only skinny jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt and two Cuban heeled boots.

Whatever it is, as he shuffled amongst the undergrowth, sniffing and holding the rapt attention of a small but febrile crowd, my companion Hud, said, ‘Oh look, there’s my friend, Tommy the rock-star’.

Now, if any of you read Hud’s blog with any regularity you will know that he has a whole bunch of rock star mates. Or so he says. To be honest, I was beginning to think he was making them all up, an imaginary group of ‘pretend friends’ if you like, but no, Tommy, despite looking as if a strong gust of wind may render him invisible at any moment, was real enough. And I’ll tell you what else; the boy can spin a yarn longer than a yard of spaghetti. Tales? I heard ‘em all! You should write a book, I told him, as we sat under a rosebush and he regaled us with yet another, highly improbable, but fabulous sounding tale. Lets just say the boy has led a chequered life, as any self-respecting rock god should have.

Once he had turned his attention to lil’ old me and extracted the critical information – music I am currently listening to, age and what I do for a living, he offered himself up for scrutiny almost straightaway. In return, I have to think up a new stage name for him. I think I can do that. ‘Foxy’ was my first thought. Marc with a ‘c,’ the second. All the cool Marc’s are Marc’s with a C. Marc Jacobs, Marc Bolan and, err, Marc Anthony. That’s Mr Jennifer Lopez to you and me.

No matter, I have a few days to think of something good. We are due to meet next week and I can hardly wait to hear his story. I already know it contains several false starts and a lady old enough to be his mother.

Ker-ching!

Two for the price of one. That’s my Mrs Robinson style story taken care of as well!