The Virginity Project

Ooh la la…

The man that I lost my virginity to was French and he was absolutely divine. He was so shockingly good looking that I made the very backward (and teenage) assumption that this meant we were going to have great sex. Great sex? I hardly knew how to kiss, let alone have sex.

But he could walk on his hands and he was on holiday without parents. This alone was the absolute end as far as I was concerned. It didn’t get much better than that. By day, we sat on the beach drinking beers and white coffee - ‘Una cerveza por favor?’ and ‘Café con leche Senor?’ How grown up can a fifteen-year-old feel about ordering drinks for herself? Very. Take it from me.

Later on, after my captors (the grown ups) had fallen asleep and I had fled from the villa overlooking the sea, we smoked copious Fortuna cigarettes together and danced to Laura Branigan as she sung the words to ‘Self Control’….

Oh, the night is my world


City light painted girl


In the day nothing matters


It's the night time that flatters


In the night, no control


Through the wall something's breaking


Wearing white as you're walkin'


Down the street of my soul

For the love of god will you listen to this song and tell you it doesn’t move you in the way that it might move you if you were a fifteen year old girl?!

We would end the night back on the beach, kissing and smoking other combustible products that can be purchased in Spain. Sometimes we would take ourselves up to the hills above the town and lie on a bed of pine needles whilst listening to The Cure on his crappy old cassette player.

Fumbling around with him under the moonlight in his sleeping bag, I still remember feeling what a man felt like for the first time and being pretty freaked out about it. This really was naught to fifty in about five seconds. I had barely kissed a man before then. But I didn’t want to miss my chance. I didn’t want to miss my chance to lose it to Adonis beneath the trees in Spain. Even if I was labouring under the illusion that looks really do matter that much.

Needless to say, when the moment came, it wasn’t much to write home about. No matter, because that’s not what I remember now. I only recall the sights, sounds and smells of a truly unique time in anyone’s life.

These days I am touched by something very different I am pleased to say. Kindness, patience and humour all add up to sexiness in a way that looks never could. Not that that aesthetics don’t matter. Of course they do, it’s just that deep down, bona fide sexiness comes from somewhere deep inside and it’s all about a feeling, not just a look.

All this is a long way of telling you that today’s story is from a French man. Perhaps he is my French man but fifteen years older. Perhaps he too is still transported by the smell of pine trees at night, or the sound of a song that echoed across the Mediterranean in the summer of ‘83, and maybe not to a time when he had the greatest sex of his life, but to a time when he was writing life-changing history. His own.

Virginity loss. You can’t beat it for invoking memories.

Big Tom. Born 1953.

Since I met A, I lost my virginity. For sure she was the first one. I had been in love with others. S. was a kind of first love because she answered to my desire. Other nice girls did answer to it, some rejected it, but we didn't make love. I wanted to be loved and I was afraid of the thing itself - touching, being touched, taken, wounded, leaving my amour, defenseless, that was my idea of it.

What I mostly remember is - excitation – a quickly ending voluptuous sensation - a smell that I would keep on my hands some days before washing. I left girls quickly those days, or they left me unsatisfied, wandering.

Then I met again gals and eventually got married because B. was pregnant. We were together since winter holidays, my mother had bought us our mattress ... it was a matter of weeks. I'm a grandfather now, happy to live with her after all these years.

But now, since I met C. I have a new idea of my virginity. It's not as if we never made love. All the contrary, as I met freedom and joy and lightness and oneself's gift with her. Once again.

All of a sudden I was absolutely a virgin, anew, just beginning to learn something about our bodies and how they met. Now I was - I still am - in longing, craving and amazement. My sensations have gone deep, under my skin, next to my heart inside.

C. wanted me, I didn't say no, she said she loved me, I knew I would not love here enough. She wanted to be an accomplished woman, a mother.

I did write about that to C. We're not making love any more as I was feeling like split in two, unable to fondle more than one woman at that part of my life. Did she understand? Maybe, she still adores me, but did not tell much about the subject.

This is not a miracle, not new, nor rare. I just wanted to write about it. And I'm sending it to you because I realized it was like that for me, that virginity sensation, only when I read, amazed, your project site, dunno from what random clicks.

Born in France 55 yrs a go! Thank you Kate for what you do.

Big Tom

 

The age of innocence?

The Virginity Project has been a busy bee lately doing actual work. Don’t my employers understand that I have more important things to do than so-called real work? Like document your stories? Clearly not. The good thing is that plenty of you have been on the case and as a result, I have a rather nice back catalogue of stories.

Since the nights are drawing in and winter is whispering around the corner, what better time to settle in for a spot of ‘period drama’ than now? Sorry Dennis, I don’t mean to jest about your age, it’s just that it’s a rare occasion indeed to hear from the older generation - the whole seventy-four years of you! It’s also a great opportunity to reflect on just how much life has changed in a relatively short period of time.

Our parents really did live in an age of innocence. They remained childlike for longer because they didn’t know what sex was. It wasn’t alluded to in advertising, nobody had televisions and the Internet wasn’t even invented. Childhood lasted a lot longer than the perfunctory ten minutes we are granted today. If you are interested, Rafael Behr writes very well on this subject in the Observer Sex Special.

Meanwhile, pull up the blankets, light the fire and settle in to listen to a story that has more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing. Bring a tissue. I don’t mind telling you that I shed a tear or two whilst editing this story….

Dennis. Born 1934, lost virginity aged 24.

‘I was born in 1934, the first born to working class parents who themselves had not experienced penetrative sex until after they married at twenty-nine and twenty-eight years of age.  My father had been a soldier, posted overseas for eight years during their engagement but I have no problem in accepting their celibacy as fact. 

I was brought up to the same tradition, my father often telling me that if a man had any respect for a woman, then he would naturally honour her womanhood.  I remember when I heard German prisoners - working on a nearby farm - use the F-word in regard to what they thought of the Russians. I asked my Dad what they meant and his reaction was to box my ears so hard that I was knocked across the room and I was told never, ever to use ‘that’ word again.  And so it still is, now that I am seventy-four. 

Certainly, I went through the schoolboy ‘dirty stories’ phase - but it was what I heard, rather than me actively joining in.  I remember joshing around with schoolmates and comparing ‘hard-ons’ but at 16, I still had very little idea of what this was about.  Accidentally discovering masturbation came as a shock but it was something which I was to make much of in adult life.

I had girl friends but never got fresh with any of them.  One girl friend lasted through 6th form until I was well into National Service.  I used to visit her house on weekend leave and we were left alone in the best room to chat... but nothing more.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt quite so stunned when I heard that she was getting married to someone very much older because she was pregnant by him.     

I also remember all the barrack room banter about what the other men had got up to at the weekend. ‘Did you get it away?’  ‘Were you on the nest?’  ‘It looked just like a peach when you take out the stone’.

I was twenty-one when I started university and student nurses were the main outlet for amorous feelings.  I ‘went out’ with one but we just found ourselves holding each other, hugging, kissing and getting very breathless together but nothing more.  

Then my brother died suddenly - found dead at work in a toilet cubicle from a massive epileptic fit - which shook me rigid.  The summer following his death, I was determined to have a holiday like no other and chose a Club Med straw hut holiday in Sicily.  I had never been further than Paris before and this was an eye-opener for me, to feel incredibly free ... the unlimited wine, superb cuisine, the sea, sand, sun, with people from all over Europe, and sleeping in the most basic accommodation: straw huts.  A lot was ‘going on’ for sure ... but oh so discretely and not in your face at all.  

We were just having the time of out lives... at least, I was.  It was here that I met the girl I was to marry, some three years later, although our ‘relationship’ (HOW I HATE THAT WORD!!) didn't get under way until we met again, quite by chance, the following summer. 

She was Scandinavian, a high-powered international secretary, from a farming background.  At the time, she was working in Brussels.  We had New Year together in Copenhagen.  She came to England for Easter, we holidayed Club Med again and the next summer we got married - a huge affair, at the farm, which went on for most of a week!!  She had rosemary sewn into her wedding veil, a sign of purity, as she - like me - was still a virgin.  She had an upbringing as rigid as my own and, although working abroad ever since graduation, she had deliberately kept herself chaste.  

I don't think we consummated our marriage on the wedding night; after dancing until 4 am, we were taken to a hotel for the rest of the night ... being called for soon after 8 am to return to the farm for breakfast to speed the parting guests.  The hotel room had two single beds, fixed together, as is the custom in Scandinavia.  We were too tired for more than closeness and bodily contact and the floor of the room was covered with rice the next morning from every pocket and crease in our clothes.

There followed two more days of partying and late nights, then three nights with my relatives in Copenhagen, before they returned home.  We achieved full intercourse - just about - only on our first night in Copenhagen, but the real pleasure did not happen until we were on honeymoon in Greece.  And so it continued for the rest of our time together – twenty-three years - until my wife could no longer do so, because of a colostomy arising from surgery for ovarian cancer.  Sex for us was always good and it was very rare for both of us not to experience an orgasm. 

When she died, she was the only woman I had ‘known’, in the Biblical sense ....and there was no way I could even think of taking another woman.  I was distraught for months afterwards.  I felt that our marriage had been perfect in every way, in spite of one of our twins having very severe learning disabilities - from oxygen starvation at a difficult birth - and then the cancer.  Her prognosis had been very bad but she persevered through four years and four months of hideous chemotherapies, two major surgical operations and radiotherapy.  I was with her at every treatment and I nursed her, at home, in her own bed, through the last three weeks of her life.  She died in my arms. 

For most of the following year, I drifted.  I gave up the job I loved. The stress levels were enormous and no longer made sense, so I opted out and worked in administration in a charity hospital, a job with little pay but zero stress!  Throughout my wife's illness, I had received a lot of support from a gay man.  When things were really bad, I would take my lunch sandwiches to his flat, from which he ran a small business supplying clothing to gay shops.  I was aware of his sexuality and didn't think being with him and his friends would have any effect on me. 

I went to his clubs and so gravitated towards the company of men, finding it impossible to relate to women.  Then, one such evening, in a gay bar, a man came straight up to me and kissed me.  I reeled back - why had I let him even near me?  ‘Why did you do that?’, I asked.  ‘Because you look so sad,’ he said ... and that was it.  I broke down completely and hugged him. 

After that, I got deeper and deeper into the hard-core leather scene and S & M, with my own full leather of the best and most expensive quality.  While once I had just my own darling wife, I now found myself in bed with ten ... fifteen ... maybe twenty men over the next nine years.  I even had a man living with me for some four years.  I was always a ‘top’, hating the submissive role; I couldn't understand ANY man submitting of his own free will to another - I loathed being penetrated myself, it was too painful and made me feel dirty to allow this to happen.  But whatever I had been doing Fri/Sat evenings, I was always in church Sunday evening. Through everything, I kept my faith.  Invariably, I ended each service a broken man and in floods of tears.

Then I joined a church group for an Alpha course and, during an evening learning about ‘The Grace of God’, I suddenly realised it was ME for whom the Grace was intended... and I ‘came out’ to the group.  From then onwards, I turned away from the gay scene.  Through a college friend I joined a ‘pilgrimage’ to The Holy Land and there met a delightful widowed lady.  We were South (me) and North, so our meetings were perhaps once a month and, after a year, I had proposed and we decided to marry. 

We were soon sharing a bed during weekends together and it was she who led me into sex again – and for a while, it was good; it was so easy to bring her to a very wild and noisy orgasm.  But I was already sixty-nine when we married and had had a TURP some years before.  So, not long into our marriage, I experienced erectile dysfunction and resorted to Viagra on prescription... the headaches this induces are nearly unbearable!!  I have done a little better with other, similar medication but, gradually, we have come to do without penetrative sex - just closeness and lots of hugs.

When we are on holiday, I am much more open to sex and have even managed to perform without the pills.  I think my problem is psychological as much as physical, as I despise myself for giving in to full sex before we were married.  I am so ashamed of myself for this premature behaviour, although it was encouraged by my wife-to-be and it was already clear that we would marry in due course. 

I can honestly say that I have not been anything more than sociable with men in the past eight years and I do love my second wife.  I try not to compare or contrast ... but this is time round just so different and I long for something of that other marriage, even if only a shared appreciation of fine things for our home, and a neatness which living with two dogs and a cat will never allow.  It is sad to say that, so often now, I am just about ‘hanging on’.  I have had so many hard knocks in the past 5 years that I swear simply would not happen where I lived before.   I guess that I just don't ‘do’ North!!’        

 

The age of innocence...

This put a smile on my face….

‘Woman describes losing virginity to her dog!!’

When I read the line above, I actually expected to see a film about someone sitting and telling their pet about their long lost virginity. Nothing wrong with that I thought. I tell my cat all sorts of things. Turns out, that wasn’t what they meant.

If you can get past the extreme ick factor this film engenders then I have to admit, it makes compelling listening. Don’t worry, there are no scary visuals.

But it still left scary thoughts somewhere more pertinent - my head. I needed something nice to think about. This helped. Laughing – tick, teddies – tick, innocence - most definitely. Bring it on.

(Apologies for not posting the YouTube link directly. If there are any Typepad brain-aches who know how to do it since the new 'Compose page' was introduced, please tell me!)

To have and to have not....

Sometimes a story’s interest lays not so much in what it does say as what it doesn’t. This is a curious little tale with some large holes. I was going to wait and post it once its author filled the gaps but I can’t hold back.

He raises a subject not often mentioned: the male urge to have sex with virgins. I was going to try and dress that up a bit but what’s the point? This is what I mean to say. Since the dawn of time, the virgin woman has held a certain allure. This is beyond the need for verifiable paternity so that the correct children inherit the correct wealth and it’s also beyond the concept of virginity as commodity, something to be traded via marriage for upward social mobility.

This is virginity as fetish. The idea that the virgin woman imbues us with something magical that cannot be gained elsewhere. Youth perhaps? Or even a cure for Aids? This may seem a preposterous idea, but in this day and age, children in some parts of the world are suffering under the tragic and misguided belief that sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS.

Virginity is a powerful and potent symbol. As ever, I turn to Hanne Blank and her book ‘Virgin: The Untouched History’, for some clarity. She says this:

‘In eroticizing virginity, youth, physical nobility, ignorance, inexperience, fragility, and vulnerability are objectified from the perspective of someone who, by definition, is none of these things. The erotic charge of sex with a virgin rests on the interplay of the sexual aggression of an experienced partner and the sexual submission of a virginal one. It champions sex as a vehicle for completion and transformation, and it insists that a person who has sexual access to a woman automatically claims or colonizes her, body and soul.

Virgin territory. Perhaps that’s what its all about. Is it that deep down, man needs to plant his stake, so to speak, upon virgin soil, previously unsullied by anyone else? Who knows? The owner of our story certainly isn’t sure. ‘I am not a religious person’, he tells us, ‘but I may have been influenced by religious thinking’. He then finishes by telling us ‘my obsession with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general’. This is a large statement with no conclusion – yet. Watch this space and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of one of The Virginity Project’s most perplexing challenges yet.

*‘Brady’. Age unknown.

'Hi Kate,

Wow, have you ever set up a good website. The topic of virginity has consumed my life. First of all, I am male. I abstained throughout high school, figuring that there was ‘one for everyone’. I soon changed my mind and thought that I would have to have sex because nobody seemed to have any morals whatsoever and that if I were to be seen as ‘cool’ by the ladies then I would have to lose my virginity. This logic does not make much sense as I write it. I didn't have it, but to have it, I had to have had it previously: the paradox of virginal thinking!

Anyways, my friend hooked me up with a ready and willing (drunk) girl at the bar one night, and we did it. Unfortunately, she was not expecting a one-night stand and ran off upset. I also did not feel that much better about myself for having done it. It really seemed like nothing had changed, besides perhaps feeling a bit more superior to another girl, my first serious girlfriend, who had just broken up with me.

Still, there was a yearning to have meaningful sex. The one-night stand didn't do much to make me feel like I'd accomplished anything besides thinking ‘Yes, I'm cool, girls. I've done it’. Then there was another paradox: I was desiring a virgin so much, but then thinking why had I decided to go ahead and lose my own virginity?

Since then, I've had a series of girlfriends, both serious and not, from near-engagements to one-night stands. Yet still, I long for a virgin. I believe it is the only way I can find pure, everlasting love, and form a pure, unbreakable bond with a girl. I am not even a religious person, although I may have been influenced by religious thinking. Where I got my beliefs from is a whole other question; some guys don't seem to think virginity is an issue at all.

My obsession, (as I will call it) with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general. It's a depressing cloud that covers me. I try to find happiness in the girls that I'm with, yet I confront them, I challenge them, and make them feel guilty for what they have ‘done’. It makes me wonder if I can ever be happily married or love my wife the way I know I could. So, I'm waiting, sometimes to the point of hopelessness and despair, for the girl who will pledge herself and her love to me and make me feel like a whole, complete human being.'

*All names changed to protect identity.

The times they are a-changin’?

Perhaps it is the practice I have been getting with the interviewing of people, or maybe it is a lifelong skill that I simply never noticed, whatever it is, I appear to have an innate ability to get people to talk about stuff - without really trying. Take last week as an example. It was Saturday and it was national expose your flesh day. You know the one I mean. The one day in the year that the sun comes out and people everywhere, much like the ecstatic scrabbling of dogs looking for leads, tear open the doors of their closets and don the most optimistic item of clothing they own in order to celebrate April’s first five minutes of sunshine.

And so it was that I found myself in a strapless sun dress standing outside Somerfields in Brentford, yes, Brentford, at 7pm on a Saturday night. It was my old buddy Mark’s birthday and I had the dress to prove it. We met at The Brewery Tap. On arrival I was reminded of a previous visit, many moons ago. It was vaguely comparable to the scene in American Werewolf where our hero arrives at the back of beyond, pushes open the door to the local pub only to be met by rotating heads and the stony silence of a series of League of Gentlemen look-a-likes.

Except this time they were smiling. Kind of. ‘We don’t get your type around here much’. This was clearly what they were thinking as I perused the facilities. To the right, a pool table – still nobody on it! So far, so good. To the left, the judge and jury, a motley bunch consisting mainly of Brentford’s most ‘senior’ members, and, starboard, our host, stationed behind his taps, much like the captain behind the controls of a large sailing ship.

The pub might not have changed much but I have. I’m more of a driver than a drinker these days and I couldn’t resist half a lager in one of those glasses that looks like the thick glass windows of an old fashioned pub. You don’t get many of those to the pound in your average Gastro pub. Nope, there’s wasn’t a herb-crusted cod nor pan-fried frittata in sight at The Brewery Tap. This is what we would term ‘a proper boozer’. You’ll have a packet of pork scratchings and a pint of Young’s and be glad of it here at the Brewery Tap.

Now, I know I said I had an innate ability to get people to tell me stuff but I’m only half telling the truth. Mark began celebrating his birthday at around midday so I can’t take all the credit. Mr Lager played his part too. It was quite a scene as I stepped out into the self-designated young(er) persons area i.e. the garden. A lot of celebrating had clearly been done and one person was asleep on the table.

The birthday boy was having a fine old time, if you could only get a look behind his sunglasses – so the thing on a Saturday night out in Brentford. My good friend Tania had also been let out of the house for the night, a party girl if ever there was one and it wasn’t long before they were contemplating the piano action in the front bar. Yes ladies and gentleman, this wasn’t just any old real boozer. This was a real boozer where real old people sit around and listen, sometimes even joining in, to another real old person who plays the piano and sings. Tania looked like she had died and gone to heaven. I, meanwhile, spent some time getting to know the birthday guests. The first conversation went something like this:

Him: what do you do with your time then?

Me: I interview people about virginity loss.

Him: (raising eyebrows), I don’t actually remember losing my virginity but I am about to become a grandfather.

My turn to raise my eyebrows now and you would too if you were looking at what I was looking at.

Me: If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?

Him: I’m 39

Me: and how old is your expectant son or daughter?

Him: It’s my son, and he is 13

Here I will leave a long silence in which to contemplate this astonishing piece of news, although in real time I think I did continue to gabble about something whilst lifting up my jaw from its resting place on the pavement. Here was a normal enough looking man, of sane mind, no outward signs of poverty/ill-education or any other cliché ridden stereotype that you might care to reach for in order to explain such a calamity, telling me that his thirteen year old son is about to become a father. Tania has a son who is 13. He is a lovely boy but he still laughs if you tickle him. He is a child.

For the record, the man looked like he had been slapped about the face with a fish. And in amongst the lager, cigarettes and the warmth of a first Saturday evening spent outdoors, I felt sad for this man, and his son, and most of all, for a girl who had managed to conceal a tiny human being inside her body for almost seven months until the bump got too big and the game was up. We want to believe that this doesn’t happen in this day and age, but it does. Virginity loss can be every bit as dramatic now as it was for our parents.

Revelation number two pales a little in comparison but it is no less poignant. The owner of the tale was Dave, a forty two year old man, whom, as it turns out, was a frequent visitor to many of the same watering holes I frequented in my teens. The Cobwebs, The Bull and Bush and The Old Ship. We revisited them in our memories and then got onto first gigs.

Me: ‘My first gig on my own’, (up until13 years old, my brothers took me to gigs. Genesis, Echo and the Bunnymen, Blancmange, I was a pretty eclectic kid), ‘was the Hammersmith Palais to see Africa Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force’.

Him: ‘I was conceived outside the Hammersmith Palais’.

There’s not much to say to that except how the monkey nuts did that happen?

As it turned out, he was adopted and he didn’t find out this truly unique piece of information until years later when he questioned his birth mother and she told him the truth about her ‘situation’. Without going into too much detail, a night out at the Hammersmith Palais can be memorable for many a reason, not least for the fumble outside in the car that led to the birth, and the adoption of a son in 1966.

Perhaps I do have one of those faces. Or maybe we are just a generation who are happier with the truth. We no longer live in an era where pregnancy has to be concealed – unless you are thirteen years old. In a week when I was also told a story about a woman who gave birth to her second child and lost her husband to a heart attack on the same day, I realise that truth really is stranger than fiction. You don’t have to scratch the surface of most human beings too hard in order for them to tell you stories that you will never forget. We all have them. Perhaps I might write down a few of my own sometime.

Meanwhile, the party in the pub continued. Not only that, but the ice had begun to melt as Tania and Co talked the pub pianist into playing a selection of Elvis classics and the evening’s entertainment really got underway. Later, as Mark, with two fingers bandaged from an accident earlier in the week, attempted as good a rendition as you could ever expect to hear from a man with only eight digits of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, I fancied our geriatric audience were enjoying themselves more than they let on. But it still wasn’t quite like this in our day, they seemed to say. Actually it was. You just didn’t talk about it is all.

*All names have been changed to protect identity.

I can't get No....duh nuh nerr....SATISFACTION

Judging by some of the stories I get sent, virginity is not a place that most of us want to go. A recent contributor summed it up thus: ‘most people view virgins as pathetic losers who should just make more of an effort.’

No mincing of words there then. But he has a point. Time and culture have dictated virginity to be a place of shame, disempowerment even, despite the fact that our definition of virginity loss precludes any number of sexy things that we might have done that don’t involve putting a penis into a vagina. As one of my interviewees once said, ‘I certainly didn’t feel like I had ‘lost’ anything, I’d had so much cunnilingus, I had lost my innocence long ago’. I rest my case.

Virginity loss is a nebulous issue, but in the end it doesn’t really matter what I think or how we define it, it is still the bogeyman of modern culture. Who wants to be a dried up old virgin when you can be, well, Jordon?

Which got me wondering if virginity really is all that bad? And do we all have such a negative outlook? There must be someone out there who could turn this thing on its head?

I found her.

‘Virginity is extremely alluring’.

Come again?

Its author continues: ‘its mysterious allure is not rooted in an image of innocence and purity, but rather in the notion of strength. It takes a strong woman to be abstinent, and that’s the sort of woman I want to be’.

Now, I can’t speak for the guys, and something tells me that these words are unlikely ever to be uttered from the lips of a man, but whatever way you look at it, this is still an interesting statement. Who would say such a thing?

Janie Fredell is who, a student at Harvard University and contributor to a series of articles by Randall Patterson for The New York Times. Janie is a Catholic girl who had never found the need to join the abstinence movement, mostly because she came from a place where ‘literally everyone’ wore chastity rings - but Harvard was the opposite end of the scale.

‘The hook-up culture is so absolutely all-encompassing’, she says. ‘It’s shocking! It’s everywhere!’ She decided to take a stance and took up the reins at ‘True Love Revolution’, Harvard’s very own answer to ‘The Silver Ring Thing’. I should be shot down for such a lazy comparison, so, to re-dress the balance, here is their homepage mission statement to read for yourself:

‘TRL is a new non-sectarian, student run organization at Harvard College dedicated to the promotion of pre-marital abstinence. We strive to present another option to our peers regarding sex-related issues, endorsing ideas of abstinence and chastity as a positive alternative for ethical and health reasons’.

OK, so far, so…abstinent. It’s not my cup of tea but each to their own and here’s the bit that interests me:

‘It’s extremely countercultural for a woman to assert control over her own body’, says Fredell. ‘It is, in fact, a feminist notion. Conventional feminism’, she explains, ‘teaches that control of your body means the freedom to have sex without consequences – sex like a man. I am an unconventional feminist’.

This is a pretty big statement and we could spend all day picking it apart. Believe me, I have just spent twenty minutes trying to do so in a nutshell. We all have our points of view. I’ll just say this. I admire her stance. In this day and age, it’s not easy to stand up and say ‘I don’t have sex and that’s my choice’. ‘Feminist notions’ aside, it is still her right as a human being and as a woman to do as she pleases.

But is self-inflicted fundamentalism really healthy? After all, whether we like it or not, human bodies are hard wired for procreation. Even if we were deaf and blind with no sense of smell, we would still have the hormones and as such, the urge to mate. Should we be holding ourselves back?

Just a thought.

The point I am trying to get to is this: does virginity have to be the last word in hell or can it be something better, a position of power even?

I don’t know about power but medieval woman might have argued for something even more intoxicating: freedom.

Back in the day, you were either married or waiting to get married. These were the roles that were allocated to women. There was none of this ‘you can be anything you like’ malarkey. You got married and fulfilled your duty as a wife, a mother and a housekeeper. Nobody expected any more, or less of you.

You can see why the convent held a certain allure.

Virginity equaled opportunity for the medieval nun. Yes, they were married to god and a life of devotion, but above and beyond that, relatively speaking, nuns got to call the shots. They spent their time with like-minded people. Nobody expected them to change nappies, tend children and have sex with their parent’s choice of marriage partner. More than that, they were educated. This might not sound like a big deal but back in the dark ages, women’s education was not top of the list of priorities. As Hanne Blank writes in her book ‘Virgin, The Untouched History’…

‘Years of singing or listening to a relatively limited collection of familiar texts whilst looking at the books would eventually result in women figuring out how to match what they heard to what they saw’. She continues, ‘to the nuns, it was a miracle bestowed upon the deserving, pure-hearted virgin by god: when the gift of literacy bloomed in the mind of Hedwig von Regensburg, the entire choir of sisters saw her heart shine through her body and habit “like the sun through glass”.

Powerful stuff. Just throw Elizabeth 1st into the mix, a woman who knew that relinquishing her virginity for marriage could cost her her freedom and the future of her country, and we see that virginity packed quite the heady punch in those days. But all to an obvious cost – our sex lives.

Times are different now. We live in the era of ‘having it all’. We have the freedom, the education and the sex life. But it still comes at a price. Because this will all be cold comfort to my lonely friend, the ‘pathetic loser who should just make more of an effort’. And I am right back where I began.

I feel for men. I really do. You could argue that women’s freedom has been to the detriment of men. Because whilst women may have the opportunity to have ‘sex like a man’, the sad fact is, that depending on which way you look at it, this now means that she can choose not to have sex with you.

Women hold the cards. A fact that I wish I could shout from the rooftops to teenage girls who still think that they need to lose virginity in order to gain acceptance/to be a ‘real’ woman – insert whatever your particular insecurity is here. But they don’t, and nor do men. Because that’s what this post is really all about. That times may change, as does our perception of virginity loss, but the pay off is that we suffer in equal measures. It’s not just women who are sweating about virginity. Men are too!

Going to California….

There are lots of things you could say about this story. You could comment on the fact that its author is technically a minor. You could also point out the last line - the smartly penned assertion that her virginity has ‘got lost in the mail’, but mostly what I love about this story is the way that even though I don’t live in California and even though I am no longer seventeen, this young woman has allowed me to get right underneath the skin of her life. Intentionally or not, Aimee builds intrigue and suspense right from the first word she writes. It’s never clear which way this story will go. It still isn’t.

Reading her words puts me straight into the shoes of a seventeen-year old world. I can hear the slam of shuttered porch doors on warm dusty streets and I can feel the late night walks around quiet neighbourhoods and the first kiss from someone you love. Aimee has shown us an episode of her life but one way or another, the story will continue to be told whether we have a subscription or not.

Aimee. Born 1991. Virginity loss TBC.

‘I'm only seventeen years old but I grew up fast. I was invited to take courses at Stanford University in California when I was in 4th grade. I graduated high school at the age of sixteen and I am now a full time student while I save up for University.

I met my boyfriend at my job just a month and a half after my sixteenth birthday. He was actually one of the assistant managers and he had just been transferred to our location. I was instantly attracted to him but never acted on it because, well, he was technically my boss and older than me. We worked together for four months before he was promoted to general manager and yet another location.

I was hanging out with my best friend and we decided to invite him. We were all hanging out at her house and he said he wanted to get something out of his car to show us, (it was his old school ID and it didn’t look anything like him). He asked if I wanted to help him and I said sure. When we were at his car he said, ‘Aimee, I really want to tell you something, but you can't tell Mary-Beth.’ Mary-Beth being my best friend. I of course said I wouldn't tell her and then he said he was head over heels for her.

Of course I was hurt, but what was I to expect? Mary-Beth was nineteen, almost twenty, much closer to his age than me. I said I wouldn't tell her and I agreed to help him. If I couldn't be with him, I wanted to at least be his friend. We became really close. We talked everyday on the phone and hung out at least every other day.

Then while we were walking at about eleven o’clock at night, (he worked late and not in town so we would hang out once he got off), we started talking and he was telling me how I was his best friend and he could talk to me about anything and he was really comfortable around me.

At this point I liked him a lot, I had gotten to know him and he was so sweet and amazing. I'm not to let my feelings be known to someone because I fear rejection among other things. I didn't want to ruin our friendship by telling him how I felt. But before I could tell my mouth no, I heard these words pop out of me, ‘What if I were older?’ I just stopped walking and froze. I couldn't believe what I had just said!

Alex stopped walking also and looked at me. All he said was, ‘What did you say?’ I couldn't pretend like I didn't say it, so I just said, ‘What if I were older? What if I were eighteen?’ He didn't say anything for a moment and I felt myself freaking out. He walked closer to me since we were standing a good ten feet away from each other. He looked into my eyes and said, ‘You would be Mary-Beth’.

He leaned down and tilted my chin up with his index finger and kissed me. It was only my second kiss ever. It was the most amazing moment. We had only been friends for three weeks and all of a sudden we were kissing. We talked for at least two hours about the situation and had come up with the only logical solution. We would remain friends until my eighteenth birthday then we would date. We weren't sure if we could resist the temptation of each other’s bodies so we had to have boundaries. Since I was a minor and he was not, he could get in a lot of trouble.

But even being just friends, it didn't quite work out. We were basically dating, and eventually we just said we were. He then asked me if I would be his girlfriend. I of course said yes. I had never had a boyfriend before. Unless you count the whole ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ thing in 5th grade where you sit together at lunch.

It was amazing. He was so sweet and wonderful, and nice. He would do little things that would make me smile. He would open the car door for me, he would walk closest to the cars when we were walking, he would randomly surprise me with a rose.

He said ‘I love you’ first, and about a week later I said it to him. I had never said it before and well, I didn't really know how to. Since I only had had one other kiss before him I obviously hadn't done any other type of sexual interaction with another person. But he was really sweet about all of it and I found myself exploring his body and allowing him to explore mine.

We didn't take the physical stuff very slow. Well, all the stuff leading up to actual sexual intercourse. Within a week I was comfortable enough to have my top off, but it took about three weeks until I was comfortable enough to even have him touch below the belt, but it took me a few days more to let him look. It all was fun and new experiences for me.

After dating for two months, I had decided I was ready to lose my virginity to him. I told him and he asked me all sorts of questions so we could decide if I was emotionally ready or if my hormones were just telling me to do it. After figuring out why I wanted to and things like that we both agreed that it was something I was ready to do.

But once we go to the actual act, I got extremely nervous and tightened up. Needless to say, your body won't let anything in when your muscles have closed the opening! He was really sweet about it though, telling me it was okay and that he will wait until we are ninety if that's what I need. We just layed in bed naked and held each other.

I lived with my mother, and only three months after we began dating, Alex moved in. We tried to have sex every once in awhile but it always hurt too bad. It's now five months after he moved in and six months after our initial try, and we still have yet to have sex. So even though I'm still a virgin, I find myself not feeling like one some of the time because of my relationship and what we have done. But I definitely see myself losing my virginity to Alex. He is the man I hope to marry one day and the only man I wish to sleep with.

Hopefully soon will we be able to do the deed, I can't wait to share the experience with him. Even though he is not a virgin, and hasn't been for many years, he has remained supportive and does not pressure me in any way. My ‘virginity’ may still be intact but my heart has been given away, and the gift of my virginity might have just temporarily been lost in the mail

Sincerely,
Aimee,
California, USA’

Sign me up...

Having spent a lifetime not recognizing quite basic forms of flirtation from the opposite sex (note: for any potential suitors, you may have to make yourselves obvious, when I say obvious, I mean installing green traffic light signals outside my house type obvious), my heart goes out to this week’s story teller. Nineteen year old Christopher is a teenager. He differs in no other way to you or me, except that he is Autistic.

This is a condition that amongst other things, affects the perception of quite basic non verbal communication. The ‘playing hard to get’ routines of the average teenager would be lost on the Autistic youth. The casual signals that you and I (usually) read would be invisible to the Autistic eye. Christopher explains it thus:

‘I have trouble with women. They tend to be very subtle which of course is entirely lost on me along with their non-verbal signals. I have difficulty recognising the significance of expressions and gestures as well as the more implicit language features – intonation and stress, etc.’

And we think we have a hard time!

Christopher has adopted what some may consider a radical solution to this problem. He has taken the bull by the horns, saved up some cash and taken the short cut. Christopher chose to lose his virginity to an escort. I applaud his brave, pragmatic approach. These qualities will serve him well as he prepares to leave home and go to university, a bold step by anyone’s standards. Here is his story…

‘Dear Kate,

I've been considering sending you an e-mail for some time now but have only recently plucked up the courage.

Until the 25th of May, 2007 I had never had a girlfriend, never kissed a woman, never held hands, never touched, and never came close to having sex. On this day I had a two hour appointment with a beautiful twenty-five year-old escort who went by the name of Dannie.

I've always struggled with social interaction, particularly with the opposite sex. This is due to having mild autism and also having suffered extreme levels of bullying throughout most of my life. I am generally considered very handsome and do not have a shortage of women interested in me but I don't have the social skills or the confidence to do anything about it - although I am working on it and feel my virginity-loss experience has helped immensely.

The idea of using an escort for my first time had been in my head for about a year but I had not seriously considered it until my eighteenth birthday on the 4th February 2007. Roughly a week before meeting Dannie, I phoned the agency which she worked for. They were friendly and put me on to the escort I had selected (which I wasn't prepared for and, unfortunately, nearly hyperventilated just speaking to her).

The day came and I took a taxi to the city where she was based. I arrived at her flat and took about ten minutes to bring myself to ring her door bell. When I did, I was greeted by Dannie who was even more stunning in real life than in her photos. Five foot nine tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, very soft features, and large, supple breasts (I hope that doesn't sound crude, if so I apologise).

She greeted me warmly with a kiss on the cheek, (the closest I'd ever got to a woman) and invited me inside. I handed her the envelope of money (£250), she invited me to sit down and offered me a drink of wine which I accepted. She went to the kitchen to pour the drinks, and presumably check the money also.

Dannie returned with the drinks and we talked for about fifteen minutes; just general chit-chat. She asked me to come to the bedroom, but I sheepishly asked for another drink which she obliged. When pouring the drink she asked 'Christopher . . . are you a virgin?' I answered that I was, something which I'd never admitted to anyone before and had always vehemently denied when previously questioned. She talked to me reassuringly as I drank and then led me to the bedroom.

I won't go into details but the rest of the appointment was amazing and intimate though we were basically strangers, we spoke more during and after which was, again, very intimate and personal. I left the appointment having received one last kiss, and wearing a grin which didn't fade for a few months and still returns when I reminisce.

I was extremely relieved to be free of the bonds of adult male virginity. As clichéd as this may sound, I felt like I had removed the weight of the world from my shoulders. I have since become much more confident in communicating with people. I still haven't had a meaningful relationship with a non-paid woman, though I have seen two other escorts since which, though not as special as the first, have served to make me more confident with women.

Although I was only eighteen at the time, and am only nineteen now, I could not and cannot see myself ever having had sex or a relationship without having seen an escort; I needed this. I will be going to University in September and hope to have a fresh start and, hopefully, forge new friendships and pursue a meaningful relationship with a woman. I will never forget Dannie and do not regret my decision to pay for the experience.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher, 19 years old, from England'

Given the prevalence Autism, I had to ask Christopher what advice he might offer to someone else considering this course of action. He answered with the following nuggets….

‘I would say that it's important to keep an open mind and be willing to learn, or more importantly, be willing to be taught. My first time I left my socks on and was jokingly scolded for it, we laughed and I didn't do it again. So, yeah, I'd say don't take things too seriously; be light-hearted in your approach and humility never hurt.

I'd also advise to aim to experience a variety of different women, not just one age group, ethnicity, background, et cetera. I've been with a tall blonde twenty five year-old, a medium height black-haired thirty year-old, and a short brunette thirty eight year-old. All of them brought a new and totally different experience.

Finally, I'd say if you're looking to use a sex worker to gain experience/ lose virginity/ whatever, then be sure to research them. Check previous clients' reviews, the reliability of the agency/girl, and remember that you generally get what you pay for. Also, I'd recommend a minimum booking of two hours, particularly for your first time; it gives you more time to relax and get to know the woman on some level.’

Wise words.

However you feel about Christopher’s choice, it is interesting to note that despite the fact that he lives with a condition that excludes him from the bore of standing on social ceremony, he is still prepared to go to great lengths to rid himself of his virginal status. He goes on to say this:

‘Now that I'm not a virgin I feel much more confident and happy in all aspects of life. As bizarre as this no doubt sounds, the moment I stopped being a virgin was the moment my confidence and general happiness increased ten-fold.’

You can’t argue with that.

Note: all names changed to protect identity.

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.