Like Mother, Like Daughter?
Christmas has come early. The Virginity Project is almost hyperventilating with excitement. A while back I came up with the bright idea of asking favourite writers to guest on ‘The Virginity Project’. The brief was flexible. Write about virginity loss. Yours, someone else’s, the cat’s, I really don’t mind but let loose with a piece of paper and a pen and tell me what you come up with.
My top two dream choices were Will Self and Drunk Mummy. All I can say is: one down and one more to go. Drunk Mummy is in the house. My house to be exact and I am honoured. I am a big fan of Drunk Mummy’s. Or I was until she stopped blogging - a sad day indeed for us all, but she’s not called ‘mummy’ for nothing. She has commitments asides from entertaining the likes of you or I.
The good news is this. When I asked her to write this post, her response was just a littttttle too quick. I think she misses us. I think those wine-glass-holding hands are a-twitch. Don’t expect the silence to last forever. She could have something up her sleeve.
Meanwhile, Drunk Mummy has rather telepathically selected a subject that I had been pondering myself of late. I am not a mummy, (nor am I drunk), but one day I might be and I have often wondered this. Bearing in mind one’s own stupidity as a teenager, how on earth do you deal with the thorny subject of your children’s virginity when you know exactly what they are going through? It’s a knotty old matter and one to which I will return, but for now, I will let DM take the mic and entertain you.
When you’re done, I suggest you log onto her blog and read a fine back catalogue of work. Perhaps whilst knocking back a glass of something. I will follow suit with a pink glass of Laurent Perrier in my hand. It’s not on offer anywhere and it costs an arm and a leg. Priceless, in fact - just like Drunk Mummy....
'Next year, it will be 25 years since I lost my virginity. Maybe I should celebrate with a programme of Silver Jubilee events. Perhaps I could organise a street party complete with flags, or get the kids to paint me my very own celebration mug?
Well, there’s a slight problem with that, and it’s not the obvious one to do with trestle tables, or finding bunting which proclaims ‘Twenty Five F**king Years’. You see, I have talked to my three children about how babies grow inside the mummy’s tummy, and even explained to the horrified faces how the baby gets out. However, I must confess to having blurred over the mechanics of how the daddy’s seed actually comes into contact with the mummy’s egg, (I may try the doughnut and éclair analogy, but I could risk putting them off cream cakes for life).
When they finally link the clinical facts of insemination with the intimate act that enables it, then I will struggle to keep the balance between information and personal privacy:
‘Yes, Daddy and I have done that.’
‘Actually, we’ve done it more than three times.’
‘No, it isn’t disgusting.’
‘Yes, I have done it with someone else, before I met Daddy.’
‘No, I wasn’t trying to make a baby.’
‘You won’t feel like that when you are older.’
Throughout her short life, my eldest child has been forced to listen to me relating countless stories beginning, ‘When I was your age….’ and encompassing topics as diverse as school, friends, music, films and sport. These tales are always presented as misty-eyed nostalgia, but they are actually subliminal lectures, and not very subtle ones at that. Despite needing very little prompting to climb up on my soapbox, I can’t imagine ever delivering one of these sermons on the subject of losing my virginity. It is just too personal for me to share with any of my children. Somehow I need to keep that part of my identity free from the suffocating sanctity of motherhood.
However I fear that it is only a matter of time before the level of parental interference in the lives of our children reaches such neurotic intensity that it will be considered normal, essential even, that I pass on such details. When my daughter is ready to take that first tentative step into adulthood, it may be standard practice for over-protective parents to write a small note to their child’s first sexual partner, explaining in advance that her performance may be a little below par because she’s had a cold recently, and has been off her food for a few days.
So, if my dystopian view is correct, and I am forced in future years to sacrifice even more of my privacy upon the altar of ‘good parenting,’ I would imagine that the conversation might go something like this:
Now, darling, sit down for a minute. I just want to talk to you about something…
Yes, please do take out your earpiece.
I notice that you’ve been getting quite, erm, close to young Nathan, sorry, Ethan, of late, and I just thought that maybe we should have a little talk together. Woman to woman. Sex and stuff.
No need to roll your eyes like that. I thought I would tell you about when I lost my virginity, so you can learn from my experience…
Don’t be so dramatic; of course you’re not going to be sick. Informed choice, that’s what it’s all about these days…
No, it’s not too much information.
Let’s start with contraception, because that’s what I certainly did. There’s no reason why you or your friends should ever have recreational sex without contraception. You have much easier access to it than I did when I was young. You can choose from pills, condoms, diaphragms, coils, erm what else…
Yes, yes, spermicides too…
Yes, female condoms, although they’re a bit like freezer bags…
What? Can you get the morning-after pill from a chemist now?
Without a prescription?
Really?
Well, I was taking contraceptive pills before I had sex for the first time - I was very conscientious about avoiding unwanted pregnancy…
Well, avoiding sexually transmitted diseases wasn’t such a big deal back then…
I know, I know, it was ridiculous.
Anyway, I was nineteen when I lost my virginity…
What’s so funny about that?
Well, I was a bit older than my friends, but that meant I was able to learn from their mistakes, and to study the theory of intercourse before I ever did any practical so to speak. There was much less blatant sexual imagery back then. We didn’t have all these girl bands thrusting their way through pole-dancing routines. The closest I got to any sexual imagery in my parents’ living room was Pan’s People shaking their pom-poms on Top of The Pops. If someone told you they were ‘hot’ you would open a window.
You see, losing your virginity when you are older can be a good thing. You are better informed, and therefore you are more likely to enjoy sex. I mean, you never hear anyone say ‘I wish I’d had more awkward, anxious teenage sex’ do you?
Well, Sophie’s mum was probably just joking when she said that. Anyway, why was she out clubbing with you?
Now, when I was growing up, female virginity was still regarded as some sort of precious gift, which women chose to bestow or withhold. Giving away this ‘gift’ too easily diminished the allure and respectability of a young woman.
However, a man who accepted this ‘gift’, and similar ‘gifts’ from other women, only gained in status and reputation.
Yes, of course it was a shocking double standard, and obviously the whole ‘gift’ thing was based on a fantasy. If losing my virginity at nineteen was ‘bestowing a gift’ then it felt like I was ridding myself of one of those hideous colourful sweaters that your Gran knits. I knew I really should value it more, but giving it away was actually a huge relief from embarrassment.
Anyway, I finally got the chance to free myself from my virginity when I was at university and living away from home…
Oh, he was just someone I knew. A friend. I can’t even remember his full name…
No, I wasn’t in love with him at all…
Well, maybe it would have been preferable to have lost my virginity to someone I loved. It certainly would have made a better story. But it did make me realise early on that sex and love can be mutually exclusive…
It might sound unromantic, but I hope you don’t ever confuse the two, or feel that in order to keep the love of some spotty youth; you have to use sex as a bargaining tool…
No, I’m not saying that Nathan….Ethan, would ever make you feel like that…
Yes, yes, he does have lovely skin.
Look, don’t sulk. I’ll tell you something else about the first time I had sex. In all honesty, I thought it was really funny. Despite all my carefully gathered information, nothing had quite prepared me for the comedy potential of the sexual act. Even now, I frequently have the urge to laugh during intercourse, much to your Dad’s dismay…
Sorry, sorry. Yes that possibly is too much information.
Just let me refill my glass here.
Of course, recreational drugs seem to play a much bigger part now in young people’s early sexual experiences, but I hope you would never be so irresponsible. Drugs can loosen your inhibitions and make you do something you might regret…
Well, I wouldn’t say I was stone cold sober when I lost my virginity. I’d probably had a few pints of cider and Cherry B I suppose, but that was a normal Saturday night back then. It wasn’t as if I was so drunk that I couldn’t remember the details the following day…
Yes, I talked to my close friends about it afterwards. I used to tell them everything, just like you do with your friends, although I didn’t have a MySpace page. I certainly wouldn’t have posted that sort of information on it if I had. Neither would I have videoed the whole event on my phone and downloaded it onto YouTube, or joined a Facebook group called something like ‘Slags and Slappers’ as a nod to post-feminist irony, and then faced the prospect of publication in a national newspaper…
Why not? Well, it was all a bit more private in those days.
I mean, my mother would never have dreamed of having this sort of conversation with me when I was your age…
What do you mean, ‘Lucky you’?
